Innovation Pharmaceuticals Inc (IPIX)

[FlashingLeather]

Question for you frrol: Why do you think the company chose their particular strategy to inform the market about their decision not to provide an interim analysis?

Leo and Dr. B are intelligent individuals and were very aware that they created a data release expectation within the market, and would have to somehow communicate its abandonment. They most certainly discussed information dissemination strategy.

Dr. B's recent presentation provided a perfect venue to use a direct approach. In discussing the P trial (which he did), Dr. B could have addressed the issue with a succinct comment or two to the entire investor community, about their decision and reasons behind it and moved on. Then follow up with a blog post containing more information about investigator bias in clinical trials. Done. Over.

Instead they chose to employ classic damage control methodology (which all companies and CEO's do) in choosing not tackle the issue head on; rather to leak the information quietly via an email response knowing it would be posted to iHub, and following up with a throw-down PR as a diversionary measure.

The thought here is by addressing the issue in direct fashion now they would draw unnecessary attention to it and make it into a bigger deal than what it truly is. Now that they've "softened the blow", they'll come back at a later date with more explanation and proclaim "no big deal".

They used the same tactic back in the spring to announce the P trial delay, which IMO is a much bigger deal in terms of financial risk to the company than whether or not interim data is released. It didn't work too well then. I am not a big fan of the strategy, particularly as an automatic response to non-positive news.

Unfortunately, it seems as though they've added a lot of unnecessary stink to the situation which could have been diffused rather easily and in a much more credible manner.

I do suspect the CRO had concerns about an interim release. This is the benign and rational explanation.