the downside

The biggest attraction of Acrux for me is the downside - or the relative lack of one, compared with other biotechs.

What's the worst case? Acrux is not a single product company, but it is a single-technology company. So the big risks involve a threat to that technology.

A worst case scenario might be the discovery that (say) the ACROSS enhancers were toxic, in some way not detected in clinical trials. Something like that would pretty much destroy Acrux, but it seems an unlikely scenario.

Invalidation of key patents would hurt, but Acrux would still have a development lead and a lot of experience, so it seems likely there'd be value in the company anyway. Also, their patents cover several aspects of the delivery mechanism, and multiple regions, so an attempt to invalidate them would be drawn-out and expensive.

Finally, there's the risk that the delivery mechanism won't be popular with patients or practitioners. But not only are there all those polls and surveys Acrux has done, but KV was impressed enough by experience selling Evamist to sign up for six more products using the same technology - that all suggests the underlying idea is sound.

Which leaves the drugs. These may fail or succeed, but there are a lot of them, in a lot of different markets, so it seems unlikely they will all fail -- and the last few years have seen a steady stream of successfull trials and product registrations and applications.

Finally, Acrux has enough cash that it won't need to do a capital raising or otherwise compromise its position to raise money.

Obviously none of this guarantees anything about the share price. If market sentiment goes more bearish or another large shareholder has to sell out, who knows what could happen? But I'm not expecting another chance to buy at 40c.