Dear IMV: You Fail, Fail, FAIL … However *

Many comments are shuttling into The Calandra Report/TCR  since the credit protection filing two weeks ago — most of them from The Calandra Report/TCR subscribers, and some of us wise enough (pas moi) to avoid IMV shares at any cost, or correctly bail years ago.

A sampling: 

“I doubt they even care.” That is an Asia health-care exec — about IMV execs’ and board’s willingness (not!) to engage with stakeholders.

“Awful. Terrible situation. Many lost large sums. Such a big hit … .” This is an asset manager.

“I will never understand why pre-commercial biotechs take debt money, esp with short maturities. It was 13% interest so it’s not even like it’s cheap. Basically puts the company in the hands of your debtors because there’s no chance you will have enough money to pay it back (unless you do a development deal in the meantime).” This is a fund manager.

“I honestly just put the whole thing up to either a) incompetence; or b) the science doesn’t work.”

This all comes, once again, in the wake of IMV’s filing two weeks ago, the Canada-lab seeking court protection from lenders, largely a $25 million USD venture lender.

One more?

“Thom, I can understand your furstration but it is clear that you are wasting your time with them. They simply  DO NOT CARE. A friend of mine (an analyst) had attended (years ago) one of the shareholder meetings of
Dryships. When shareholders were complaining about share dillution, destruction of shareholders’  value, he (George Economou) replied to them (more or less), ‘If you do not like the company do not hold the shares.’

I am afraid this is, also, more or less the attitude of IMV’s management over the years (though they use a
politically correct approach and phraseology). Anyway the best case scenario I can imagine is to calculate how much the
their research and patents can be valued and after paying their debts… to minimize the losses for the shareholders.

Even I, who I was always sceptical and cautious with IMV as we have discussed ovef the years, I have managed to accumalate a loss of $15,000 to $17,000 USD.”

That was a Greece shareholder.

TCRs, against the backdrop of all 
of this p*ss-poor executives' and 
directors' managing of what is a legit
immunotherapy laboratory, there is 
the science.

DLBCL: Enrollment for this lymphoma 
trial is now complete. 
See www.clinicaltrials.gov.

Data apparently show the human trial was 
or is one positive response away from meeting 
its primary (stabilizing of disease or 
its progression; or eliminated cancer) endpoint.

Ovarian cancer: enrollment complete 
in this human trial.  

Many more comments, some scathing, in my wings. Ping me and I’ll send them along.

This comment below sums it up in a semi-scientific way — from England:

“Thom,

Here are a few thoughts of mine for you on this situation.

I am unable to say much about Andrew Hall, who is unknown to me, other than draw the clear inference that he has no idea how to run a business where cash is tight.

As CEO, Andrew Hall had very little to do other than make sure the trials were being set up and run professionally and to promote the products to regulators, relevant large drug companies, health service providers and investors.

If he had shown a greater willingness to involve large drug companies or health service providers in funding trials then maybe things would’ve gone much better even if a big drug company, say, ended up with a large share of the upside. The recent recruitments they have made are actually quite disgraceful as people have joined IMV and then discovered in a really short time that the business has run out of money.

So not only investors and lenders, but employees too have been misled … .

Most successful business managers run a really tight ship on the cost front. IMV never seemed to do this.

An old school friend of mine is a now retired professor of economics at a very good university here and he has been involved for a number of years as an independent assessor of the success or otherwise of drug trials. He told me that most drug companies and regulators ignore small scale trials as the results can be skewed by all sorts of factors, especially an unconscious positive bias in the staff carrying out the trials.

No doubt we will discover that some investor or other will be in the background waiting to take over the assets of the business (DPX, maveropepimut-S). for a relatively small sum, and that shareholders will walk away with nothing.

Metaphorically, Mr Hall and his fellow directors are each deserving of a punch on their nose unless this is all wrong.

Thanks for your tireless research into junior gold and other precious metals miners and others. It is always interesting to read what you uncover.

Best wishes,