Some quick remarks and thoughts on the Investor & Analyst Day presentation.
As a reminder, for Denner the President & CEO obeys to the BOD and not the other way around.
The BOD wanted this presentation and Management was compelled to execute, putting this “poor” show.
If BOD had anything important to present the A&I Day would not have been scheduled at 8 am EST while the rest of America is sleeping. Then, in an attempt to impress shareholders, the invitation mentioned that this corresponds to 2 pm in Amsterdam, Berlin, Rome, Stockholm and Vienna, thereby showing the lack of professionalism of Management because:
a) None of these cities is on the list of the five most important European financial centers (London, Frankfurt, Paris, Milano and Madrid).
b) Fixing a time in Europe is usually done by using either of the following time zones: Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) or European Central Time (ECT).
Recall also:
1) When A. Berg was appointed INTERIM President & CEO in April 2023 he confessed in his first public declaration that he knew nothing about Europe because his attention was focused on his job as VP U.S.
2) The same BOD chairman that had introduced him then announced his appointment this year as full President & CEO by saying “no one knows better the company than Aaron Berg” because he has been with it for twelve years.
3) The data given on MENA is inaccurate and incomplete. It says Amarin is present in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Oman whose populations total 36 million. Yet, their total local population who benefits from free governmental medical coverage total about 27+ million. Moreover, management curiously forgot to mention the approvals obtained in UAE, Bahrain, Qatar and Lebanon.
4) Christos Papadopoulos was recruited in March 2022 as Vice President – General Manager Central Eastern Europe Region (CEE). Previously, he had spent 8 years and 7 months with MSD as European Head Commercial Excellence & CEE General Manager (Nov 2020 to Jan 2022) and 4y 4m as CEE Cluster Chief Poland.
In August 2022 KM announced that a partnership covering CEE was due by the end of the year.
Today, out of the 11 countries constituting Central Europe Christos lists 6 as presenting “Additional Future Market Access Opportunities” namely, Croatia, Slovenia, Romania, Germany, Switzerland, Austria. While the fumbling of Germany is well known, the latter two countries already have approved individual reimbursement which means that any doctor prescribing VAZKEPA must himself apply on behalf of his patient for reimbursement which might be approved or not – a smart way of limiting the strains on the national healthcare budget.
Management mentioned collaboration with Mochida. The latter had stopped referring to Amarin and collaboration with it in its Annual Reviews since 2021. The fact that neither Amarin nor Mochida is able to commercialize the latter’s self-emulsifying one-a-day MND-2119 in the U.S. (marketed in Japan since September 2022 under trade mark EPADEL EM) points to a potential threat to Amarin’s patent protection – the foundational element of its business.
a) Mochida’s annual report 2019 states: “In June 2018, Mochida also entered an agreement with Amarin Corporation Plc Group to develop and commercialize high-purity EPA products in the US and certain other countries under Mochida’s intellectual properties, including new EPA formulation.”
After trying to change the language, Mochida utterly stopped mentioning the subject starting in 2021.
b) Since that date Amarin holds to an invariable text in its SEC filings that includes the statement: “the parties will collaborate to research and develop new products and indications based on EPA for our commercialization in the United States and other territories.”
c) Will Mochida be able to break free from the Agreement on the grounds that Amarin cannot fulfill its commitments since it no longer has a U.S. salesforce and is even unable to market its own product, and also point to KM’s and Per Wold Olsen’s declarations that the U.S. market is lost?
d) Who unsuccessfully challenged Amarin’s IP in Europe?
Management is unable to forecast sales/revenues growth. It has no visibility. Christos Papadopoulos had the honesty today to recognize that high percentage growth in UK and Spain stems “from a low base;” hence it’s not that impressive as it might sound.
In the end, was this a truly an Investor & Analyst Day presentation? Indeed, its timing, structure and à la KM narrative hardly contribute to the promotion of the company.
Announced on October 1st, the A&I Day must have been conceived quite some time before.
So, what’s its purpose?
Buying time? Does the BOD need to buy time? It doesn’t seem so. And then, time for what?
What would happen had they did not hold it? Nothing would change: no sales, no growth, and decreasing revenues.
Maintaining revenues by decreasing costs has long reached a limit.
It is worthwhile recalling that Patrice Bonfiglio, President Sarissa Capital and Amarin BOD member, participated in DealFlow’s “The Activist Investor Conference held on March 21, 2024 in NY City.
Patrice’s presentation was on:
Defining the Spectrum of Success in Shareholder Activism
• Navigating a retail shareholder base
• Reinserting the “G” in ESG in 2024
• Inflection points for successful shareholder activism
Patrice was joined by Phillip Goldstein, Founder and CEO of Bulldog Investors to discuss Good, Bad and Ugly - Defining Shareholder Activism Success and Failure + When and how activism goes wrong and how to move forward + Ways shareholder activism helps propel stagnant companies into a brighter future + Case studies and situational analysis that help drive better decisions.
Has Sarissa concluded its investment is a fiasco and it is time to move on by recuperating as much of it as possible?
Was today’s presentation part of a financial engineering to that end?
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