MDT deal redux, the buyuot already happened
1. When the MDT deal happened, this came on the heals of Titan nearly running out of cash. This is evidenced by the press release speaking to the accounts payable dispute with its development vendor, the incremental small raises of $2M at a time, and that the $1.5MM MDT loan happened well in advance of the broader licensing deal
2. If MDT ever wanted to acquire Titan, it would have then, and could have, by presenting an offer to the board for $2 / share (it was trading at $0.40 prior to the deal). It was clear MDT was the only option from a funding standpt. Interesting to note that the board has continued to see a lot of churn, including right after the MDT deal with two people leaving, which if you believe people on this board, was the seminal event in Titan's history sealing the fate of a future multi-billion dollar buyout. Why then would board members and key members of mgmt quit after that? What do they know that the savvy investors on this board don't?
3. MDT's development efforts with Titan seem to have focused on instruments and the camera (which has a great light, by the way). When you see McNally's slides, those are the only two bubbles filled. This tells you MDT is only using a very small portion of Titan's IP to fill in some sort of small gap in their broader development plan for multi and single port robotics. I stand by my earlier analysis that MDT is very likely building its own system
4. As many point out, MDT is the largest medical device company in the world. It would be presumptuous to think that they have not already started on an SP product years ago ... and they certainly have the talent, IP, and warchest to get something done that is game changing w/o the need for Enos. This is probably why Titan's VP of Upstream marketing quit and left for MDT ... and was replaced by some gump from Alabama who got flushed out of ISRG after a couple of years
5. McNally's own words are revealing. In the latest IR presentation (which if you listen to is quite painful, McNally is not a good presenter, he's sitting in some home office that looks like it hasn't been cleaned out in 20 years - christ, at least put a zoom background on, very parochial style that is not confidence inducing - also copy paste charts of the robotic surgery market and studies on the da Vinci SP platform) ... McNally points to the IP slide and says, gee, we certainly could sell off more of our IP vs. what we already sold to MDT to continue funding the business. There was no discussion or even conjecture around the potential for the MDT relationship to extend past milestone 4 .... not even a topic. Why?
6. Why doesn't McNally talk about manufacturing scale up, commercialization plans? Seems like he is just a R&D tinkerer, hoping to create a mouse trap with enough capability that someone wants to buy him out, enough proof of concept - the problem is there is not enough differentiation vs. current alternatives. You can sense it as he has in his presentation the same slide twice on relative valuations of other robotics players. Reading between the lines, he is saying "please buy me"
