Just in case anyone somewhere should be focused solely on spinning anything they can as negatively as possible, here are some interesting facts and reasonable inferences.
Surgeons who tested the original single port system were working with prototype hardware, nowhere near able to meet the rigorous standards set forth for medical device approvals. Everything from failsafe considerations, redundancies, and component obsolescence had to be addressed, as is the NORMAL development process for a medical device. We also got to tack on some additional modifications to ensure we met all of the new Human Factors Engineering requirements which kicked in a couple years ago (and possibly cost Trixie their second platform). So if 2000 changes seems egregious to someone, they apparently know very little about developing a medical device for this market.
Someone recently pointed out that we were getting sued by a development contractor. True. We didn't want to pay for work that we did not ask them to do. They were suing us for how much? About $5M?? If they had a leg to stand on, would they really have settled a $5M lawsuit for a mere $1M? Doubtful. It appears we just paid that to get our stuff back and to close the books on the case, as required by our new benefactors.
No timeline to FDA? Well, not that we are currently aware of. Does anyone believe that Medtronic would throw $41M at a company blindly, without having pinned down a timeline? It would be absurd for anyone with more than half a brain to think $41M didn't buy them a timeline. They know the schedule, they know the milestones, they know what they are doing. Just because they haven't told us everything yet doesn't mean they don't know. For $41M, I'm very confident they know the hows and the whens of the entire project. (This, BTW, from a guy with a Master's Degree in Operations and Project Management, who recently worked on a very successful $257M government contract, in case anyone should doubt my credentials.)
The fabrication of baseless assertions appears to be best left to others, some of whom believe themselves to be quite good at it! I try to not do that; I prefer to have some basis for everything and build logical, substantiable assertions therefrom. That is why I believe what I believe about this company and this investment. None of it is random, all of it is rooted in the pieces that we do know, and not everything I post is all sunshine about Titan - but enough of it is that I still buy more shares whenever I have the means to do so.
