There are no known facts upon which to anticipate an offer nor are there any which would preclude an offer being made imminently.
The known facts at this point in time appear to me to be:
1. VLA now has close to $60 million in cash reserves which are said by VLA to be sufficient to support it until 2020,
2. Lepu has seen sufficient value to pay $29.6 million for 13% of VLA and has expressed an interest in working with VLA to advance trials with a view to capturing market share in the oncology market in China,
3. Lepu having become a substantial holder must inform the market if its holding varies by more than 1% so it is now not in a position to surprise the market and will need to be open about any further expansion of its position and additionally being foreign it will need approval if it were to seek to expand beyond 20%,
4. VLA's data to date from its trials together with the proof of concept which can be extrapolated from the success that other companies have and continue to have using modified virus it is highly probable that further expanded trials will continue to be successful and will eventually lead to FDA approval.
5. Merck and Bristol Myers have supported and continue to support VLA in those trials and in Merck's case in expanded trials beyond melanoma.
6. Currently VLA has approximately 240 million shares on issue.
Reasonable conclusions which can be drawn in my opinion are that if an approach was made to acquire VLA there would be at least two other potential bidders.
If Lepu is not the prime mover it is reasonable to expect it would seek to protect its position and most likely make a bid in its own right.
VLA is in a strong position in a financial sense and would have confidence in its intellectual property such that even if there was only one bidder it would not be under any pressure to accept or recommend a low ball offer and in circumstances where there would clearly be more than one bidder while I do not know what an end number might be previous acquisitions during 2016 and 2017 lead me to expect it would be close to one billion dollars. This would put a value of about $4.00 per share needing to be on the table.
These are my own conclusions and opinions and would welcome any other view points regarding what conclusions or opinions should be drawn from the above six known facts.
VLA Price at posting:
77.0¢ Sentiment: Hold Disclosure: Held
