I'm going to try to stay above the personal attacks that have been such a mainstay of this forum for quite some time. I'll be the first to admit I have participated vigorously at times in the past, even going so far as to suggest that a prior management team had done an admirable job of developing the early technology but that it was time for someone to take the helm with more experience getting a product to market. When Mr. McNally took the helm, I appreciated the prior team for stepping aside both for the sake of the shareholders and for the good of the program itself. I certainly didn't envision at that time that we would still be this far from the finish line.
As of late, it seems to have become fashionable here to not just object to the progress of the program, but to berate the people behind it, especially Mr. McNally. If things are really as bad as some folks here would have us all thinking, then I would be in full agreement that it is also time for him to step aside. But we are far from that point, and until someone can convince me that A: MDT is just going to have their way with us and leave the sorority house in the morning never to be seen again; and B: that Titan has no viable plans beyond conclusion of the current MDT program, I think it is premature to want to dispose of Mr. McNally. Let's say for the sake of argument that he has already orchestrated the conclusion of this particular deal and it is scheduled to conclude late this year or early next year, maybe to the tune of $5B or $38.50 per share. If he hangs in here and sees this through, he will be a hero to all of us, having sailed the SS Hargrove to Treasure Island. If he were to leave, either on his own volition or due to the "I'm not rich yet and it's his fault" mentality here, we could get a total administration change a la Washington DC where all the prior work is inadvertently undone, and we are screwed. My first point here is that until we know otherwise, we don't have truly valid reasons to be so vocal against him.
However... we do have valid reasons to continue to support him. He may have orchestrated the aforementioned deal or something similar. If so, this certainly wouldn't be the time for him to abandon ship nor be subjected to mutiny. I can't disagree that we really could use more information, but having his hands tied may have been a condition of the deal. We don't know. He just might be going waaay above and beyond any reasonable expectations on our behalf. What we DO know is that Medtronic has the authority to censor his communications, and if a buyout is forthcoming, they have good reasons to do so as well. Is it his fault that he isn't allowed to skewer the entire deal by sharing too much info with us? Well, that's up to your judgment.
But is it reasonable to slander him publicly because we don't know what is going on behind the scenes? Probably not. Has he screwed over his shareholders at his prior organizations? No, they all seemed quite happy with the outcomes. And maybe most importantly, is it beneficial to publicly berate the CEO of our investment and attack his competence when we really have no actual information to substantiate those claims? No, absolutely not, unless you are shorting this stock and want to see PPS fall. Otherwise, the attempts to shake other shareholders' confidence is entirely couterproductive and makes it much more challenging to the company to succeed. Our PPS could be partially suppressed because of all this derision. Without it, our share price could be much higher and the dilution we all dislike might not have been nearly as bad.
In summary, stop shooting yourself in the foot. The name calling and bad mouthing is driving further discontent, causing lower PS, more dilution, and hindering out eventual outcome.
As always, all IMO.
