Who here thinks Medtronic is completely inept??? Raise your hand if you do!
For the record, I did not raise my hand.
To re-phrase the question a little more pointedly...
Who thinks Medtronic would be so naive as to enter an open-ended agreement which allows the little guy to run amok afterwards and stimulate any and all of the competition by selling duplicate copies of their IP licenses?
That is not the business model Medtronic has espoused thus far. And it is not a business tactic which gets any company to the position of prominence that Medtronic currently enjoys. Added to Mr. Martha's proclamation that his legacy shall be acquisitions, and it is Intuitively obvious (pun intended) that they plan to compete with ISRG head to head. They do not plan to compete with a dozen other players who all offer the same technology that they have. They do not even plan to compete with Titan. Titan is required to maintain that ruse to avoid the share price run-up which hurt their position in the Mazor deal. Frankly, they aren't very convincing. And I believe things are going exactly according to the plan.
I do not expect any BIG news from Titan anywhere in the near future. The milestones are part of the plan and they will necessarily receive some requisite pressers when they are reached. Major steps like IDE approval, results, FDA filing, etc. are largely public records so they will need to PR those types of things because we will know anyway. I personally expect that over the next year or so, we hang around between fifty cents and two bucks, controlled by the shorts. And so it goes until the buyout, probably still 18 +/-3 months from now if things run according to the plan. But that time frame could get cut short at any moment by Medtronic saying "Close enough. We know where this is going so let's wrap up the deal and move on." In doing so, they could de-risk the program by having complete control over it, as opposed to allowing Titan or one of their contractors to inadvertently move the wrong way. Hell, just look at the Naglreiter situation. Contractor went sideways and it turned into a legal pi$$ing contest. The sooner Medtronic wraps this deal up, the safer the development program is for meeting their ultimate objectives. And their ultimate objective is not to compete against the very same tech they will be offering. That would be stupid. Medtronic is not stupid.
