Please keep in mind that the SAGES unveiling was at least a reasonably high-functioning prototype; at most, a near fully functional device. SAGES was March of last year. In February, the FDA had released the final draft of the new Human Factors Engineering guidelines, which became the new rule in April. That is the document which killed TRXC's submission (that plus an issue with their "predicate device" claim); they were hoping to get approval before the guideline took effect but missed the cut, and shortly after, they had announced they were scrapping the SurgiBot program because the re-engineering would be too extensive (I think they have since turned the program back on because Senhance isn't bringing in the revenues they had hoped for).
The unit at SAGES was pretty much the real deal, but the FDA threw in the monkey wrench that time with the new rules. Investors only saw the headlines of "More engineering needed" and "Delay delay delay"; they didn't see things like "Titan has a plan and is ahead of the re-engineering effort." Stock price plunged; fundraising failed; progress stopped... last year's debacle was largely due to the new FDA guideline and investors not understanding the real impact, so Titan took the blame. From a funding standpoint, there was obviously some culpability on the part of that management team, but it was also a bad set of circumstances caused by unfortunate timing of the FDA regulation. Or maybe not as unfortunate, considering SurgiBot might have been approved otherwise.
In any event, SPORT was much more than a shell at SAGES and that particular delay was not all Titan's fault.
Now, based on early surgeon feedback, they are re-positioning the foot pedal tray for better ergonomics and comfort, and making a couple other tweaks to improve the vision system. Software development will be largely focused on redundancies to meet various safety criteria, and probably some user interface software tweaks as more feedback comes back from Nicholson. This is just the product development cycle for a medical device. It's all good, but it does take some time to get it right. Any by all accounts, they are getting it right. Unfortunately, not a lot of the general investment community understands medical device development as a process, so $0.11 it is until some particular milestone wakes up the bigger investors, and just imaging the ROI they will see when this all comes to fruition!
The first couple large infusions of cash will drive PPS up a bit. Let's say two majors step up to the plate with a few million each, and stock runs to $.30. The next wave of big investors will have missed out on the opportunity to have triple the gains like the first couple on board. I'd want to be first and reap three times (or two, or four, or 10 times) the rewards.
