I'm just fortunate enough to have been able to open up a direct line of communication with the company. Back in 2018 prior to the merger I had reached out to the company's IR department which was internal at the time. I'm pretty sure it was just one person though. I asked a bunch of questions regarding PolyStart and it's progress as it had been hyped up quite a bit by prior management and at the time seemed to be the company's best bet to actually make something of themselves. The IR person could not answer my questions as they were more focusing on the science. He forwarded my email to Dr. Florkiewiczs, who created PolyStart, so he could provide answers to my questions and then asked if I would like to set up a phone call with the CEO. Apparently when Peter Hoang came on as CEO toward the end of 2017 he had been making a point of trying to communicate with shareholders who were contacting IR. I forget the frequency but IIRC they were trying to do two calls a month with individuals who were reaching out to IR. I can't imagine there were many people making valid inquiries though.
So, I had my phone call with Peter and asked my PolyStart questions and some financing questions as at the time I was irritated with all the warrants that prior management kept issuing. He was straight up with me. Said that prior management hyped up PolyStart a little too much and it was nowhere near where they had been saying it was and still had a long way to go before it would be of much benefit to the company. Side note, I've fairly recently brought PolyStart up again and was told that their lab techs were working with it and found some "interesting applications" for it. We'll see if anything ever comes of it. He understood my frustration with the warrants and said their goal moving forward was to keep the warrant situation in check. Throughout the conversation I focused on asking my questions about the science and financing but still let it be known my frustration with how the company seemed to be operating and the slide in share price. I’m always going to remember this part of the conversation because he said, paraphrased, “I understand your frustrations and that it has been a long wait, but you won’t have to wait much longer.” At the end of this conversation, he said that these calls don’t usually go like this. I’m assuming that the other calls they set up were people just complaining about the share price but not actually trying to learn anything about the company and their plans for moving forward. He said if I ever had any other questions, I could email him directly. I’m assuming this is because I showed a genuine interest in what the company was doing. Anyways, I kid you not, he emailed me right after the merger was announced to say, “see, I said you wouldn’t have to wait much longer.” We set up another call and I got some information on Marker, MultiTAA, and some insight into what the plans for the future were going to be.
Since then, I’ve emailed periodically with questions and/or concerns. I am generally able to set up phone calls around “eventful” news or if I have questions that might need a little more detail than one would want to type in an email. I would say I send an email off once every couple of months and have phone calls maybe three times a year on average. I don’t get any direct information that wouldn’t be available to anyone else who asked but during my communications things are implied and I can read between the lines to make certain assumptions. As an example, I’ve stated I expect to see new trials announced by February 15th next year. I was not directly told this, but I inquired as to why they did not do a third quarter conference call as they generally do a call for Q1 and Q3 results. During this inquiry I also expressed my concerns that the fate of the company was resting on this upcoming interim data and with no other trials to fall back on it could spell disaster should the results not be received well. For the record, I still think the results will be good, but it is only for the active group right now which is a lot more difficult to treat. During this conversation, and based on previous communication, it was implied that they are indeed working on initiating new trials and that the reason they delayed the Q3 conference call is that they feel the call would be better suited for Q4 results, which are due by February 15th, as they seem to want to announce something that wasn’t quite ready. This is just a brief rundown of that conversation and doesn't include every detail, but I decided to share my expectations as I do believe them to be highly probable of happening. Otherwise, I would have just kept my assumptions to myself because if new trials aren’t announced in Q1 of next year I am going to look like a dummy. Regardless, I try to share as much information as I can obtain as I feel it will help others.
All of this to say that I am not on the “inside” but have been lucky enough to be able to communicate directly with the company which does provide me a little more insight that what comes out via PRs but nothing that one couldn’t figure out on their own. I would be lying if I said I wasn’t biased though. Everyone is biased and almost all opinions are based on some bias in one way or another. Most of what I post can be verified and if not, I will indicate as my opinion. It’s all about presenting enough evidence to back up those opinions as much as possible whenever possible. Whether I’ve done a good enough job of that or not is up to whoever is reading.
Friends don't let friends place market orders
