Primary completion date (the readout)

ClinicalTrials.gov asks every sponsor for a primary completion date: the day the final participant is assessed for the study's primary outcome measure. It is posted as estimated while the trial runs and switched to actual once it happens. It is not the day results are announced, which usually follows by weeks or months while the database is locked, unblinded and analyzed.

For a finance team it is the most important date on the calendar after the cash-out date. A readout resets the company's valuation, opens or closes the financing window, and determines whether the next raise is negotiated from data or from need. Planning a runway that ends before the readout means raising into uncertainty; planning one that ends well after it means raising into evidence.

Because sponsors revise the date whenever enrollment moves, it should be read as a plan rather than a promise. That is exactly why the cash forecast is built to flex with it: a one-quarter enrollment slip is a one-quarter extension of the burn, and the model should show what that does to the cash-out date before it happens.