Register for free to join our community of investors and share your ideas. You will also get access to streaming quotes, interactive charts, trades, portfolio, live options flow and more tools.
Register for free to join our community of investors and share your ideas. You will also get access to streaming quotes, interactive charts, trades, portfolio, live options flow and more tools.
If you get a chance, inquire about "Einstein" with your connections there. It sounded like more competition than the device in the picture.
At least three table-mounted arms have a better level of practicality than the four behemoth pedestals completely surrounding a TRXC patient!
Going back to the Medtronic/DLR alliance... I presume this is the system they are calling Einstein? I heard a rumor. Anyone else hear anything about Einstein?
Finally! Nothing negative being posted all day!
I'd say he did a nice job with the piece I just caught (about the last 20-25 minutes). No Verb chatter, but the end effector discussion near the end would just as easily explain why if there was such a discussion going on. The "earlier partnering" question I took as alluding to the Longtai deal and I wasn't clear on the root answer to that one, maybe for similar reason (a little circular banter to distract from the original question? Maybe I missed something when evaluating leftovers in the fridge...)
He seemed to handle it all rather professionally. I was hoping for something more but honestly everything he talked about is really positive. He seems like the kind of person who will hold responsible people to their timeline commitments, and there is indeed a timeline, so the most critical takeaway from this week in my book in that he has put the chaos to rest. There is a plan; they are working to the plan; pieces are falling into place and progress will now be measured, tracked, and hopefully reported to shareholders.
I did not offer any questions, but one I thought of as the call was progressing was if he would welcome continued feedback from the retail investment community. Shoulda...
The Double Black is very nice, but the Blue is awesome. First tried it a couple years ago, coincidentally in Vegas (little round martini bar in the corner of the Paris casino). Loved it, so my wife got me a bottle for special occasions. Worth waiting for a sale! Can be $250+ at full retail or $170 on sale. The savings alone is an extra 320 shares of Titan stock!
The celebration... that will still be Vegas, right?
On Monday I sold the last couple dozen ISRG shares I had and dumped them into Titan. Hit 275K shares, so this had better pan out!
I just don't understand why we can get good news, price pops a little bit, then trickles back down over the course of the day. That is frustrating.
It sounds to me as if the hardware design is pretty close to being wrapped up. Software is up next...
It is definitely nice to see true milestones on a schedule and not to be overlooked, they are already slightly ahead of this new schedule! Now if we can get the PPS back on schedule...
That's a big DoD grant for telesurgery! SPORT might be a great platform for that... It would sure beat having to close up four different holes when you aren't even there!
Maybe insiders were just buying Easter presents for nieces and nephews...
"Here kid, it's only worth a few hundred bucks today but in a few years it will pay for college and your first house."
Crap, and apologies... MD&A is today, but Conference call is Thursday.
"MD&A for the fourth quarter ended December 31, 2016, after the markets close on Tuesday, March 21, 2017. Management led by David McNally, President and CEO, will host a conference call to discuss these results and recent corporate developments at 4:30 PM ET on Thursday, March 23rd."
MD&A and Conference Call at 4:30 Eastern. I hope it's good; I just bumped up my position a lot this morning, also got my dollar cost average down even further.
Not sure why but I thought Shore was gone. Not listed on the web site any more and I thought there was a blurb somewhere about looking to pick up a new QA guy.
I'd be buying more right now if I had any cash. Almost tempted to sell the rest of my ISRG... With competition everywhere on the horizon, it might not be a bad time to close that one down completely.
I tend to think McNally's list at the end of that article (I agree, nice find and thanks for sharing!) implies Verb is independent from Titan's program. Is anyone (or everyone) else also reading it this way?
I had been trying to think of ways to approach Verb as a question for the CC in which a "No" answer would be easy to put the question to rest; the question itself has to encourage them to choose to answer it. At this point I don't mind as much if the answer is yes or no, but the mystery is much more annoying than intriguing, so I wish we could get a real answer. If anyone has ideas for this as well, please share!
And if he knows how we fell, he should be looking to change that.
I'm in no hurry to try to do another letter, but the PR extended an invitation to ask questions and since we have questions, I think we should take them up on their offer. I'm happy to let him do his job but I also believe that listening to shareholders with valid concerns is part of his job. I don't think it will be a distraction because he knows the answers already; he just needs to let us know those answers which he can share. I agree that a Verb question might be considered hostile at the moment and we probably shouldn't go there, but a more generic question pertaining to any type of business partnership could be considered.
So it looks like Chris Lewis and Amanda are our only two options to try to get questions in front of McNally. In either case it might end up being a scripted presentation, but he might be willing to share some info if we can get one of these two options to put our questions/concerns to him at the con call. Nothing to lose, lots to gain, so worth a try!
It also says "Others are encouraged to submit questions prior to or during the call to aprior@evcgroup.com." Maybe we can hit up Amanda during the call if it doesn't look like we are getting any attention.
And maybe one of our questions should pertain to why their institutional holdings are so small. The problem there is that institutional investors might be relying on PR and analysts for info, which means both of our contacts for this call might be made to feel they are underserving Titan. Do you know anyone who asks his boss "Why am I doing such a poor job?" We might not be able to get that question presented during the call!
Even though the press release says to use Amanda to present questions, we can still cc McNally on these so he can prepare or provide info as part of his presentation instead of waiting for the questions at the end. That would give him a little more control over the flow of the call as well, which a guy like him should appreciate.
Ouch! I didn't realize institutional holdings would be so low! I have almost 5 times their combined holdings.
That also might be a good way to go... We need to get the right contacts and we still need to get the right questions and story lines to their attention, and hope they are intrigued enough to ask the right questions. Does anyone here know how to find out who and where these analysts and institutional investors are? It is well beyond my knowledge base!
With the conference call next week, there's a pretty good chance that some positive info will come out to get the PPS moving again. What is the real point of the conference call otherwise? Is it mandatory with release of year end results? If not, then the man must have something important to say!
Hopefully, we have less than a week left of these bargain basement prices.
That's the plan! We can put together a list of good questions and send them to Amanda in advance.
I'd be happy to reprise my role as Scribe for this board if we want to create a few questions that I can send to Amanda in advance. We can also discuss the possibility of sharing them with Mr. McNally and others in advance in the event they decide to prepare answers. We would want thoughtful and insightful questions; not so many that they all get ignored, but there are certainly a handful of issues we really need to hear discussed. We could even vote to rank them by importance before we send the list. Thoughts?
Also a vote of confidence by themselves. Over 630,000 shares bought by company insiders. Someone here recently requested they "put their money where their mouth is" and apparently they were willing to do so!
I'm hoping that the IP Review is to verify everything is solid moving forward, meaning no more substantive changes for design freeze (just software to meet performance and regulatory requirements with current hardware configuration).
The increase could be simply due to a re-evaluation (and re-valuation) by McNally and his team once he came on board. And how old was that $950K figure anyway? What technology was that originally going to buy?
I had read that healthcare costs over the past 30 years have typically risen by nearly 8% per year (that and higher education have been about the same rate, about 2.5x inflation).
That is the savings over today's Xi price... maybe. In 2014, Forbes pegged the Xi price at $1.85 to $2.3M, depending on accessories purchased. I've hear $2M talked about for target pricing, but I can't find any firm pricing on line. And service contracts are up to $170K per year (if the system lasts 6 years, that's another million in cost). By 2019, purchase price could easily be $2.5M. So McNally's proposed purchase price of $1.25M when it hits the market in 2019 still works out to half of the Xi, or not far from it. Add in a more reasonable service contract and accessories, and Titan could still be the ultimate value proposition in this marketplace. When we finally get there.
Foot pedals will be translucent, with multi-colored LEDs built in. Surgeon can select color scheme. For those surgeons in states which have legalized marijuana, the surgeon can select a flashing strobe mode, which randomly flashes different colors for each of the pedals and swaps pedal functionality accordingly. Selecting this mode also initiates playback of Grateful Dead tunes through the console. Unfortunately, negotiations for licensing rights to the Grateful Dead library is causing delays getting to design freeze for foot pedals. If they just built in an iPod dock, the problem would be solved!
Do you think Dr. Patel would have signed on to the SAB without seeing the hardware and maybe a video or two? And why would the preeminent robotic surgeon on the planet sign on to work with something which "looks like crap" per your post?
I'm certainly in agreement with a few of your points as being as close to factual as we can determine:
Still need a LOT of cash to reach the finish line.
Still at least 2 years away from regulatory approval.
On the other hand, VC/Partners/Chinese all uninterested cannot be determined by the facts we do have at this point in time. We don't know who Mr. McNally is working with behind the scenes. We don't know what his plans are for financing this thing to completion; we can reasonably surmise that the current offering was required because they wouldn't have another infusion of cash until the current warchest was depleted. Most organizations won't hand over tens of millions of dollars overnight; they need to do their due diligence and get internal sign-offs, determine payment methods and timing, most likely a series of payments based on lower-level milestones, contract approvals, etc.
I don't think McNally signed up to fail. And I don't think Dr. Patel operates with a life jacket because he thinks he's on a sinking ship. If these guys didn't both believe they are on a path to success, they wouldn't be there. And they both are privy to the behind-the-scenes info (facts and real data) which we do not have access to. The $5.6M raise probably gets us to the end of Q2, give or take. If we don't have something tangible by then, I will start to worry.
I'm concerned that from an investment standpoint, TRXC's failure will scare big money from another ISRG competitor (Titan) because TRXC proved it's risky business. And most of the big dollar investors won't understand the technological differences between the two, so they don't understand Titan's advantage when it gets clearance.
AORN is in Boston next month. I just found a site listing exhibitors and Titan Medical is not on the list (Titan Nurse Staffing or something like that will be there - that doesn't help us much).
Scottrade agrees - 166.51M outstanding. And if they could keep it at that number, it would truly be outstanding!
That was the bad news... the new patent application. That will cost them THOUSANDS of dollars and surely put them six feet under. Patents are practically a death knell for a tech start-up.
So, math in my head... adding 14M shares and another 7M warrants (which had better be worth more than 0.35 in 2019). From a dilution standpoint, it could have been much worse. On the other hand, they are barely raising enough money to run another month or so. Maybe something else is in the works but still a few weeks away? Also, closing on the 16th... How will this impact trading in the meantime?
I agree, unless they can leverage their presence at SAGES for good PR and fundraising, or at least to get a bump in PPS so another offering won't hit us with as much dilution. Otherwise, Git'r Done!
Might be a Copy/Paste error... they updated the year on the right side of page 9 of the Advance Program, but maybe forgot to revise the date on top of the page? It's only 3 weeks away so I would imagine they know who this year's exhibitors will be. On the other hand, Titan had some sort of PR last year indicating they were going to SAGES; one would think they would announce it again this year if they really are going.
Playing catch-up again; family emergency yesterday (all is well now).
One thing that has bothered me the whole time about the Verb situation is that there is very little focus on an instrument in their communication. One of five pillars...
I'm thinking, as they claim, that their "system" is more advanced than a "mere" surgical robot, and the focus on software and data is the real basis for their end product. Just a hypothesis here, but could they be looking at a system which tracks and correlates surgical robotic movement with live video imaging for eventual repetition? In other words, they could be using various existing robotic platforms (limited selection today but more coming, including ours) and monitoring/logging the robot's movements and activities for a given procedure. Eventually, they could build a statistically significant database of what movements surgeons make with the instruments to achieve the surgical goal for each given procedure. With today's image recognition software, it is feasible that the end result is closer to automated surgery; the software recognizes features, differentiates tissue colors, textures, positions, etc. and either guides the surgeon through the process with on-screen prompts or could perform the movements itself, relying on the surgeon for approval for each move, merely as a sanity check. Maybe add something to measure distances more accurately such as an ultrasonic sensor, and let the computer convert colors to a wider spectrum for on screen representation (the surgical field is mostly varying shades of red and pink; maybe do a reverse-Dolby compression for the visible spectrum to provide easier recognition of different anatomical features...
They talk a lot about the future of robotic surgery and it seems digital learning is more than hinted at repeatedly. How else would this be applied to the robotic surgery environment?
Earlier stages, they would need their software to be an overlay on the existing software for data accumulation. Their database will have learned for a given patient size, gender, age, etc. where to expect to see certain anatomical features, and how to recognize them and any issues being dealt with surgically. A surgeon could then conceivably sit at the control station, clicking away at confirmations (Yup, that's the pancreas... Yup, that's a tumor... Yup, go ahead and remove the tumor...) with the ability to override and control the robot manually at any time.
Looking at today's image recognition capabilities, this is all very feasible, and it just might be the direction Verb is going. If so, they will be equally concerned with compatibility than capability of a given robot. If this is the behind-the-scenes interaction between Verb and Titan (if there is any interaction at all) then Titan should be well-positioned to enter the market as a viable platform for this next-generation, even more automated surgery paradigm, and still at a price point and per-case cost point which provides them a huge eventual market opportunity.
From my own experiences with digital imaging recognition technologies and robotics in general, I believe the tech all exists but just needs to be incorporated into one system. And that might be what Verb is doing, and why Titan and others could play a role.
All hypothesis, of course, but sometimes it's fun to let the imagination run on a bit.
I've been away today, so just catching up. And frankly, I'm surprised there hasn't been more discussion about the Verb job posting and some of their wording. They are near completion of their first gen, and now want to hire a large group of engineers for the second gen development. So then, who developed their first gen? Why wouldn't those same people be tasked with the second gen development work? My preference has always been that Titan go it alone if possible, but does anyone else (obviously Rocko...) think that Verb's wording and timing are a bit coincidental with the current status of SPORT? Gen 1 almost done (Hey, Titan is almost done!). And now Verb wants to hire a large engineering crew to work on Gen 2 even though their Gen 1 development team is just about done. Kinda looks to me like their Gen 1 team might have been us all along. Or at least recently. Maybe McNally was the selling point for them; they could have just monitored the situation until McNally came on board at which point they were convinced the product would make it. Again, not my personal preference, but there is a lot more coincidence here with these new job postings and Verb's project description. Several of the positions they are looking to fill would already have been in place for the first gen if they did it themselves.
A couple questions... What is the ROTH conference and what type of discussions might they be having there? And regarding Longtai/China/Design freeze/funding/possible personnel changes, are you able to indicate any sources for these nuggets? It all sounds like great info to me, especially if it is valid or verifiable!
Week 7 of Mr. McNally in charge. Dr. Rayman probably doesn't think of him as a wuss. If they haven't shut development down again yet, he must be doing something right, because their historical burn rate should have had them running out by now, or pretty damn soon. Linear extrapolation of their prior funding is about the most "data" we have from which to guess at it. Real news would be nice!
We are down to our last week in February. It sure would be nice to get some kind of news or communication from them. One of our biggest complaints has been the infrequency of communications in general. Granted, it has barely been over two weeks since they announced the addition of Dr. Genova to the team, but just about every press release so far this year has been about personnel changes, and nothing about operations or finances. On November 8, they announced third quarter results ending September 30. Presumably, they should announce year end results in early March (assuming the same delay as last time). But that will still be outdated information - we really need current information on finances and development status. Mr. Barker, if you are reading this, please go to bat for us again and send us some news!