Silence Therapeutics Share Discussion Threads

[vonmoger] 15/2/2021 19:34

1gw

2.9m shares as per that January SoL data... Eyeballing it... I see about 400k shares traded so far in Feb. As we know that is the average for the SoL data... but it has been fairly sticky at those levels... My guess is there is about 2m shares still short...

However one wants to calculate the days to cover it is a big number. Some would think ludicrous. I certainly do...

There is a reasonable possibility this jumps up a couple of quid in short order. Time to grab the popcorn.

[1gw] 15/2/2021 16:39

Now, who's still short?

[1gw] 15/2/2021 16:37

Nice. 612p UT takes out the 4th Dec 2019 closing high of 610p.

So that's weekly close and daily close gone recently (10 year highs), just that 646.5p intra-day on 25th March (Astrazeneca announcement) to go.

[frndlyfire] 12/2/2021 17:07

Because you're back.

[kreature] 12/2/2021 06:11

What for though?

[aquilla] 11/2/2021 18:07

The revised notice makes more sense. So it looks like they haven't sold any shares, just moved them around.
The share price has now made 3 attempts to get through the 600p barrier in the last couple of weeks. It will be interesting to see if it can make it through that barrier this time.

[1gw] 11/2/2021 17:43

So is that a correction holdings notice from LO? 12.86% rather than 9.86%. Or is it just that voting rights "disappeared" briefly when moving from shares to ADS's?

In any event, that's a more plausible holdings notice given the lack of volume on Nasdaq. They have taken the opportunity to move a good chunk of shares to ADS's, perhaps giving them the option to take advantage of any sustained higher prices over there due to the lack of alternative supply.

[1gw] 11/2/2021 15:55

That's true. He didn't mention landing the biotech investors either.

[spectre10] 11/2/2021 15:43

It could be that if there were ongoing negotiations at that time, he may have felt constrained to keep the possibility of such a deal under wraps.

[1gw] 11/2/2021 15:35

I would think they ought to have the results by now, or if not they should be imminent. I can't see that covid could have caused much of a delay in the actual research project since they wouldn't have been trying to dose humans.

In the 11th Jan HC Wainwright session, Rothera said something like "Things are progressing well with Takeda on the one particular target that we're doing a technology evaluation around." But in the 14th Jan William Blair fireside chat he didn't even name a Takeda deal possibility when asked to list key catalysts for 2021.

It is always possible that having done the deal with Arrowhead on ARO-AAT, Takeda has what it thinks it needs for RNAi exposure. I hope not though, especially given the implied commitment to a licence deal (following a successful study) in the original announcement.

Covid might cause a bit of a delay in negotiation of a follow-on deal if one side thinks they need to get together to seal the deal.

[spectre10] 11/2/2021 15:22

Thanks,1gw. So from that response by Iain Ross the results of the initial evaluation study could be imminent.

[1gw] 11/2/2021 15:17

Indeed. And further commentary from Ross and Rothera in the post below:

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1gw 5 Jan '21 - 10:29 - 50033 of 50136 Edit 0 0 0

Just to whet the appetite on Takeda, here's a reminder of what SLN have said.

First, Iain Ross on the interim results (from a Seeking Alpha transcript) in September:

"It’s -- basically, it’s a 12-month research evaluation. It is on a proprietary target of theirs. And we will hope to sit down with them early in the New Year and review where we’ve got to."



And then Mark Rothera in the Chardan presentation in early October (my hearing):

"We are encouraged by this collaboration and hope it will then transform into a bigger and longer-term deal on numerous fronts"

[spectre10] 11/2/2021 15:07

1gw, I presume you are referring to a deal following the announcement in the business update last January.

"Silence is pleased to announce today that it has entered into a Technology Evaluation Agreement with Takeda to explore the potential of utilising Silence's platform to generate siRNA molecules against a novel, undisclosed target discovered by Takeda. Takeda will provide Silence with single-digit million USD of research funding. Silence and Takeda have further agreed to negotiate the terms of a License Agreement should the initial evaluation study prove successful."

So we are awaiting a possible licence deal following the results of the initial evaluation study?

[1gw] 11/2/2021 14:45

Feels like we need a bit of a push to move decisively above £6 though. If only they could RNS a big Takeda deal...

[1gw] 11/2/2021 14:44

Agree. If the market can absorb both Dirk's shares and these from LO and still stay close to £6 then there must be good underlying demand.

Also interesting that they [i.e. LO] seem to have sold around 123k ADS's (370k shares) since 4th January. That's more volume than I can see on the Yahoo! Finance trade volume listing. So is there more volume going through on the Nasdaq listing than is apparent?

[spectre10] 11/2/2021 13:00

Lombard Odier Asset Management has offloaded 2.6% of its holding. The good part is that the share price has remained steady. Someone must have picked up some 2.3 million shares in recent days.

[1gw] 08/2/2021 14:41

I would hope the biz dev focus has now moved to closing something with Takeda.

[wilko14] 08/2/2021 14:29

From a quick review Adage has got $48bn aum and Franklin Berger was named by the Wall St Journal as the number one biotech analyst in 1997 and 2nd in 2000.

[1gw] 08/2/2021 14:13

Well done to the SLN team for pulling this off, despite the extended lack of a CEO during the process. Great to see such names investing publicly in the company.

[1gw] 08/2/2021 14:03

Today's 6k filing details the number of shares each investor has taken and $ amount invested.


As I read it, by far the largest investor is BVF Partners, investing $25m (1.1m ADS's) through various funds (e.g. Biomedical Value Fund, Biotechnology Value Fund, Biomedical Offshore Value Fund).

Next is Adage Capital Partners, investing $10m.

As well as the 4 biotechnology institutions identified in Friday's RNS, there are 2 biotech individual investors (Franklin Berger and Chris Capps), plus $1m from 3i, LP.



So no doubt in my mind that this is the conclusion of the "biotech investors" process disclosed by Iain Ross in March last year (as opposed to some more recent dash for cash).

[wilko14] 07/2/2021 16:23

Correct 1GW. Banks generally won’t let you break terms deposits.

[vonmoger] 07/2/2021 15:20

Good to see STT and K working hard once again. Made my Sunday afternoon. Keep it up boys! I have been in this for just over a year now. I have always found your posts very reassuring for my long position...

[1gw] 07/2/2021 10:58

Term deposits generally can't be touched for their term, k. That's the point. You will note from the balance sheet that the term deposits are under "current assets" meaning they are relatively short-term. They are treated as being cash-like and so included in the comments on liquidity e.g. "Cash and cash equivalents and term deposits of £50.3 million at 30 June 2020".

This is fairly standard practice in the biotech industry I think. For example, Arrowhead reports $165m of "Short-term investments and marketable securities" as of 31st December 2020, as well as $111m of "Long-term investments" which it then lumps with cash to give $416m of "Total cash resources (cash and investments)".

Early stage biotech companies consume large amounts of cash. Therefore if they have raised funds they tend to keep fairly large amounts readily available on the balance sheet to allow them to meet operating expenses as they become due. Boards have fiduciary duties to shareholders and therefore look to earn some return on this cash through the use of relatively low risk vehicles such as term deposits.

[kreature] 07/2/2021 09:14

Strings attached to term deposits ? Ie can’t actually spend them?