RE:Vote against Paul who has been CEO for 2 years ifAs you know I am a big fan of Luc's. He saved the company after egrifta fell on its face (remeber the huge price increase he put through when he became CEO?). He made a lot of smart smaller decisions that added up to several good big decisions. He is responsible for the Trogarzo deal which was really an amazing deal structure for a company that had very little to offer to Taimed. He kept costs low (maybe too low but given the near death experience earlier, you can understand why), the financing deals he did were sensible ones and he was great with shareholders like myself. Unlike you and me, however, he was not perfect ;). The analyst coverage was better than it is now but still pretty bad. And his projections for future sales were always vague yet still obviously off the mark, to say the least. One could argue he intentionally pumped Trogarzo sales forecasts up to ridiculous levels in order to get the convertible financing off at an unusually good price. But the fact that they chose a convertible offering versus stright shares as you preferred indicates to me they actually believed those forecasts and thought we would be looking at a share price well north of the $14.80 conversion price by now. I am not suggesting Luc belongs in the CEO Hall of Fame but I don't think he belongs in the Hall of Shame either. If nothing else, we had a very big run higher in the share price when Luc was in charge, so there was a chance to get out with a very significant profit for almost all investors.
With Paul, it has been mostly all downhill on the share price so far although two years is too short a time to judge him on. Even so, he is off to a bad start. I suspect he will finish strong on the back of cancer, perhaps even really, really strong. I vacillate between thinking he is just a guy who made decent progress at Pfizer by saying the right things and not screwing anything up too royally to thinking he really knows what he is doing. He inherited a situationwith NASH that was well on its way to getting the phase III IND but he did not mess that up. He also inherited TH-1902 and he has not messed that up yet either. He has been trying things with the salesforce but even if he = really is great on that front, it is just flat out hard to sell Egrfita nd Trogarzo so I am keeping my expectations low there. There have been some recent signs of hope on Egrifta howeverand I would like to think there are more doctors than just Dr. Grinspoon writing those prescriptons. I actually think the company has gotten meaningfully better under his tenure as he is willing to spend money and leave the poverty mentality of TH before that behind but I also worry he is willing to spend more than he should. A Chief of Staff? Really? I worry that he actually believes some of the things he says, but I don't think so as he is a salesman at heart. I like the quality of the new staff he has brought on and don't think anyone TH could have gotten for CEO other than him would have been able to convince Dr. Rothenberg to join up. He was the CEO for the ONO, so that is a hard one to overcome. I am a large investor and I know several others too - none of us feel like we are a priority to him. I am not saying we should be but it would be nice to think you are anyway! He is not knowledgeable about the capital markets and I think he would rather do other things than spend time on that. He mostly leaves a good impression as he has good people skills, at least in a sales environment, and he can make a good presentation and answer questions well on the fly. I have also heard secondhand from someone who works there that he respects him a lot. He is tarnished by the ONO, the phase 1a delays, the inability to push NASH over the finsih line after miraculously getting very close to it and the Trogarzo Europe situation (which is really inconsequential). If he hits a home run on cancer like I believe is likely, most of the those things will be forgotten.
Both Luc and Paul helped build the reputation at TH for coming up short on expectations they built up, and often spectacularly short. That has resulted in a really bad situation with investors view of the company, something TH has not figured out how to fix. Good cancer data will help fi it but had they done a better job all along the way of setting appropriate expectations and meeting most of them, this next financing would likely be accomplished on better terms than it will be. So, that capital markets problem they have is a very serious one for a company looking to raise money regularlysince we get unnecessarily diluted.
palinc2000 wrote: you agree with JFM that Paul is no better than Luc who was in the C Suite for 25 Years .I