Comments from the AGM. Most of the data comes from the President's and the Chairman's report during the formal part of the meeting. Unfortunately, I had to leave immediately after the Q&A because of another commitment. Perhaps others can report on anything that happened at the end...
- It seemed to be a well attended meeting, including some media, brokers and analysts.
- I wasn't surprised to hear that WHT was delaying the clinical trials again since they want to incorporate the Novacor blood bag. The Ottawa Citizen article was inaccurate in stating that the delay was from mid-2000 to 1Q 2001. The last timeline announced had been 4Q 2000.
- The longest any patient has been on a VAD so far is 4 1/2 years. That patient was on Novacor's device using the blood bag that the HeartSaver will now employ.
- Tofy Mussivand put up a slide that compared the complications experienced by the Heartsaver VAD during in vivo trials versus other devices. However it wasn't clear whether this data was "apples to apples" or whether it was comparing animal trials to human trials. Anyway the stats were...
WHT WHT Other
Occurences Percentage
Infection 0/44 0% 25-45%
Bleeding 3/44 7% 30-50%
Thrombosis 6/44 14% 5-20%
For thrombosis, 1 was blood chamber related (a blister in the sac), 2 were cannulae related (apparently due to surgeon error), and 3 were small issues related to the valve interface. All have apparently been resolved. He then showed a slide of valves and conduits at explant (the major places where thrombosis occurs). They were clean with no thrombosis.
- Over the last year, WHT has made seven major technical improvements to the device and a number of smaller ones.
- In 99/00 WHT has published 7 articles or chapters in scientific publications. They have participated in 28 conferences. This all helps in building credibility for trials. There are now 63 centres gearing up for clinical trials, up from 23. This doesn't include any potential sites from Novacor's network.
- The Novacor device is the only VAD to meet the National Institute of Health reliability requirements.
- The financing was arranged such that WHT gets the cash injection now, but presumably converts to common shares much later, when dilution would be less.
- WHT only has to get 5% of the market to realize $5 billion per year in revenue.
That's all the notes I took. Obviously, the market is taking a "wait and see" approach. Volume has been generally anemic. I don't think we'll see any movement up until the calf trials begin and some analyst reports come out (see below). But the bigger pop will come when the human trials begin. I just hope there are no more delays.
In talking to the company before the meeting I was also told that several analyst reports will be coming out over the next few months including a revised Merrill Lynch report (new analyst), HSBC, Yorkton, and Research Capital (the former ML analyst).
Perhaps others who were at the meeting can add their comments. |
