Given what appears to be a mass migration over to CEO.CA by the usual suspects (you know who you are, changed na[mm]esakes aside) I will assume that this post will be read by virtually no one, and ask in advance that no one write back on why they need an audience for their announcements over there (you’ve already told on yourselves). It would seem that Dr. Phil has put himself into a real corner when it comes to testing the patience of shareholders. First he was unable to suss out the agenda of our research partner in Edmonton (which cost we shareholders much time and money, oh so long ago) then he struck out again in arranging a bought deal that could go absolutely nowhere other than in the back of the large SUV’s owned by Can-of-Crapola and Leeds-all-monies into Mr. Loe’s account.
Strike 3 appears to be on the near term horizon. This is the need to address the cash burn rate relative to what still needs to be done to have what is considered a cure, which cannot be funded, or appears to not be on a funding path, by current institutions who we supposedly have NDA’s with. This is not to say that new partnerships around funding aren’t being negotiated, but if we look at those two other Swing-and-a-miss episodes, one has to wonder what Evotec sees ahead. At first I thought that Evotec would simply stabilize the share price by soaking up the share dumps that certain houses have done to line their pockets. Then I thought, is the risk-on a matter of lack of confidence in company management, or just pure manipulation by non-retail through and through? Probably both.
For sure, no retail investor wants to have their investment wiped out by algos pushing the price into the $2.80’s only to have the price drop to the $.70’s again. And the big Pharma partners don’t see any threat from a company that cannot fund the risk-off development process by themselves. So what of this situation is Dr. Phil ignoring or willfully blinding himself to? According to all the chatter over on the CEO channel, he must have some secret recipe he’s cooking up that must involve people that are the mirror opposite of the portal vein guy or the bought deal guy. Now why we should assume that he’s become a much better judge of character, could only really be shown to be true if he himself stepped aside (not completely away) and let someone with real abilities in the area of mergers and acquisitions move in to help relieve some of the restrictions that “the corner” we’re in, imposes.
To my mind, he either sets this up - loads the bases - between now and February 2023, or it will all be taken away from him at the next AGM. I only believe this given that I don’t need to comment more than once every 3-4 months, because the conversation is going full steam ahead over on CEO. To my mind this all gets better in 10 months time. Am I too optimistic? Maybe. But I was also the guy who said it was only a matter of time before Phil would wear out his welcome should he continue to believe he could do it all himself long, long before the herd turned on him.
DF