There have been interesting interactions on this PPHM board in recent months. Here are some observations, all IMO of course.
Who are the players? Let's not forget that there are many more players involved with PPHM than the PPHM BOD and investor groups with a desire to acquire management control of the company (like Ronin and ?)
A. PPHM management guiding Avid production and growth and those directing PPHM research (like President Steve King).
B. Ronin and new entrant large investors who recently announced via their letter to shareholders their intent to invest in PPHM for purposes of maximizing Avid value for return on their investment.
C. Dart and institutional investors with holdings, pre 2017.
D. Pharma contracting with Avid as their supplier.
E. Pharma with "friendly" interests in PPHM technology, be it for partnering, technology rights or collaborative development.
F. Retail investors holding shares of PPHM hoping for a return on investment commensurate with the risks and opportunity costs they experience through their investment.
G. Investors with short positions hoping that lower PPHM pps advances their investment interests.
H. Parties engaging in naked shorting of PPHM stock to suppress the pps or drive it down.
I. PPHM and Avid employees whose success and dedication drives Avid sales and PPHM technology development.
J. PPHM and Avid Knowledge Leaders (scientists, technical)
K. PPHM's Board of Directors
L. Investment analysts covering PPHM
M. Companies and organizations with whom PPHM collaborates for product development or provides PPHM with services.
N. Litigating parties from period after the PPHM Bavi Phase 3 trial halt whose settlement is scheduled to be finalized on July 27, 2017.
O. Regulators like the SEC (financial) and the FDA (technical).
P. Patients suffering from maladies for which Pharma like PPHM is developing treatment, along with their friends and family. The hope is that these patients experience improved quality of life, prolonged life and healing as a result of the medical research, development and commercialization efforts while they personally incur sacrifices to participate in trials.
Q. Doctors and medical staff providing patient care, prescribing treatment and assessing and reporting on patient responses.
R. Research Doctors and technical staff designing and providing for the research.
S. Pharma who might see their products displaced, reducing market sales or who are developing competitive products that might be displaced due to Bavi or PPHM technology in the future.
T. Parties at CSM who made Bavi Phase 3 trial, dose labeling errors and those responsible for the problems discovered as PPHM reviewed unblinded information in advance of their presentation of Phase 3 Bavi study interim findings at a European conference (the pps dropped from $5 1/2 pps to below $1 pps during premarket trading, or about $38 pps down to about $7 pps, post the 1:7 reverse split.
The A through T list tallies to 20 factions with interests in PPHM that extend to recent events. I fall into the retail long investor faction "F", motivated for the sake of faction P (patients and their families while seeking a good return on investment. Notably, not all the A through T faction's interests are aligned and success of some of these factions can preclude the success of others.
What is the situation? Complicated. I observe that Faction "B" (Ronin) has stepped forward and made public to all parties their intent to take control of PPHM managment and strategic leadership through placement of three directors on the PPHM Board. Ronin success, for now, depends on enough parties from Faction "F" deciding to weigh in their support by voting for the Ronin agenda at the October annual shareholders meeting. Avid sales have grown to about $60 million per year, the reverse split adjusted outstanding shares to about 45 million and institutional and large investors now hold about 1/3rd of shares. Avid is situated to deliver enough growth in sales to make PPHM overall profitable, but existing Avid customers are said to be reforming their mabufacturing needs while additional customers are preparing for production of more sales. Absent new customer contracts, Avid is projected by PPHM management to just match Avid's good 2017 FY performance for 2018, not expand sales. During a July 14 investor call, PPHM technology development was said to have shown stat sig successful results for a subgroup drawn from the portion of patients whose results were not impaired by the mislabeling of medication by CSM during the Phase 3 trial.
Why should the retail investors align their shares with Ronin's to enable Ronin control of PPHM? I have not yet been convinced that I should. Rather, I look at the factions with agenda's contrary to my best interests as a long retail investor and wonder if or how those "contrary factions" might have affiliation with Ronin? Factions with interests contrary to long investors might clearly include factions G, H, S and T. Ironically, all the factions listed might have interests that run contrary to mine, depending on the issue being considered.
For now, I continue to watch, read and learn, trying to figure out what is going on with my investment that I had thought would need to stay long on for another six months or more while Avid sales pick up enough to turn PPHM net profitable or while PPHM finds a partner to support their technology commercialization. Ironically, over the last week the PPHM BODs announced they are considering breaking off Avid as a separate business unit while the management takeover candidate (Ronin) wrote they plan to focus on extracting value from Avid growth, discontinuing outlays that support PPHM technology development. Avid's $60 million in annual sales with a 33% profit margin plus prospects for more growth is being recognized, but as a long investor, I know that it was PPHM's BOD that guided action to enable that Avid growth. Making things yet more complex, it is PPHM's BOD that has guided about $300 million in research and development that has not yet delivered a commercial product that can enable some return to the long investors who provided most of those funds. Is stat sig benefits data recovered from the halted PPHM Phase 3 Bavi trial going to translate to helping deliver that value recovery?
It was nice to see the pps recover most of the price dip after the July 14 PPHM investor call. One might presume that Ronin purchases contributed to that. However, it looks like some of those factions whose interests are likely contrary to my retail shareholder interests also benefited from the pps movement from Friday to Monday's close.
So "who's who"? LOL!
Best wishes and IMO.
KT
