Summit Therapeutics plc Surrender Of Share Options

 
TIDMSUMM 
 
   Summit Therapeutics plc 
 
   ('Summit' or the 'Company') 
 
   Surrender of Share Options 
 
   Oxford, UK, and Cambridge, MA, US, 8 October 2018 -- Summit Therapeutics 
plc (NASDAQ: SMMT, AIM: SUMM), a leader in new mechanism antibiotic 
innovation, announces that UK-based Executive Director and PDMRs, and 
employees have voluntarily surrendered options to subscribe for a total 
of 5,532,461 of the Company's ordinary shares of one penny nominal 
value. Following the surrender, the total number of share options which 
remains outstanding is 3,073,330 (representing 3.7% of the Company's 
issued share capital). The surrendered options all have exercise prices 
in excess of 105p. The changes to Executive Director and PDMR option 
holdings are summarised in the following table: 
 
 
 
 
                                           Number of       Number of 
                                          share options   share options 
Name           Position                    surrendered     still held 
-------------  ------------------------  --------------  -------------- 
Glyn Edwards   Chief Executive Officer        3,055,096         409,959 
-------------  ------------------------  --------------  -------------- 
               Chief Operating Officer 
David Roblin    and President of R&D            666,208         100,000 
-------------  ------------------------  --------------  -------------- 
 
 
   The Company's remuneration policy, last approved by shareholders in July 
2017, has been effective in attracting and retaining talent within the 
business as well as aligning the long-term interests of Executive 
Directors and employees with those of shareholders. The majority of the 
share options held by employees are significantly below their exercise 
price, due to the recent decline in the Company's share price following 
its lead Duchenne muscular dystrophy candidate missing its primary and 
secondary endpoints in a Phase 2 clinical trial, with the consequence 
that they no longer represent a meaningful incentive. 
 
   Summit is now focussed on creating a successful antibiotics business. 
Its strategy is developing new mechanism antibiotics to become the new 
standards of care with this activity spearheaded by its Phase 3 ready 
antibiotic candidate ridinilazole and supported by its proprietary 
Discuva Platform. 
 
   In light of these developments, Summit's Board of Directors is actively 
looking at ways to re-align the interests of all its employees as it 
seeks to deliver its business strategy and create value for 
shareholders. One potential method is to make a new award of share 
options to all employees on terms and performance conditions which 
reflect the current business strategy, provide the persons charged with 
executing that strategy with meaningful and targeted incentives, and 
better align their interests with those of shareholders. For this to be 
viable, the Company would need to increase the size of its available 
option pool to avoid exceeding the limit within Company policy on its 
ability to issue shares in the form of share options. This surrender of 
share options has increased the size of the option pool. The surrender 
will have a non-cash impact on the Company financial statements. 
 
   The Remuneration Committee of the Board of Directors continues to 
evaluate the choices available to it and has not as yet made any 
decisions or commitments with regard to the granting of new share 
options. 
 
   About Summit Therapeutics 
 
   Summit Therapeutics is a leader in antibiotic innovation. Our new 
mechanism antibiotics are designed to become the new standards of care 
for the benefit of patients and create value for payors and healthcare 
providers. We are currently developing new mechanism antibiotics for C. 
difficile infection and gonorrhoea and are using our proprietary Discuva 
Platform to expand our pipeline. For more information, visit 
www.summitplc.com and follow us on Twitter @summitplc. 
 
   This announcement contains inside information for the purposes of 
Article 7 of EU Regulation 596/2014 (MAR). 
 
   Contacts 
 
 
 
 
Summit Therapeutics 
Glyn Edwards / Richard Pye (UK            [phone] 
 office)                         Tel:           951 
 
Cairn Financial Advisers LLP 
 (Nominated Adviser)             Tel:   [phone] 
Liam Murray / Tony Rawlinson 
 
 
   Summit Forward-looking Statements 
 
   Any statements in this press release about the Company's future 
expectations, plans and prospects, including but not limited to, 
statements about the impact of share option surrenders on the Company's 
financial statements, the clinical and preclinical development of the 
Company's product candidates, the therapeutic potential of the Company's 
product candidates, the potential of the Discuva Platform, the potential 
commercialisation of the Company's product candidates, the sufficiency 
of the Company's cash resources, the timing of initiation, completion 
and availability of data from clinical trials, the potential submission 
of applications for marketing approvals and other statements containing 
the words "anticipate," "believe," "continue," "could," "estimate," 
"expect," "intend," "may," "plan," "potential," "predict," "project," 
"should," "target," "would," and similar expressions, constitute 
forward-looking statements within the meaning of The Private Securities 
Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual results may differ materially from 
those indicated by such forward-looking statements as a result of 
various important factors, including: the uncertainties inherent in the 
initiation of future clinical trials, availability and timing of data 
from ongoing and future clinical trials and the results of such trials, 
whether preliminary results from a clinical trial will be predictive of 
the final results of that trial or whether results of early clinical 
trials or preclinical studies will be indicative of the results of later 
clinical trials, expectations for regulatory approvals, laws and 
regulations affecting government contracts, availability of funding 
sufficient for the Company's foreseeable and unforeseeable operating 
expenses and capital expenditure requirements and other factors 
discussed in the "Risk Factors" section of filings that the Company 
makes with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including the 
Company's Annual Report on Form 20-F for the fiscal year ended 31 
January 2018. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on 
forward-looking statements or information. In addition, any 
forward-looking statements included in this press release represent the 
Company's views only as of the date of this release and should not be 
relied upon as representing the Company's views as of any subsequent 
date. The Company specifically disclaims any obligation to update any 
forward-looking statements included in this press release. 
 
   -END- 
 
 
 
 
 
 

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

October 08, 2018 02:00 ET (06:00 GMT)

Copyright (c) 2018 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.