Justifiably shareholders are upset by the slowenrolment of the agitation trial and the resulting share price.
I can see at least 3 reasons for the slow enrolment.
These aren’t related tochanges in dosing or trial protocols.
I am not sure how much thesecan be changed once the trial starts.
The first reason is the Oct 18 announcement that the initialtrial end point wasn’t met. (although some data was positive)
I would expect that those recruiting patients would have felt lessurgency to enrol patients since it appeared it didn’t work.
The second potential issue is did the BNO board loseits commitment to BNC210?
Most of this appeared to surface after the detailedanalysis was completed and then announced in Feb 19.
One quote was “the results of the complex andtime-consuming drug exposure analyses were not available (in Oct 18) and couldnot have been readily been foreseen”.
The exChair obviously knew the BNC210 trial protocol beingfollowed and unless he had a crystal ball he could not predict what the druglevel results would be.
Put simply the initial Oct 18 announcement were basedjust on patient feedback and the Feb 19 results (requiring more analysis) werea correlation of patient feedback with the patients drug levels.
Another Feb 19 quote was “Bionomicschairman Dr Errol De Souza says it (the trials success) vindicates thecompany’s decision to seek to treat PTSD with BNC210, even though it stoppednearly all work on the drug, lost its CEO and underwent a recapitalisationand strategic review after the initial news”.
No one is arguing the final success of the PTSD trial could be foreseen.
However the board appears to have automatically assumed the trialwas a failure before the definitive blood level analysis was completed.
Some confidence in the years of research done on BNC210 was needed bythe board.
A final concern is the amount of time the exChair whois US based spends in Australia to follow up with those involved in theAgitation trial enrolment to push it forward?
Its fine to have the large overall strategicperspective but often you just need to keep ringing or visit those involved to keep projects moving.
Particularly when the good news story of the Feb 19 drug level datacould be explained.
The successful aspects of the PTSD data should beexplained and should have prevented the share price slide to today’s close of14.5 cents.
Shareholders need however tokeep in mind that the combined personal shareholding of the board (last annualreport) is less than 800K (with 1.9 M Options). None participated in the SPPin Feb 19 and I can’t see any Directors Interest Announcement to say theirholding has changed.
While checking the data in the Annual report I was surprised to see the pay increases the board have given themselves.
Just for board membersthis was
Sept 2017 : $65K to $70K
July 2018 : $70K to $77K
Naturally there is extra payfor chairing Internal Committees.
This is an amazing amount ofpay for a company now not in The All Ords.
