resultsThe reaction on the board has ranged from being initially positive to disparaging as yesterday's sell-off ensued.
Research as important as this, with the potential of saving millions of lives, including members of all of our own families, should be respected and the challenges acknowledged and appreciated. I appreciate the various posters who comment constructively on this board and I hope to see that level of decency continue.
As a non-expert optimist, I listened to the presentation yesterday and went through the slides. I suggest everyone do the same, see IMV’s homepage for the presentation deck and audio. The questions by the analysts were fair and insightful. Both CEO Ors and CMO Schindler did a fine job answering them. Looking at the data and listening to the presentation, it seems that IMV has already reached the bar to seek FDA approval to advance. This seems like a major achievement. Is this not a huge positive development? As more data rolls out, hopefully the numbers continue to improve, placing IMV well above the bar.
Slides 9 and 12 in the presentation show many of the key results and stats, with a 79% disease control rate – is this not superb? As an indicator of treatment response, baseline tumor burden was comparable between DPX and EPAcadostat. Further, tumor regressions for DPX were evident in 53-63% of patients compared to 31% for EPA. Aren't these results positive? Moreover, the clinical response rate was 21-42% for DPX, compared to 23% for EPA, which again seems positive. In the sum lesions, DPX seems to measure up to EPA with tumor regressions and CRR just below EPA results. Either way, as a monotherapy or with EPA, IMV's delivery platform works. Let’s not loose site of the fact that IMV's delivery platform extends lives of hard to treat patients who have exhausted other means of treatment. IMV's vaccine is extending lives through a needle injection and, critically, with limited side effects. Undoubtedly, I think that we would all agree, based on these metrics, that extending life with little side effect equates to improving quality of life. Is that not a positive development? And I can only think that perhaps one day, IMV's delivery platform may even extend my own life, or perhaps yours? That seems positive. Thus, I do think that the company made good progress with this study, though perhaps not satisfying all of the various hopes ($$$) and asperations of everyone who has invested, and that's understandable - it has been a long road where news releases are usually accompanied by sell offs. So what drove yesterday's sell off?
This is pure conjecture, but I think what torpedoed the shares yesterday was the downgrade by the Wells Fargo analyst. Research is challenging and IMV is making good, solid progress. Why Wells Fargo decided to downgrade is any one's guess. Do any posters have any detailed, specific, meaningful and constructive insight into why the stock was so aggressively downgraded? At the very least, I hope that analyst and IMV are communicating and discussing the results further. IF this was actually the case, then I actually find it more alarming that a single analyst can torpedo a stock. And it’s important to note that, as far as I know, other analysts did not similaly downgrade their target price, but rather held their targets. Wells Fargo was the anomaly.
On a final note, looking forward, I do believe that IMV learned from the last financing and will be much more acute in the future.
Here’s hoping for future success….