Shareholder Meeting - Additional thoughts and opinions.
Overall Missling exuded confidence. He spoke passionately about our prospects and it was genuine. Despite having presented the same thing countless times, his excitement for our data rubbed off on me.
It was encouraging to hear him want to buy more shares. He spoke like it was a gift at these levels.
It was comforting to hear him speak of failures and how we are not like them. He even referenced Axovant pumping their drug and how he didn’t want to be like them.
He agreed and knew that people were skeptical because most still think you need a study with thousands of patients. And you don’t.
He talked about feeling a sense of relief or a renewed confidence when the Illumina data was revealed. (My paraphrase)
In a way I understood the silence. Really. What was he going to say? I screwed up with the timelines. I underestimated the difficulty in planning these trials. Not what people want to hear and it’s not what a leader wants to admit. Saying this would’ve hit the sp just as hard and probably would have had us demanding his head on a platter even sooner.
He was still amazed with the fact that we show signals across so many indications. It really tells us that our drug does something. He also stated how he believed that using our own bodies to heal itself seemed like the best way.
He is juggling a lot and is dynamic in his approach like all CEOs should be. When new info comes along he acts and make changes based on it. That’s why strict timelines are so difficult to keep. Still a mistake on his part.
He put to rest some areas of contention, in particular the power of our small sample size and the safety of our drug in pediatric patients which renewed my confidence. Hearing it from the horses mouth in person is different than listening to a canned presentation or reading it on some slides.
I walked away feeling there is a bright future ahead of us. I also understand that this will take more time than many of us expected. However, they are marching forward with their eyes on the prize.
Like many here, I anxiously awaited news thinking something big was about to happen any minute. Still could but the anxiously waiting has turned more into patiently waiting. These few years have tested our patience to great lengths. News will come when they are ready. He doesn’t want to look back and say. We should have, could have but didn’t.
