Silence Therapeutics Share Discussion Threads

[vonmoger] 18/1/2020 20:20

K,

Sln has no CEO, hasn't got any wholly owned assets in phase, 3,2,1 clinical trials... Has mnk possible bankrupt partner... Has already halved in value from it's high Etc.

ARWR has a CEO. Has assets in phase 1,2,3. A share price up 4 or 5 X last year. They have partnered with plenty of reliable partners. However they also have haven't managed to prove their RNAi tech assets turn on or off lights so to speak... from memory they aren't selling any drugs yet, nothing approved by FDA (from memory)

Surely ARWR are a far better short candidate, all the good story baked in and all to lose, Would it not be better to short them? One could replace dicerna above as well.

To me it looks like investors have chosen ARWR and Dicerna as you put it, rather than this. What are they going to choose next? When sln gets a CEO, does deals, mnk doesn't go bankrupt, sln gets assets in phase 1,2.

Obviously I think silence has a lot of catching up to do. I think it's going to happen. I think investors will choose silence this year.

[kreature] 18/1/2020 19:17

interesting, thank you

[1gw] 18/1/2020 18:03

Depends on the price they had to pay and what's available, I think. If you look at some of the competing options for investment from the shareholder side, you have:

$13.2bn market cap ALNY
$ 5.7bn market cap ARWR
$ 1.5bn market cap DRNA
$ 0.3bn market cap SLN
$ 0.2bn market cap ABUS

while from the big pharma side it depends what is still available to license. DRNA and ARWR have already partnered a lot of what's available, which is perhaps why SLN is (or was) having its moment in the spotlight.

SLN deserves some sort of discount to DRNA and ARWR for being behind in general on clinical programs, and at the moment it deserves a discount for lacking a CEO (but hopefully that will be resolved soon). SLN has been arguing that for SLN360 in particular, they actually have an advantage in being relatively late to the clinic in that they can learn from the others' mistakes and benefit from the safety stats already gathered in other RNAi trials.

Ultimately though, it's perhaps going to be around the quality of the platform to generate safe, effective assets for each target, the competitiveness of RNAi against other technologies, and the scope for RNAi to expand outside the liver and bring into scope all sorts of other targets. On the first point, the quality of the SLN platform, what evidence do investors and big pharma need to commit funds? Do they need successfully completed Phase 1 trials, or are they ready to commit meaningfully before the asset gets into the clinic?

[kreature] 18/1/2020 17:38

Wouldn't potentially investors just choose a company who already had a CEO and a few trials, rather than this ?

[1gw] 18/1/2020 15:03

I guess Ali did when he came on board. But I would hope the new CEO will already have a background in this area - as I suggested before I think the ex-MDCO CEO (Mark Timney) might be a good candidate given the MDCO deal has gone through. Even better if he could bring Alex Denner/Sarrossa in with him as an investor.

[kreature] 18/1/2020 15:00

Is a new CEO going to have to learn all this stuff ? Good luck

[1gw] 18/1/2020 14:56

The linked-in article mentions expanding RNAi to extra-hepatic targets as a key challenge for companies in the field. SLN acknowledged this in their R&D day presentation where their very last bullet point was:

"Extra-hepatic delivery
> Numerous collaborations being explored. This is a key priority"

So I have to think there is a possibility that at least one of the "multiple opportunities to create shareholder value through significant partnerships with large and established pharmaceutical companies" will involve extra-hepatic focus.

[1gw] 18/1/2020 14:48

And I found this article quite a good primer, covering history, past safety concerns, different generations of platform and issues going forward. Note this article, published in August 2019 highlights the potential importance of the Inclisiran Phase 3 safety data which had not then been published - and which was presented in detail at the ESC congress on 2nd September (hence Ali's tweets on the subject that day).

[1gw] 18/1/2020 14:40

And this was ARWR's big hep b-focused deal with Janssen in 2018. Headlined as $3.7bn, it included $175m up-front and $75m equity.

[1gw] 18/1/2020 11:55

Dicerna - just checking out the competition, or the peers. Good corporate overview published recently by DRNA (perhaps for use at JPM20), linked below.

DRNA seem to have 3 big collaboration deals:

Cardiometabolic (up to 8 targets, liver & non-liver) with Lilly ($100m up-front, $100m equity)

Cardiometabolic (30+ potential liver targets) with novo nordisk ($175m up-front, $75m total "annuals", $50m equity)

Hep B with Roche ($200m up-front)

They also have a complement-mediated deal (2 targets + option now exercised on further 2) with Alexion, which seems similar to the SLN-MNK deal.



Does anyone know why SLN does not yet have a disclosed hep b asset? Given the scale of the Roche deal, that might seem an obvious area to go after in deal negotiations, if they have done some preliminary work. DRNA are currently in Phase 1 proof of concept, with readouts expected mid-year, so not all that far ahead perhaps.

Fiercebiotech's spin on the Roche deal:

[1gw] 17/1/2020 20:34

This comment from Takeda, from JPM20, caught my eye:

"We will clearly still look in oncology, but we actually have a nice portfolio of opportunities there," Plump said. "My guess is that we will be a little bit more active in the rare space, maybe neuroscience as well."

It so happens SLN disclosed 2 programmes (apart from Complement-mediated diseases) at the R&D day in the "rare" space: "Rare metabolic" and "Rare undisclosed", both in the "discovery" stage at the time (September). So could Takeda be in the frame for a further deal with SLN?

[1gw] 17/1/2020 20:28

I think there have only been the 2 CEO's in the last 6 years, K.

Ali Mortazavi from 2013 until June 2018
David Horn Solomon from July 2018 until late 2019

Remarkably stable at the very top until December's little local difficulty.

[kreature] 17/1/2020 20:14

No way of knowing if the ex CEO has continued selling under 3% either. Not the last CEO, but I think the one before that? Or maybe the one before the one before ? I'm not sure

[1gw] 17/1/2020 19:19

On that theme, we never got a TR-1 from Richard Griffiths (as far as I could see) after the MNK dilution. So perhaps some shareholders are more diligent than others in their reporting.

[1gw] 17/1/2020 19:17

I agree it's likely to have contributed to the drop, if it is a bona fide sale (or 2). But it isn't balanced by "little" buys is it (look at the January trading volumes apart from those big trades) and you don't think the MMs have taken that sort of quantity on their books to dribble out to "the many" over time?

If they are both Soc Gen, then that's a big dent in their remaining holding, so maybe the overhang will lift soon. And if they're a buy and a sell then I think we may get a TR1 from the buyer. But then I thought we might have got one after the early January trades. I will hope for an RNS next week!

[kreature] 17/1/2020 19:12

Oh, 6.5m quid? Maybe just the many passing wealth to the few, hence you only see TR1 sales ? If it's a worked trade, which it must be, perhaps that would explain the sudden drop to 300 yesterday?

[1gw] 17/1/2020 18:59

1.2m shares at 304p and 0.95m shares at 304.3p.

The bigger trade is around 1.5% and even the smaller one is over 1%, so if the bigger one is a sell and the smaller one is a buy by an existing holder over 10% then we ought to get an RNS for going up through a % point.

If both are sells then that's not far short of 3% in total.

Then we had the big trades early in January: 1.6m at 356.9p, 1.4m at 360p and 200k at 336p.

Seems implausible not having someone go upwards through a declaration threshold with all that going on - unless of course the Soc Gen holding is double-counting with some sort of derivative held by one of the other declared holders and all that is happening is a movement between derivative and actual shares.

[kreature] 17/1/2020 18:47

£133k looks like a buy to me, but of course we never know for sure.

[1gw] 17/1/2020 18:22

So is that Soc Gen getting rid of another chunk or someone else? When are we going to see a holdings notice from whoever is picking up these big chunks?

[kreature] 17/1/2020 14:52

A close below 300 might be an issue imv...I don’t see any support between 300 and 200. Any thoughts?

[vonmoger] 17/1/2020 12:14

Imho, I would say ultimate value is going to come from a takeover, when the majority holders sell sln in 2 to 3 years. That is well before 2026+ which Edison had for the final approval dates.

But proving and ultimate value... Need to also have probability of success in there as well? That is what Edison did...

I think you know all this though.

As before well done on making money on your short.

Gl and atb

[kreature] 17/1/2020 11:19

Ultimate value is surely in proving that the products are able to single out and switch off a single RNLI or whatever it’s called? How long is that likely to take?

[mdw1] 17/1/2020 09:15

Maybe some news out of the Healthcare Conference next week.....

[1gw] 16/1/2020 20:59

And I guess the other thing that might help sentiment is to see a holdings notice for someone (preferably a well-known biotech investor) declaring or increasing a holding. Who took the Soc Gen shares for example?

[1gw] 16/1/2020 20:30

I think it reasonable to assume that the corporate presentation (Jan 2020) has been used with a number of potential investors at JPM20. Precious little sign of a rush to buy in from the shareprice today though - have to hope for a reaction when everyone gets back to their desks.

And I also think a reasonable assumption is that SLN360 would be worth a seriously large up-front (but SLN want to keep it for now) and that discussions are underway for other assets and/or platform access that will generate up-front cash.

If the SLN platform is capable of churning out new assets in the way that the ARWR platform is, then I don't see why SLN shareholders shouldn't hope that the SLN market cap can make up a lot of ground on that of DRNA and ARWR.

But the loss of the CEO and the "non-delay" to SLN124 first dosing have created a couple of question-marks around leadership and clinical competence, in my opinion.

So the company and shareprice could do with some good news in the near-term. Plenty of candidates, but it would be nice to see one confirmed soon:
o First dosing of SLN124 would ease any nerves around clinical competence;
o New CEO could give big boost to sentiment (depending on who it is);
o (Positive) news on Teprasiran DGF (into NDA process) or AKI (Ph 3 early results);
o A further deal involving up-front cash;
o MNK exercising one or both options on additional complement assets.

The assertion that SLN124 wasn't delayed, or the lack of specifics about the protocol change that caused the "non-delay" did not play well I think.