Mr. Clark: The key developments since we last spoke are, having ridden the wave as a newly floated company in early 2000 and having completed an acquisition of a small Nasdaq-listed company in late 2000, CeNeS then ran into difficulties as the sector fell away in terms of its overall market cap performance. We were struggling for cash and so in late 2001, we were one of the first companies to announce and go through a major restructuring. At that time, we had 150 people, research facilities in the Boston USA region, Scotland, and Cambridge England. As part of that restructuring, we’ve gone from 150 people down to 10; we’ve spun out two businesses; we’ve partnered all non-core assets; we’ve made some people redundant; and we’ve got rid of our American and Scottish operations. Obviously, our market capital at the same time was struggling as we effectively lost a certain amount of support that we had in the sector. The restructuring however has gone well and we’ve now sold one of our final assets and we’re sitting on over 2 years cash. We have a Phase III program in pain and a Phase II program in pain, which we’re looking to push forward. There are a lot of companies, especially in the UK and Europe, that over the last 12 or 18 months have really had to face up to cash shortfalls and restructuring because there is no real appetite for biotech companies. Our advantage was that we acted earlier and we have not issued any capital since then; we’ve lived off our own means. We are quite proud that the restructuring has met its targets and we’re now sitting here with a small well-funded company with a small focused pipeline and a simple story, which is something it didn’t have in the early days when it was a more complicated business. We’ve managed to maintain some significant upside to come with our clinical programs, which are late stage and we think will add value. We are spending money on them as we speak, as well as looking at other opportunities.
Tickers included in this excerpt: CEN.L
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