Theratechnologies Inc T.TH

RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:THTX rose 0.9% this week

[jfm1330]

I think you overestimate the cost of cancer trials. This is not NASH where you need 1000 patients or more and treat for 18 months. They can easily start a phase II trial with their actual cash position and loan deal with Marathon. They did that deal especially not to dilute before oncology is much better valued by the market, and they still talk about an oncology deal in China that should bring in a good amount of money upfront. In my view, they can wait to see what will happen in phase Ib, they will know before the rest of us and will be able to adjust accordingly. The only thing, phase Ib will need to proceed much faster than phase Ia, which was awfuly slow.

Also, in the CC, they spoke about only three patients, but as we know with the wife of juniper88, they also saw other things on other patients that they did not talk about. It is also strange that on the efficacy signs they reported two of the three patients had prostate cancer, which was not in the phase Ib basket trial as a main cancer type because prostate cancer is not one of the cancer with a high percentage of sortilin overexpression.

SPCEO1 wrote: Actually, I largely agree with your first paragraph. My only alteration would be too say THTX only seriously injured the stock with the Egrifta and Trogarzo commercializations failures. The stock still actually traded a decent amount shares from time to time back then. They murdered it over the past year or so when they effectively stopped communicating with the capital markets and analysts and investors took the hint and left. I call it murder when you don't come to the aid of a bleeding victim and let them bleedout and that is what seems to have happened here lately. 

As for the offering to fund phase II trials, I would not expect themto do that at the current price. At least I sure hope they wouldn't. If they get a preliminary indication of efficacy on two patients in one type of cancer, it is my impression that they will take that the the FDA to start a phase II trial. So, if that happens, and THTX would have knowledge if that is about to be declared, then they might be in a fundraising mode for the phase II funds sooner than we think. The months of quietness followed by a week of press releases matches up with their previous behavior prior to fund raisings. What was missing last week was a run-up in the share price and that usually accompanies such good news aided by the cooperation of the share offering's lead broker pushing the share price higher just prior to the deal. I could be totally wrong about this, and probably am since no broker was pushing the price up, but the idea that a phase II share offering is coming to fund phase II is worth keeping an eye on. That should be a non-ugly share offering but I am not sure it will be an ideal one either since TH has fallen so out of the view of investors and it will be hard to get back to where it should be, especially with the phase 1a efficacy news and the hope that provides that an IMMU scenario is one that can now be legitimately considered at least somewhat possible. 

An share offering in the Fall at a much higher share price, perhaps after early phase 1b data is shared at a late breaker session at the AACR meeting and a lot of effort by management to pitch the stock to investors between now and then, to fund the phase 2 makes sense to me. But management has an awful lot of work to do to get THTX's shares back in at least the focus of a decent amount of investors besides ourselves. I have to believe that is a process that is about to start imminently given the packaging of news items this past week. Now, they have something to talk about with investors as they seek to revive the stock they let bleed out. 

jfm1330 wrote: We will never agree on what is driving SP. Trogarzo's commercial failure murdered the SP, Egrifta commercial failure murdered the SP, and not only that, but the company's reputation too, and what about NASH. They promised a lot on that, and delivered nothing, but I am happy they delivered nothing because it would be suicide to pursue that at this time, given the financial situation of the company. The bacteriostatic water thing came at a good time to put it on ice, and I hope oncology results will put it on ice forever.

As for an equity offering, if as we think oncology will work, why would they do that at the actual price. Add to that the fact that they insisted on the non dilutive aspect of their deal with Marathon. You don't highlight the non dilutive aspect of that just to go dilute a few weeks after. It does not make sense. Add to that the possibility of a deal in China. Also, if what they have in oncology is really special, maybe not in Troveldy territory, but enough for a spectacular turnover, as a CEO, would you promote this thing too early at this weak price? No. I think the goal is to stay relatively quiet for still a few months, and then come with really a big news, the game changer.

SPCEO1 wrote: I wish I could believe good interim results would move the stock price. No investors are anticipating those results other than ourselves and therefore none appear to be lined up to react to them in any significant way. The evidence for that is straightforward and overwhelming at this point. Until something changes and the stock gets a heart transplant, we really should not expect the market to price it correctly. 

With the 4 press releases this week following effectively none for months, it smells alot like an equity offering is imminent. Management  might have convinced themselves the stock would have a big bounce on the news they shared on efficacy because they still have not realized they had previously murdered the stock with their lack of engagement. I will give them credit for a lot of good things they have done but they simply do not know how to manage the share price effectively. One problem they likely were hoping to resolve was the analyst coverage issue which will only happen with a share offering. The cost of that is way too high, however, given the absence of a meaningful positive reaction in the stock price. If you are right and I am wrong, which I hope is the case, then they likely will wait until they have a preliminary sign of efficacy before raising money for a phase II trial. 

Thanks too for the excellent info on Trodelvy's 1a. 

jfm1330 wrote: This is the worst time of the year to get attention, especially for a very small company, but some will react at some point. Good interim results somewhere in September will move the SP.

To get a better perspective on yesterday's results, I was looking at the dose escalation phase I of Sacituzumab Govetican (Trodelvy), the Immunomedic's ADC targeting the membrane glycoprotein Trop-2 that was bought for 21 B$ by Gilead.

This phase I dose escalation trial was not a real all comers like Thera did in phase Ia. They have enrolled in this trial 25 patients with various type of cancers (pancreas, TNBC, colon, SCLC, etc..) They did no pre-selection of patients based on Trop-2 expression, a bit like Thera, but they tested biopsy samples on all of them for Trop-2 expression, and it ended up that >75% (17 of 25) of the patients were expressing Trop-2. That is a lot. Also, the patients enrolled in the study had on average been previously treated with three other chemotherapy drugs. In the case of TH1902's phase Ia, patients were previously treated on average with 8 other therapies. That's also a big difference. And Trodelvy cytotoxic agent is SN38, which is much more potent than docetaxel.

So, despite all these advantages, Trodelvy got "only" two partial responses, and 16 stable diseases, twelve of them for 16-36 months, and six of them survived 15-20+ months. So they have a lot more stable diseases, but on less treated patients with 75% of the patients expressing the ADC target (Trop-2).

Personnally, I find these results very encouraging for TH1902 because the Trodelvy trial was in my view much more favorable to achieve efficacy. These trial results were published in 2015. I think it puts in perspective TH1902's results we got yesterday. The blockbuster potential is there for TH1902, but also the whole SORT1+ platform. Proof of concept opens a lot of possibilities.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4558321/

SPCEO1 wrote: It traded about 287,000 shares on the week or a little less than $600,000 worth of THTX stock.

Despite a financing that took a ugly possible share sale off the table and clinical data that is highly suggestive of good things to come in cancer.

Management let the stock bleed out from its self-inflicted wounds and now it is effectively dead enough that even when management does some really good stuff, it is not enough and too late to generate a heart beat.