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FJA:
That would be a very nice win to start off the New Year.
Point of interest, yesterday I came across an updated research report from Golden Capital dated Nov 11/97. I wont post the details because it would take forever to type a three page report to reiterate what we already know, but the comments were very positive. However what I found most interesting was the outlook:
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OUTLOOK
Nortran is one of the more promising Vancouver biotechs, having been relatively successful in attracting financing over the past year. In the spring, Nortran raised $2.5 million through a private placement, plus an additional $2 million through the exercise of warrants. The licensing agreement with CCM will add another $4.3 million to treasury if everything proceeds as planned. Even prior to the CCM agreemnet, Nortran was sufficiently financed to continue its research and clinical programs.
While we continue to rate Nortran favourably, one perennial source of uncertainty is the Company's lack of a CEO, following the departure of Gordon Politeski in early 1997. The search for a replacement was not expected to take this long, and is admittedly not helping the Company's share price: some are interpreting the difficulty in finding a CEO as a poor reflection on the Company. While we concede that this may be a valid criticism, we are more inclined to believe that the Company's difficulty in attracting a suitable CEO has more to do with the small pool of qualified applicants and the low compensation relative to executives at more established firms than with the Company's scientific merits.
Nortran's share price has appreciated by more than 50% since we initiated coverage earlier this year, and at one point was up by as much as 135%. Despite this increase, we still regard Nortran as a highly undervalued and misunderstood company, and expect a gradual appreciation in share price in 1998 as its clinical program gets underway for the second generation antiarrhythmic and the first generation Nociblocker.
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I wish that this whole CEO issue was resolved already, and speaking with the IR guys at NRT, it seems that they too are feeling the frustrations of not having a suitable executive in charge. |
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