Acmella has held 10.27% and hasn’t dropped below 10% since no flagging notice has been issued. One possibility is that Timo has transferred his personal shares to the company.
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For now, I’m choosing to believe this. A perfect opportunity to transfer them to the company without tax consequences. Then I would definitely start wondering too, if Syrjälä had decided to sell everything.
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On another forum, someone mentioned that Syrjälä has sold everything, i.e., 17 million shares. In that case, others only sold 4-5 million. This just goes to show that we need patience now and shouldn’t let rumors carry us away. It’s perfectly understandable if he reduces his position and participates in the share issue, but I believe he is reducing it moderately and isn’t sawing off the branch he’s sitting on. He has been involved for a long time, after all.
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Syrjälä would have had to issue a flagging notification if he had sold all the shares from the company as well, so there is reason to assume he still owns them.
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You are right, and the Financial Supervisory Authority’s website says the following about the matter:
“When and how is a flagging notification made and published?
A flagging notification must be made without undue delay, however no later than the following trading day after the shareholder became aware or should have become aware of a transaction breaching a flagging threshold.”
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I suppose the “quiet period” also prevents insiders from selling. At least I would think Timo belongs to it.
If we continue to dream, let’s say Faron’s goal is to reach a valuation of €1bn:
- €1bn / 358.5 shares = €2.79/share → €2.80
- subscription price 0.20 and potential target price €2.80
- value increase about 1300% → 14-fold return on the invested subscribed capital
- previous €0.60 for ownership + 2 x subscription 0.20: average price about €0.33 (everyone has their own purchase prices from previous periods for old shares)
- A rise from €0.33/share to €2.80/share means about an 8.5-fold return
- Theoretical path here:
- 2026/surviving the offering
- 2027/partnering and Phase 3 underway
- 2028-2029 FDA approval and commercial breakthrough?
There were many “if” clauses on every line and between the lines.
The share value is currently peeking at the €0.4 range, so with the subscription price being significantly lower than the market price, is that €0.20 (€–0.25) level starting to be possible? In that case, the 80M share authorization for financing is looking small relative to the funding needs.
To succeed, Faron’s board should be able to show investors now that this is the final emergency offering before a major partnering offering – without anchor investors, this offering will dry up.
March 2nd meeting
- Revealing anchor investors: at what price and amount they will participate, which would hopefully stop the share value slide: who will sign up as a guarantor for the offering?
- dilution looks severe at this rate while the share is sliding: will 80M shares be enough?
- at this point, someone who believes in the drug probably sees €0.20 or €0.50 as the same kind of lottery ticket – if they see the lifecycle value at a level above €10
- High risk of “vulture investors” appearing on the scene
- At what point are we at a forced sale by the board?
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”CLOSED PERIOD
Faron’s executives are subject to a 30-calendar day closed period before the announcement of the half-year report and the financial statement release. The company has also set a corresponding 30-day closed period for those individuals involved in the preparation of the company’s financial reports. During the closed period, a person may not trade in Faron shares or other financial instruments.”
Executives include the board of directors, the management team, and everyone involved in financial statements and financing—essentially those who have access to financial information.
Syrjälä is not an executive. He is a major shareholder, and disclosure (flagging) rules apply to him. He is the chair of the shareholders’ nomination committee, meaning the committee selects members for the board. If he possesses inside information by virtue of his position, insider rules apply to him as well. Now that everyone already has information about the share issue, if that is the only relevant information, it does not prevent him from trading. Therefore, as I understand it, the closed period does not apply to him.
The financial statement release is on March 4, 2026. Exactly two weeks from now. We will hear more about the situation then.
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“…there is currently no direct competitor for bex, but I wouldn’t be surprised if I were wrong.”
Regarding the most difficult forms of blood cancers, there likely aren’t any current competing projects. But since solid tumors have also been seen as significant future profit potential for Faron, there is certainly a lot of trial congestion in those across the world. So in their case, Faron is unlikely to dominate the market, even if bex were to reach the market as a combination therapy. For example, BioNTech’s pipeline has several cancer drugs based on the mRNA technology used in vaccines. Most of them are currently in Phase 2. If I have understood correctly, the innovative angle with these is that if 10 patients have cancer X, an individual mRNA drug composition can be defined for each based on the cancer subtype and its further sub-classifications. Of course, these too still have many years to go before reaching the market.
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This comment is hard to understand. The CEO has just held a press conference and additionally gave an interview to Inderes. Both increased confidence. Now we know that BP is interested in Bex and was even involved in designing the new study plan. It just can’t be signed until certainty is received from the FDA (the procedure described by Clark Kent). The share issue will be held before FDA certainty, and after the issue, it’s no longer worth signing.
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Based on the mechanism of action, however, these mRNA cancer vaccines would be expected to work synergistically with immuno-oncological treatments that enhance T-cell activity, such as anti-PD-1 antibodies and Bex, so these treatments wouldn’t be purely competitors either. Based on my surface-level research into those mRNA cancer vaccines, they appear to work by sequencing the cells of the patient’s tumor and designing the mRNA vaccine in a personalized manner based on the specific mutations of each patient’s cancer. The expression of these cancer-specific antigens triggers a response against tumor cells, but the immune response against the tumor in these cases will still depend on the T-cell response, which, for example, Clever-1 appears to silence.
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So, over a week ago there was a press conference and an Inderes (Inde) interview. Since then, trust has been a widely communicated issue across every channel. On the stock exchange, the price has dropped from a euro to half a euro following those events. The speeches and interviews have had a poor effect on the market. You can say this and that, but the message doesn’t seem to be getting through credibly. In my opinion, at offering prices of €0.2–0.4, there isn’t even a shred of trust left. New money is needed even before these funds from the issue have been brought in. How will HCM be handled with such a valuation, or will the issue funds be given directly to HCM before other needs? And then what? Many probably feel that something needs to be done—I can’t really think of what anymore myself. I do, of course, believe and trust that the board is busy and looking for ways to manage the situation. The problem is just that the current situation requires calming the market, and that doesn’t seem to work by keeping your head in the sand.
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What if the problem is quite simply that Faron’s shareholder base doesn’t have any extra cash to put in even if they wanted to, which is why many are selling to get the funds for the subscription?
Empty-pocketed shareholders?
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That may well be the case, but it doesn’t resolve Faron’s struggle for survival – at least not in Faron’s favor. And I repeat – how far does €0.3-0.4 per share help Faron…? Let’s remember HCM.
The proceeds from the share issue should be used to pay off HCM. Of course, the terms of the convertible loan need to be checked.
I am repeating this once again because an NDA is clearly an unfamiliar concept. When parties negotiating an agreement sign an NDA that restricts disclosure very precisely—defining the details, timeline, and penalties for any potential breach of contract—the negotiators simply cannot release information about the negotiated matters to the public.
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So how do we know that Big Pharma has been interested? Because the CEO said so? He wouldn’t be the first biotech CEO to paint the situation in a more positive light. In practice, if the CEO lied about that, it would be impossible to get caught.
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When I visited the public terminal earlier this year to investigate holdings, for some reason, I couldn’t find Syrjälä’s holdings the first time either. The application had several ways to search for information, and the holding was eventually found through one of them. Just a heads-up if anyone goes there; it’s worth taking another moment to try and dig around.
Maybe I could drop by the terminal myself, but I can’t quite bring myself to do it when the skiing conditions are so good here in the south as well.
I wouldn’t go as far as to say yet that the shares have been sold / transferred away from the personal account.
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I wouldn’t be worried about Timppa’s holdings. Earlier I speculated that he sold at the beginning of the year before the share issue announcement. If that’s the case, it’s good for all of us if he subscribes for 5M euros.
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It seems clear by now that the 80 million share issue authorization will not raise the previously mentioned target of 40 million euros—there is no longer any mention of it in the notice of the general meeting.
Here are some troubling questions.
If the meeting has to be canceled—what is plan B? Or is there still time to amend the authorization and increase it to, for example, 120–150 million shares?
And would even that help—the company’s management has lost the trust of the market and there is apparently not a single anchor investor so far?
If or when this fails—will a new desperate loan agreement be made with HCM or another similar company, resulting in Faron’s share count increasing and the price dropping to 0.1x or 0.01x levels as the lender dumps shares into the market regardless of price, because they always get cheaper shares at a discount and make their profit that way? I don’t remember the name of the biotech firm that eventually went bankrupt after the lender collapsed its share value in this way. Mind you, this happened to Nexstim too, but the company managed to survive and its market cap has multiplied.
The hope for Faron’s shareholders likely lies in a takeover bid before the general meeting—there is no point in expecting a large premium, because the bidder knows the company is desperate in its search for financing.
In a way, it’s incredible how this case was managed to be botched by the management’s incompetent financial and negotiation skills, or was Jalkanen talking bullsh*t throughout his entire tenure as CEO and now the house of cards finally collapsed?
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