As always, this is all just IMO...
I don't see a major problem with this raise. Pre-bought again, and then bumped up further. My thought is someone probably wanted more up front but Mr. McNally may have capped it to something reasonable for dilution, and because it didn't tank the pre-market price below $2, they allowed the increase. And someone is buying with $3 warrants, so they aren't betting on this tanking any time soon. Somebody wants these shares and is willing to dump some pretty good money into it. I still wonder if pre-bought means actually pre-arranged with the initial agreement. MDT's public buying of Mazor stock kept inching their PPS upward, and they don't want to make that mistake again. Why would they do these raises? They still need to proceed with getting the product through approval regardless of who's name is on it when that happens. If MDT paid for it up front publicly, it tips their hand, so Titan is required to raise the funds to keep going. The fact that this raise is also already sold hints that a bigger force may be behind it.
OR Nurse, you also asked earlier why anyone would be so convinced that MDT will buy us. My simple answer is that right now there is only one big player in the market which is projected to reach $30B/year in the next couple years. Medtronic has the opportunity to share that market space. If they don't buy Titan, either Titan will compete with a solid technology offering, or another Big will buy Titan and then market that technology. So the question is... Does Medtronic want to compete in a 3 way race for the $30B market, or in a 2-way race? And if Titan's tech only takes 10% of the market, that's $3B per year for a lot of years which MDT would lose out on, not to mention the risk of Titan's tech being recognized as superior to MDT's own offerings, in which case MDT could be seen as inferior and only capture a TRXC-sized piece of the market. At risk for Medtronic is tens of billions of dollars in the next several years for not wanting to pony up maybe $4-$6B soon. Combine that with MDT having monitors at all board meetings and approval authority over all Titan PR's, the conclusion is inescapable - if buyout wasn't the prescribed outcome, there is no reason to restrict Titan's investor communications and no reason for MDT to care what happens in Titan's board meetings.
I'd love to see the buyout happen this year; I still don't know how much merit there is in the argument that there is no buyout until FDA approval but obviously there is some merit to that argument, which still puts us maybe later half of 2022. Slightly safer for MDT? Sure, safer knowing they are buying an approved product, but riskier in that something else could happen in the meantime to disrupt the planned deal. So there is also an element of safety in wrapping up a deal ASAP, or maybe (not unreasonably) when the Titan/MDT collaborative project comes to a conclusion this summer. When the current project wraps up, MDT would still need to maintain their monitoring of board meetings, approval of PRs, etc. if they are going to buy us out later on. Much easier to just get it over with and remove the possibility that Titan tech becomes a competitor in the market.
