food for thought for the board:
Fowler is one of the main reasons I've invested in Titan - brilliant thought leader in this arena, IREP technology, snake arm technology etc so he gave credibility to my investment. At first I was stunned that he resigned but like any good investor, can't react to the info (too late at that point) and gave myself some time to digest it. Even though Fowler is brilliant, it doesn't always mean he is right. I could see a scenario where he kept wanting to tweak SPORT to make it perfect (some of the board have alluded to the pursuit of perfection) and every time he did that, it meant a ton of work downstream for Ximedica to get this ready for regulatory. Every little change now (like foot pedals) means another how set of changes has to be made to the filing process for CE/FDA etc. Also, every tweak that has to be made and every change to the regulatory process involves adding cost and expenses. IMO, i think Ximedica said enough, this is ready for submittal but we can't keep tweaking it b/c it continues to delay the process and increase expense. Their only option to force change was to suspend manufacturing, which they did and it resulted in Fowler resigning today. Now, Fowler still brings tremendous credibility to the product and I could see if JnJ/Verb were to buy/partner with Titan, the only one of the mgmt they would want to have would be Fowler. Hence, all the others get the options b/c this is the end for them and Fowler will get a "consultant" gig with Verb/JnJ or actually be employed by them while getting a big piece of the Verb IPO. He is also going to get paid off the Platform Imaging part of SPORT.
Also, IMO Verb is going to be the biggest player in robotic surgery and dwarf Intuitive in 5-10 years - I believe Verb will buy up technology as they go along and bring Fowler in to oversee the Clinical education of the marketplace (incorporating the other technology they acquire along the way). It makes complete sense to me since the IREP technology can be implemented to have multi quadrant, single port and the future micro robotic surgery (think Fredrick Nahon presenation).
With all this being said, I'm like everyone else and don't know but that is what I have concluded after digesting all the information and applying it to everything else I've researched.
