Great question. My take is pure speculation as I don’t know much about the RA approval process, but my assumption is that the company is trying to do the right thing.
I think the spike last year was a surprise to them, and the current price is not a factor in deciding the timeline.
I can imagine two reasons for this.
One is that there are so many warrants out there at the old, discounted sub-dollar prices, that the day-to-day financing can be secured without fuss, albeit at knockdown rates. So the current share price makes no difference to them keeping the lights on, so there’s no motive for addressing the share price in the near-term.
The fact that we’re currently settled at a 400% premium over the previous three-year average, probably made the company think they’ve bought some time. They don’t see a 50% drop from $2.50 high, they see the quadrupling. This is of little consolation to the investors who bought before the de-listing and historic lows.
The other reason I can see is that a buyout has already been agreed in principle, and therefore any energy devoted to the Sisyphean task of keeping shareholders happy is a distraction from the hundreds of other things that need to be accomplished to close the sale. My pseudo-evidence of this theory is the complete lack of company expansion.
As far as the journal article, I imagine that a peer-reviewed scientific paper is considered essential and substantial evidence in any application. Therefore, given it, or something like it would have to be produced and reviewed anyway, why not just stall and stack the deck?
Can anyone shed any light on whether a peer reviewed paper is part of the official BLA application?
My guess is that they decided that withholding topline until the whole process was nearing completion carried less risk, and required less effort (apart from the chutzpah) than releasing TLD in September 2020, and then having to ride the resulting, year-long rollercoaster of ’now what?’ from the investment community. Data Lock to Approval has got to be the most vulnerable and fraught time for a biotech…the sprint after the marathon...so I have some sympathy here if that’s what’s happening.
There's a reoccurring and legitimate criticism that NWBO is acting like a private company. I sometimes comfort myself by imagining a board meeting where someone asked “If we didn’t have to worry about the shareholders, what is the most prudent, careful, considered and responsible way to get from data lock to approval? What is the path that allows maximum flexibility in being able to respond to the unforeseen?”
I think we might be seeing the answer. My guess is that that there is a bold, informal policy of “The best way to exercise our duty to the shareholders is pretending (for a time) that they don’t exist!” Michael Burry, anyone?
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