Honeycomb, there is so much disagreement and so little actual information being shared both by the company and by iHub posters that I don't see enough factual information to formulate a cogent letter. Base on that alone, I'm not the guy for this letter writing campaign and I'm not really in favor of it at this point.
I certainly understand and share the general discontent regarding the share price. The general consensus seems to be that we should have a market cap of around $150-$200M by this point. Based on the technology, the patent portfolio, and the market opportunity, I would assess the company value at well over half a billion as it sits, and clearly other influences are keeping our PPS suppressed. Is it shorters? I assume they exert some influence, but I think there has to be more to the story.
As the company and Mr. McNally adhere to the schedule and occasionally make a statement about supporting the share price, we keep sliding. I suspect that one of the big issues here is expectations. When he/they say "support the share price" we expect some ground-breaking announcement which probably is not feasible at the current juncture. They are following the schedule and meeting the milestones fairly reliably, which by itself is somewhat remarkable to ANYONE with a project management background. In a normal world, that should be impressive enough to support the hell out of the share price, but our world is no longer normal, and our PPS is reasonable proof. Titan's idea of supporting the share price appears to be to continue meeting milestones and get this thing to market with no additional delays, but we seem to expect "support the share price" to mean any one of Verb/JnJ/Medtronic/ISRG/etc. will bust out a $50/share offer out of the blue. Or maybe we expect an announcement of a major supplier that they can't announce - in such a competitive marketplace with so few big names in the game, a key supplier may not want to have the Titan affiliation made public, lest a behemoth customer (see above list) take umbrage that their end effector/camera/whatever tech supplier might also be helping their upcoming competition. Some of our "expectations" may not be reasonable, and others may be contractually forbidden.
For the future, I would rather see continued progress on the scheduled milestones instead of having management side-step their development program to add a few dimes to our short-term PPS. The worst part of this is that any upcoming raise will be at our woefully under-valued price, and hence dilution is more severe for us longs. Fact of life in this new reality; the alternative would be for them to focus on share price until the schedule slips - then all PPS progress would be given back AND we would be delayed. I like that their priority is the device, because that's where the true long-term value is derived. Despite the continuation of the pain we feel now, I'm in it for the future.
To return to the topic of the letter... This forum is so divided that sufficient agreement is impossible. Titan may as well be run by Donald Trump when one considers the division, and the level of hatred continually expressed by some here is comparable to that of Trump's detractors. In 2016 when the original letter writing campaign occurred, we easily had 90%+ support in the iHub community; we had clear messages and reasonable questions, and we had extreme luck on our side in that we seemed to evoke some sympathy from Mr. Barker at the time. Now, any such attempt is unlikely to induce any positive change, and could instead stir up a hornet's nest. Does anyone have ideas for real, positive change? You might want certain people to be removed, but unless you have suggestions for replacements who are competent, industry-experienced, and want to trade their current stable, comfortable position for a lower-paying start-up company with a largely disgruntled shareholder base... I don't think anyone here can name such a person. We are lucky to have the team we have. Award-winning patent program, President and VP's with nothing but success on their resumes, and, well... the Rock. Granted, he hasn't exactly earned my trust, but he seems to have earned the trust of the rest of the management team, which is much more important than what I think of him. Or what you think of him.
There has also been a lot of grumbling about the redesign and design freeze. Reading the full PDF of our new analyst coverage, one could see how ridiculously outdated the prior design was. The old system could never have been approved by the FDA. They had years of using the old system, with lots of surgeons able to try it out and submit their comments and opinions back to Titan for extensive legal review before deciding which to release. We had design freeze, now they are building and deploying systems to their selected facilities where the same thing will happen... in time. Folks are doubting the validity of the new design because they haven't heard feedback yet. Checking the milestones, we are just about getting to where some number of surgeons can try it, then submit their opinions which will undergo legal review regarding what can and can't be publicly stated about an unapproved medical device, etc. It's all happening; it's all on the schedule in some form...
Let's let them do their jobs as a medical device R&D company. If we let them do that well, we will all make money in the long run. I am not in favor of trying to upset the apple cart just before the apples are ripe for selling.
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Quite honestly, there is Nothing to lose by sending a shareholder letter to the board. Welcome Charlie the proper way IMO. Mustang, you did a nice job on the last one - you up to the task for the second ?? They should hear from us
