DevBod. And I'm inclined to agree with you. The management of GW has no latitude to sit and ponder disappointing results. If the email from the data processing company arrives early on a working day, GW would try to issue a RNS during that day. The company's preference is for an afternoon email as they can then work on the wording into the evening for a release at 07 00 the following day.
Whilst GW can't delay the issuance of news, good or bad, it can delay the arrival of that news. It occurs to me that if the data processing company had narrowly failed to make the end of Friday 22nd. December, the data processing company could have said to GW that the data could be available between 27-29 December, in which case GW might have declined to get the data until today. This is all speculation on my part.
What isn't speculation is that GW is running up against the announcement of its Final Results. Last year those results appeared on 19th. January but that date was flagged up by GW on 14th. December.
All things being equal, GW, would have announced the date of its Finals in mid-December. However, the two sets of peripheral neuropathic pain results are so critical to the tone of the Finals that GW has had to delay the announcement of the date of the Final Results