"Seems totally plain to me in black, white and plain English...

"Seems totally plain to me in black, white and plain English from the broadcast: http://boardroom.media/broadcast/?refid=&eid=57589faf4c64e59e61dc747e Check in from 26.00 to 26.30. Could not be plainer. Teva could not have left for trial reasons. Period. Period. Period. Said umpteen times already."


Except that that the commentary that you referenced from the webcast makes no reference to what @hodgsop (and others) are asking:

Hodgsop is asking whether or not Teva and MSB had any insights into whether surrogate endpoints had, or had not, been achieved.

Because, it is only on that basis, i.e., non-achievement of surrogate endpoints, that
Teva was able to withdraw from the trial.

The CEO's response to the question from the analyst relates to patient-level data, and that this data cannot be published (CEO: "We cannot provide detailed data to the market because the FDA prevents any detailed data being disseminated in order to maintain the integrity of the Phase 3 trial.")

But his answer is silent on whether or not Teva (or Mesoblast, for that matter) actually saw any surrogate endpoint data. At no stage did he say with zero ambiguity, that "I can confirm that neither Teva or Mesoblast saw any results."

(And note that, before anyone makes any defamation allegations, I'll stress that I'm not saying for one minute that the CEO intentionally failed to answer the analyst's question in the confirmatory negative. I understand full well that, in these impromptu Q&A situations, it can be pretty stressful for company executives, and things sometimes don't come out in an optimal manner, and the CEO was probably being rightly cautious about any questions that relate to strict regulatory issues.)

But the fact remains that there exists some confusion about what trial insights Teva is thought to have seen (according to conventional thinking), compared to what insights Teva would had needed to have in order to be able to withdraw from the trial.


And this is not just a trivial point; it gets down to the very essence of the fundamentals of the company.