Much too much obsession with Price and too little with Value: "Why" the price is where it is may be more important than price itself.
Price is screaming at PPHM mgmt and BOD two things:
1. Sell product cheaply before you are ready (I advocate
only very selectively) or partner up.
2. Find alternate financing to dilutive ATM
To date PPHM has been unwilling to take either of these suggestions. I have long advocated selling non core assets or regional assets. I have also long suggested at least six alternatives to ATM financing. PPHM usually runs about one to two years behind my suggestions so they should be right in the zone. My third suggestion of bridging by adding prudent amount of debt vs Avid without encumbering IP or issuing convertible preferred is starting to age as well.
On the more positive side, earlier I noted a possible "peaking of burn rate". The "quiet improvement" here is also cited in Charles Duncans' most recent comments at JMP. Charles notes the "third" quarterly increase in projected revenue at Avid again by 2mm and he further notes the "first" quarterly decline in expenses also by 2mm. This is a good first step. If Avid revenues can again be raised by 2mm (IMO this is coming) and expenses cut another 2mm then we may be getting somewhere. Cutting another 2mm in expense is very doable IMO. One way to kill dilution that is very rarely talked about is to "kill the burn rate".
Surprisingly (especially to myself), I give points to Chris Keenan. In the PR re "NASD warning" Chris was able to prove that PPHM is capable of writing a very clear and concise and informatory PR. This PR completely defused the NASD warning and I have heard little about it since. That is how it should be. The real issues should be well resolved before the next 360 days IMO.
I was not expecting any particularly interesting data from the 7 AACR papers as much of this presentation was telegraphed. Again, I was pleasantly surprised by a second clearly presented PR this morning. Chris clearly articulated the up regulating potential of a doxy combo with Bavi, and clearly talked about the potential of new "imaging" techniques (Imaging is one of my favorite areas and IMO can be an enormous product market and non-core asset sale/deal area for PPHM).
Chris gets more points for "lucidly linking" the imaging results of doxy for upregulating PS on cell surface with the ongoing 2nd line NSCLC testing. This was more than I could have expected based on PPHM's prior PR history. (refer to FTM work and projections for opinion on coming results, plus FF work -very well
written on testing results, plus my own comments on "return to mean". FF should be paid to write for PPHM as his discussion of early surrogate indications was much clearer than PPHM on the CC.)
Additionally, Chris went further and got his final points for continuing with a suggestion I have made for years, i.e, to stop speaking as if to scientists and start aiming more at investors. He clearly and simply layed out the size and deadliness of the NSCLC market in the US annually. IMO PPHM should continue to talk about the target markets in all their various product info PRs.
Unfortunately, this type of research will not really move the needle on market cap at this stage. Harder data is needed. You can define that as data strong enough and far enough along (mos) to cause partnering speculation and eventually the actual partnership. Ditto for a "hard" announcement on FDA accomodation for Cotara that would lead to partnering.
Best Regards,
RRdog
AI
