My response to our CEO Dear Mr. McRae and fellow shareholder,
I appreciate your efforts in clarifying matters relative to Mr. Wells and Mr. Gubitz. I also appreciate you laying out a basic roadmap for the future of our company. This level of communication with me, and other retail shareholders, is a new yet welcome change. Had you decided many years ago that an open and transparent regime was in everyone's best interest, I expect that many of the challenges you now face as the head of our company would not be as real.
Furthermore, you focus your attention quite directly on the Wells/Gubitz situation and that they somehow consititute a threat to the common shareholder. For the record, I believe in your account of the initial overtures by Mr. Wells and Mr. Gubitz completely, however I see no correlation to those overtures and the transformation that they now wish to force. As you yourself have stated, I see their challenge as a positive indication that the company has much potential; potential that we investors have know for years but have not yet realized. Clearly this lack of realization falls squarely on you, the remainder of the management team and our Board of Directors. To state otherwise, or to profess that the decades old poor execution, poor decision making and outright lack of a cohesive strategic plan is somehow tied to the most current semi-hostile activites of two investors is just plain wrong.
No other person(s) are responsible for the chronic cash burn and unbelieveble reckless spending our company has suffered. No other person(s) are responsible for the obscene and horribly failed experiment known as Econiche and the VMC. No other person(s) are responsible for handing complete and total control of our prime gamble to a US based company and then stand idly by watching them run roughshod over it. No other person(s) are responsible for allowing our prize asset in Animal Health to stagnate while pouring good money after bad into the aforementioned failed experiments. You call many of these items 'solid foundations', I call them at best poor decisions, and at worst the worst kind of management. Our shareprice is a testament to these failed efforts and to suggest otherwise is naive.
You have now laid your plan for the future for all to see. All the time spent and millions wasted on Food Safety and it's VMC to be hived leaving the current shareholder with nothing to show for those years of suffering. The single biggest safety net and scalable business in Animal Health to be hived off on the cusp of significant growth. Leaving us, as the dissidents have suggested, as a pre-commercial one trick pony. It is clear you are gambling all-in.
Given that is the case, I say without doubt that I personally will not support these actvities when the time comes. To suggest that somehow the current Board, yourself included, have the knowledge, background and wherewithall to unlock shareholder value and take Urocidin to commericialization is, in my opinion, a grand embellishment. This most recent loan arrangement with Palladin is a prime example. You now extoll the virtues of this deal and claim it is the first tangible example of the many on the table. Nothing in the Palladin deal is of benefit to the Bioniche shareholder, apart from some table scraps allowing you to control the business a short while longer and to complete the dismantling of the business, which, in the case of Animal Health, is the most important backdrop this business needs for success. They are myopic persons that do not see the potential of Animal Health at this point and you would have me trust said individuals with it's sale? The Palladin deal is a tangible example? It is a laughing stock.
You conclude your letter by essentially admitting failure and that somehow Mr. Wells and Mr. Gubitz are to blame for the capital markets punishing this company and it's shareholders for past decisions. Mr. Wells and Mr. Gubtiz are quite new to our scene and they are certainly not, in my opinion, to be blamed for literally years of waste, poor decision making and, as a personal point of irritation, a communication strategy that would make the CIA proud. In essence, you Mr. McRae created Mr. Wells and Mr. Gubitz. Had it not been for your poor leadership, there would not be a need for change. I also find it laughable that you feel you deserve the title of non-Executive Chairman given where you would leave the company, which, as a reminder, would be a single bet on a single product.....when literally 6-12 months earlier, we have all of Animal Health and it's potential, a state of the art VMC with world first vaccine in Econiche and the big bet in Urocidin. This is not a legacy to be lauded, this is a catastrophe for shareholders of the highest order. This letter to your fellow shareholders is a pseudo-admission of that, but unfortunately builds upon the 'take no responsibility and blame others' approach to past failures.
Again, I appreciate you taking the time to acknowledge your fellow shareholders. However, even in reading it, I come to the same conclusion and we as shareholders and I personally deserve better.