I read with curiosity the postings of corporate lassitude.
No news whatsoever from the corporate offices of Anavex Life Sciences Corp, for some time now. It’s causing some to raise all sorts of questions regarding Anavex’s future.
Those who have these anxieties are welcome to them. Personally, I have no misgivings in my small AVXL position. I knew from the start progression to full FDA approval and widespread medical use of any Anavex drug would be in the (then, a year or so ago) distant future. Still is. No announcements of any kind. Nothing substantive. Nothing forward-looking. Not a word.
Because of the corporate silence, some perceive the Anavex story to be either flawed or hopelessly mired in regulatory and administrative complications. Personally, I do not share those anxieties, for the following reasons.
First, as all here know so well, that the team of Anavex managers, from Dr. Missling on down, have impeccable credentials, both in corporate management and regulatory arrangements. The science, and the PhDs and MDs behind it, is likewise without question.
Why, then, no corporate news? I’m not an insider; I have no useful information to assuage the anxieties of the need-to-see-progress-NOW crowd. But the important, deciding factor for me is this: Corporate officers have the same exact interests for success as we do (or even more so). All of them, too, own AVXL shares, mostly in far larger lots than most of us. So, failure to make progress, failure of the company’s CNS treatment technologies, penalizes the corporate insiders more than it does most of us. Many of those people have their entire professional lives and fortunes bound to Anavex success.
No, these people aren’t sitting around with their feet propped up on seldom-used desks talking about the NBA playoffs or other otherwise inane topics. They are all working hard, to the best of their abilities, to make their AVXL shares valuable.
But still, why no news? We can’t know. But we can be confident that the current corporate silence will play best into Anavex’s hands. The art of the deal, as it were. Anavex is certainly discussing all sorts of collaboration or licensing or other deals with a host of other firms. They are also in close collaboration with FDA officials, working out the details of new, innovative clinical trials.
None of this works if corporate positions and perspectives are floating in the public domain. Big-time negotiations require cunning, cleverness, and privacy. In time, things will be arranged and agreed upon; with favorable corporate announcements. When that happens, the AVXL share price will begin to ascend — and I won’t past any “I told you so...” messages. It’ll all happen when it does, and probably farther into the future than any of us would prefer.
For Anavex, it’s not the Art of the Deal. It’s the many private arrangements (and corporate artfulness) in the arrangement of many, many deals needed to bring Anavex 2-73 to the pharmacy.
