One of the great things about bios is that you can often map-out their timelines with reasonable accuracy, so as not to have capital tied-up for long periods of time, during the build-up to a set of trial results. I guess they could have done another $3-4M round of seed/pre but having already spent ~$12M on development, I think it's fair that at some point, founders/seeders wish to reduce some of their risk. Escrow will ensure they can't simply dump to market and in fact they actually purchased additional shares in the IPO.
IIL has been no different. On the surface, a largish lead-time to trial results (H2 2017) and yet a 20c float (that went as low as 13c from memory) is now at 70c, with strong support from both Oz and US funds. The Peach appointment at IIL seems to have benefited the company significantly, given his contacts and access to capital. I would suggest 1AD have done an excellent job in securing Peach. Interesting that the company is (ostensibly) fully-funded to Phase I trial completion, with the $10M raised being clearly mapped-out in terms of how it will be expensed. Additional $ will come from R&D tax incentives. Does this suggest any new funds (e.g. US ones, looking to get an early foothold in the company's i-body platform, should the company succeed with the IPF trial) will need to buy on-market? Or, similar to IIL, will we see a $2-3M CR to US funds, later in the piece, say, H2 2017...
The only downside I see here is opportunity cost, as the company builds momentum into Phase 1 launch. In the meantime, we should see progress on the manufacturing of AD-114; gaining of Orphan status for expedient delivery to market; potential partnerships; preliminary work regarding other applications. I think 2017 will go quickly for the company and investors will want to get set earlier than later in 2017. Delays to manufacturing and trial commencement/recruitment will be the keys to watch out for.
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