"Anyone who does not subscribe to a CR ... please just leave the forum ..."
Your request is noted. I'll consider it. But while I do, here's my contribution towards "the stupid amount of crap noise" for you to wade through.
I treat every dollar I invest in small-cap med-tech startups as lost from the moment I buy. I believe you should too. There are a number of characteristics common to all of these companies:
1) A brilliant, often highly effective innovative product or service.
2) Passionate, brilliant, highly motivated researchers and developers promoting it and the company.
And yet they almost all fail. Even where the product or service eventually fulfils its early promise it is almost never the first company to bring it to the market that eventually succeeds with it. I believe that a number of factors that are outside the control of any of these companies make success much harder and less likely than any of the participants can bring themselves to believe:
1) Practical application in realistic circumstances is very different to research and test environments.
2) The new and untested doesn't get much commitment from the health community.
3) The management team are inexperienced and often fail to engage adequately with those who do have experience.
Take for example the potentially disastrous public release of the preliminary results. There have been some very well thought-out posts explaining exactly why this is an issue. Clearly Dr Carrick did not intend his presentation to be made public. It was a verbal presentation, made to a private organisation, in a private forum, without any written material to accompany it. It was a mistake for Neurotech to have had a board member there because as soon as the board member became aware of the price-sensitive nature of the presentation, Neurotech was required to disclose it to the market. The company has put the best spin on it that they could, but the final results are now compromised. The FDA will take into consideration the fact that the trial results are contaminated by probable knowledge by the participants of whether they are on active or placebo treatment. Effectively the trial has been largely unblinded. The FDA may not accept our submission.
Our existing TGA and CE Mark approvals just mean that the product has not been shown to do any harm, not that it is in any way effective. This is why we require FDA approval, because they require evidence that the product is effective. Without it we're selling an unproven product into a sceptical market already full of quackery. The last twelve months have shown how that's going to go.
So exactly contrary to your stratospheric level of confidence, I regard this investment as having an elevated level of risk on top of an already extreme inherent risk.
The tiny probability of this coming good is worth the small amount of my portfolio I have on this stock, but I won't be putting any more on until the risk profile changes significantly. I hope the CR isn't offered to retail investors. This will just amplify what is already likely to be a very miserable experience for a lot of mums and dads. Let the "sophisticated" ones take it in the guts.
NTI Price at posting:
21.5¢ Sentiment: Hold Disclosure: Held
