Silly season for ASX biotechs
Myriam RobinColumnistApr 19, 2020 – 5.50pmThere's nothing like a pandemic to bring every biotech hopeful out of the shadows. No matter what they started off selling, everyone wants an antiviral angle these days. And in their haste to spruik their relevance to investors, many seem to be tripping over their own feet. Or the ASX's listing rules.
Medicinal cannabis producer MGC Pharmaceuticals, for one, can't decide whether its pot treatments have the potential to do coronavirus patients any good.
MGC went into a trading halt in mid-March pending the release of details regarding "a strategic joint venture with a Swiss company in relation to COVID-19". It eventually exited said halt last week (after extending it seven times) making no reference to COVID-19 at all, causing the ASX to extract from it a retraction of all COVID-19 references in its previous releases. Without clinical trials, there was "presently no reasonable basis" to assume medicinal pot could either cure COVID-19 or address its symptoms, investors were told on Wednesday.
But by Friday, MGC said it had actually gotten ethical approval for a trial of its treatments for said purposes, to be conducted in Israel. The end result: a 32 per cent jump in its shares.
Cellmid's Maria Halasz takes a hands-on approach to marketing these days. Wolter Peeters
Meanwhile, Cellmid, whose major business is hair-loss and anti-ageing treatments, rapidly pivoted in late March to the importation of COVID-19 rapid testing kits. As everyone who followed CEO Maria Halasz on Instagram found out on March 23, a day before the company came out of a trading halt to tell its ASX investors about it.
Halasz was last in the public eye for unsuccessfully taking Cellmid's ad agency to court after its TV ad strategy failed to boost sales by as much as predicted. Clearly she takes a more hands-on approach to marketing these days. Though, at least no ASX investors were disadvantaged, given the company wasn't trading at the time.
It's more than can be said for TBG Diagnostics, whose share price suddenly and inexplicably rose from 3¢ to 27¢ in mid-March, tripping the company into a hasty trading halt. Why the surge? Well, it emerged last week that its Chinese subsidiary had on March 14 told its WeChat followers it had secured European approval for a COVID-19 test. This was communicated to two of TBG's Australian directors, who were sent the announcement. They didn't realise it was already entirely public. Oops
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