I note that Garth Brennan has recently been sacked as Head Coach...

I note that Garth Brennan has recently been sacked as Head Coach of the NRL affiliated Gold Coast Titans. Success - or lack of it - attracts a lot of scrutiny in the world of professional sport. In short, they are situated on the bottom rung of the ladder and below where they were when he first assumed the top role less than two years ago.

The same set of expectations do not always seem to be applied to some CEO’s that run public companies. I think that many of us can think of one where over a period of maybe three years now, it’s CEO has overseen its share price tumble from around eight cents to just four.

How impressive!

On a head to head basis, there is simply no comparison between his performance and that of Noxopharm’s founding CEO. Using the sporting theme, his best is say eight cents and Professor Kelly’s is $1:80. It’s simply not apples for apples. That company is a shareholders nightmare where even the most astute investor would have to consider themselves extremely fortunate to come out in front. Anyone who bought upon his appointment to today would be well behind. Shareholders who still hold today what they purchased during the initial IPO remain over one hundred percent ahead. Top flight super funds in Australia are lucky to generate ten percent returns per annum. Again, it’s impossible to draw any logical or reasonable comparison on that basis.

And yet they love him over there. By the same set of standards, it’s not hard to see that Garth Brennan has been hard done by.

Now Harvet says that Noxopharm is falling behind on its timetables. And it has. Firstly, it’s always going to be an imprecise business trying to judge when things are going to take place. Much easier no doubt for drug development companies with either one or at most two drugs for one indication each.

The problem for Noxopharm, in my opinion, happens to be a good problem. I think they have only just come to realise just how good the science actually is and furthermore, what to do with it and where to progress. Among other things, LuPIN simply wasn’t on the radar at the initial stages, the science of STING is of course another.

Basically, I think Noxopharm is trying to wrangle with Big Pharma issues but only with small pharma resources, and that is why I believe it isn’t meeting some of the early expectations.

Using the sporting analogy that I started with, I think Noxopharm entered the bush league with a very good prospect but has now realised that we can not only mix it with the best, but he better than the best on the world stage. We have for instance. recently seen Professor Louise Emmett perform an oral presentation at SNMMI in the US.

World class candidates take time. Time management is a far less complicated for the beats with little chance of success.