RE: Cashrjc & proboscis
thank you for correcting me - you are right, if the $4 warrants from the most recent pp are exercised by the end of next year, then they would get an additional $4M to the $1.5M from the $3 warrants if they are exercised by next june.
as pointed out, most of these warrants likely won't get exercised until they have to be (since they won't lose any value in the meantime), and anyone exercising them when they are in the money will most likely sell the underlying stock to get their cash back.
i'm glad that you agree that the amount of cash isn't excessive
it is much better for management to be conservative in their cash forecasting - especially when they are involved in essentially ground-breaking studies where the results are difficult to predict and far from a sure thing.
that is the single most important reason why any decision to diversify before a partnership is entered into makes little sense.
their sole focus should be on guiding reolysin through the 3 phase II trials and to partner on their hopefully satisfactory completion, and conserving all of their cash to ensure that is accomplished.
any use of scarce funds to "broaden their pipeline" says to me that they think there is a better use of their cash other than advancing reolysin to partnership, or that they are so confident that nothing can go wrong with reolysin, they are willing to risk shareholder money for another tth type misadventure. neither alternative should be appealing to onc investors.
tth was and remains a black hole - when it happened i didn't like it and it turned out for good reason. all we need to inspire more confidence in management's abilities is for BT to find another company with a bloated number of shares looking for cash that onc needs to hang on to for its own drug development.
once they have a partner who has made an equity investment in onc and who has agreed to pay the costs of ph III reolysin trials, then onc management can look for opportunities to broaden the pipeline, as they'll actually have some cash to use, and the prospects for revenues from royalties wont' be so distant.
hasn't anyone learned anything from tth?