NWBO have leased their facilities and equipment to a consulting firm that has employees to assist in production and getting the facilities certified. Those employees and their expertise are expensive to have solely on the books of a single start-up, especially before they are fully operational. That consulting firm/CDMO itself only has a small facility of their own in London, which is being used currently to generate revenue for NWBO. NWBO will effectively turn excess space they have acquired in anticipation of becoming commercial into a possible revenue source, and this allows them to potentially have a profit center, for an underutilized resource until they need it themselves. By using a consulting firm model, the costs are potentially shared with other firms for personnel that would not be fully utilized in the intervening time and they do not need to have those costs embedded into the cost structure of a start-up for now. But they can change that later if they would like. Seems to me to be ideal and very flexible. And, if they get sold, those costs are easily accounted for and are not problematic.
So to me it is a structure that seems entirely advantageous to shareholders. The cost of equity for such activities now is very high for a start-up to take on. For most start-ups, being able to externalize such high capital expenditures and operational costs up front is very valuable. And I bet you, for an approved product, that is successful, NWBO and Advent can arrange to transfer personnel as needed, as appropriate.
So no, I would not paint it as you and similar persons paint it.
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