WaterMill Asset Management Releases Candid Q&As with Each of its Director Candidates for Election to Ziopharm Oncology’s Board

WaterMill Asset Management Corp. (together with its affiliates, “WaterMill” or “we”), which collectively with the other participants in its consent solicitation beneficially owns approximately 3.3% of the outstanding shares of Ziopharm Oncology, Inc. (NASDAQ: ZIOP) (“Ziopharm” or the “Company”), today issued the below letter to shareholders that introduces the candid views of its three aligned, independent and qualified director candidates: Robert Postma, Jaime Vieser and Holger Weis.

As a reminder, WaterMill is seeking to reconstitute Ziopharm’s eight-member Board of Directors by removing four incumbents and installing our three-member slate. We encourage shareholders to consent to all of our proposals on the WHITE consent card. We urge shareholders to sign, date and return each WHITE consent card they receive.

Please visit www.FixZiopharm.com to download a copy of today’s letter and review relevant materials pertaining to our campaign.

***

November 12, 2020

Fellow Shareholders:

WaterMill Asset Management Corp. (together with its affiliates, “WaterMill” or “we”) recognizes that many of you have lost complete confidence in the incumbent Board of Directors (the “Board”) of Ziopharm Oncology, Inc. (“Ziopharm” or the “Company”) following a five-year period in which shareholders have seen the value of their equity plunge by more than 76%.¹ The Board’s demonstrated inability to reverse this value destruction has been compounded by what we believe has been its conscious decision to maintain an anti-shareholder culture that deprioritizes accountability, boardroom ethics, commercial vigor and corporate transparency. This is precisely why we are seeking to reconstitute the Company’s eight-member Board by removing four current directors (Scott Braunstein, J. Kevin Buchi, Elan Z. Ezickson and Scott Tarriff) and installing our three-member slate (Robert Postma, Jaime Vieser and Holger Weis).

It is important to reiterate at this time that WaterMill is not an activist investor and preferred to avoid any rancor with Ziopharm. But once it became clear to us that Chairman Scott Tarriff and Chief Executive Officer Laurence Cooper were not going to take the necessary steps to regain investor trust, we became convinced that pursuing targeted boardroom change on an expedited basis was in the best interest of all shareholders. We could not continue to sit on the sidelines as the incumbent Board flouts the basic tenets of sound corporate governance and presides over staggering share price declines.