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While it would not be very difficult to believe the worst about management and the BOD, I fail to see how it is in their interests, or it enhances their interest, for the PPS to get crushed and remain crushed?
The reality would seem to be that they have a much greater payoff than any retail investor if ADXS share price rises dramatically?
I would be thrilled with anything below 7M.
It was much easier opening a 10M short position in ADXS back in spring / summer of 2015. The volume was much higher, with 3 months out of the first 6 at almost 50M shares traded in a single month. Even with massive HFT generated volume we aren't seeing 50M shares in a Qtr nowadays.
The challenge they have, or had, closing a 10M short position is that at 300K-600K shares traded per day for much of 2016 (except Amgen deal) and 2017 (until June) is that there wasn't enough real volume for them to cover normally. That's why they had to launch such an aggressive PPS attack using HFT so heavily to artificially pump up the volume.
Total volume for second half of Oct was about 13M shares. So far they have only been able to cover somewhere between 6%-9% of the total volume because so much of the volume is fake HFT trading designed to shake out real shares they can grab to use to cover.
So I am hoping we see another 600K to 800K covered. Anything more would be a bonus and a major positive signal.
It should be Thursday 11/9 after the close
Pitching, take a look at Post #36169 by Hornet
As I understand it, there are 2 groups of warrants, those that expire in July and those that expire in October.
To add to my point about potentially following the money, assuming hypothetically that it's true Adage was shorting this from $25ish to $3.50ish, they have banked huge profits, and their original investments in ADXS would already be paid for many times over.
So they would now be playing with house money on their remaining 4+M shares and 3M warrants. If ADXS got back to say a $25 PPS, that would represent another $160M dollar pure profit payday for them, on top of everything they have already made.
It seems running a hedge fund is a almost a license to print money.
As bad as the last 5 months have been here, the main reason I remain somewhat cautiously optimistic is because of the manta "follow the money."
It's very hard for me to believe that ADXS "friends"...the same institutions that were supposedly invested...just sat idly by and watched from the sidelines while ADXS got taken down from $30 to $3 and did nothing but watch, and somehow were not participants in that short profit feeding frenzy.
It's why now I find it very hard to believe that ADXS BOD and Management are going to allow millions of options to continually remain underwater when it represents generational wealth for most of them and their families. I would think they would sell everything before allowing that to happen.
I also find it hard to believe that Adage held 4M shares and 3M warrants all the way to bottom and will continue to allow the PPS to languish here at $3 forever. In fact, if Adage does still hold 3+M warrants, I expect the plan to monetize them has already been set in motion, much like I suspect the plan to crash ADXS down to $5 or below was set in motion back in 2015.
We'll see.
For argument's sake assuming this guy Sidransky is every bit as bad as you continually suggest, so far his take from ADXS has been relative chump change compared to all the paper he is sitting on that is only worth something if ADXS PPS is at much higher levels.
The BOD may be every bit as incompetent as you and other suggest, but I fail to see how they financially benefit from continued failure when they have tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands of shares in the form of options that cannot be monetized due to being underwater.
My point is that the BOD received a bunch of worthless paper at this point. They have the chance to convert all their options into personal fortunes. If they succeed that would benefit all of us retail shareholders.
But for all the complaints about the BOD share compensation, right now they aren't sitting on any huge money pot unless they can significantly increase the PPS from these levels. These guys can walk away with mere 5 figure paydays or 7 to 8 figure paydays. I can guessing they all want the latter. Because the former is a nice bonus, while the latter could represent generational type wealth.
So to me the motivation appears pretty strong for the BOD to significantly increase the PPS by whatever means is required.
Not that I think they necessarily deserve those shares, but right now all those options at $3.19 are worthless, and so are all the options they got at much higher prices over the past couple of years. Hopefully if anything this gang is sufficiently motivated enough to get ADXS PPS up to much higher levels.
And if they were delaying any deals or announcements to take advantage of the current depressed pricing and get their grants for 2017 taken care of first, now that's out of the way as well.
Hypothetically speaking, if a hedge fund were granted almost as many warrants as shares of company, they could short using their actual shares as the borrow, and be guaranteed they could never get burned by anything that happened inside the company because of the warrant protection.
Especially with warrants that gave them almost a 4 year window to play with.
In effect they have been sitting at a poker table and playing with everyone else, but knew they had a royal flush up their sleeve the entire time.
Ubmmg,
I think the point is, taken to it's logical conclusion, is that this never was, and still isn't, about "breaking" Adage's control.
The reality is that nobody is breaking Adage's control of over 4M shares and 3+M warrants unless they decide on their own to sell out for real, versus just selling some shares to cover a short position and take the nice tax losses on those shares purchased at $19 and $7.50 the same time to offset the incredible short cover gains.
So since we completely missed the probable $40M-$60M motivation for the bus ride to the bottom here around $3, the question is what might be the motivation for a bus ride back north?
If Adage continues to hold 4M shares and 3M warrants, one could obviously see the financial benefit for them now in running the stock from $3. The only thing is to wait for is (1) they are fully closed out and have everything ready for the rally and (2) material news to be announced, and then pump what might possibly even be a series of announcements like ADXS is going to be the next CELG.
To be clear I don't necessarily believe that ADXS is all that, but I am perfectly willing to sit quietly in the back and of bus and take that ride if it happens.
William, I will add that I think the questions and answers surrounding the warrants that Adage appears to have been granted might be the most important ones of all when it comes to ADXS and what the next 6 months might look like in relation to the PPS.
If Adage still held 3M warrants, they could realize a significant profit if the PPS got back to even $15.
William, check out Hornet's post here and the SEC document link...
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=134924853
This warrant grant announcement was dated Jan 6, 2015. It mentions that an entity or entities (unnamed) were granted warrants as a follow on to the direct placement offering at the end of 2014. That offering announced Dec 19, 2014 involved Adage (primarily) and T. Rowe Price.
I am just guessing here, but suspect...
Adage got the 3,306,250 block
T. Rowe Price got the 198,375 block
On one hand it is hard to near impossible for me to believe that level of complicity existed. DOC may have just been in the role of "useful idiot" (not literally but figuratively).
On the other hand, looking back in hindsight one could almost put the puzzle pieces together in a way that raises serious doubts and questions about the whole last 3yr period and who knew what and when.
ADXS hasn't exactly helped snuff out any fires of speculation because they have never provided a good reason for their sudden removal of DOC, and lack of any real or meaningful communication since.
This BOD also has a long 10+ year history of being forced to deal with toxic financing and the machinations these groups engage in. So by now one would think the BOD would have some street smarts when it comes to that. So if it is true that Adage was a central player in the big short of ADXS, I would find it hard to believe they don't know it, or at least strongly suspect it as well.
Like I said, I am seriously hoping Adage still owns about 3M of those warrants they were granted at the end of 2014. If they do I seriously doubt they will allow them to expire worthless.
I never understood why DOC was so into having partners buy stock on the open market with no restrictions or lockup periods.
I always felt he should have tried to get it in cash instead. The company could have had another $30M to $40M in cash right now if they had done that across their collective deals vs requiring stock purchases.
Avoiding any judgment on the abilities or lack thereof of the management team, I do agree with you on the timeline.
Even assuming absolute best case scenario, and assuming submission does happen as promised in 1st Qtr of 2018, we are talking Sep/Oct 2018. If there are a couple of 3 month timeouts for additional questions and clarifications we are now into late 1st Qtr or maybe even early 2nd Qtr 2019.
Without getting into whether that is good or bad, that is the probably reality of the timeline.
Bourbon, 4 months is really not a long time to agree to and sign any big deals.
The KITE and Tobira deals tooks many months to close, with multiple back and forth offers and counter offers.
Please don't mistake my point, I am not saying Lombardo is or will be the guy. I am just saying that it isn't really fair to criticize him for a lack of any major deal after only 4 months. I think he deserves a little time.
FBG,
I think you are wrong, no disrespect intended. The language I referred to was just in relation to the vague identification of the grantee.
The actual date of the document is Jan 6, 2015. And there is language that clearly identifies this as an addendum to the direct placement in December 2014.
Perfect, thanks. The way I read this is that warrants were most definitely offered and related to the common stock offering at the end of 2014 (which was Adage), but it doesn't mention Adage by name, only refers to a "representative and its designees" who were getting them. I think it's safe to assume it was Adage.
Obviously I think you get my purpose. If Adage still has all or a big chunk of these warrants that were granted to somebody (3,306,250 plus an additional 198,375) I think that could end up being a very good thing for us retail bag holders. At least I am sure hoping they still hold 3+M warrants.
Here is the language I am speaking to...
Tin, did you ever find any evidence that Adage received warrants during any of their direct placements?
I have not been able to find any official confirmation of that in the documents related to the original offering.
Personally I am not sure any announcement from ADXS right now, outside of an outright sale, would move the PPS in any lasting way.
That is until whatever group that took this down decides they are done. If you watch the trading daily, they just own this thing and can take it anywhere they want.
JMO
KITE's total revenues were $22.2M for fiscal 2016. They lost $267M for the year.
When Tobira (TBRA) was bought by Allergan for a deal totaling up to $1.7B they had $0 in revenue and about $53M in cash
In the Micro-cap biotech world, even in the mid-cap biotech world, it almost never is about revenues or revenue growth.
I agree with you in principle, but only from a linear viewpoint, and only if you assume they are honestly looking out at real buy and sell blocks. The challenge is that this stuff isn't linear it's multidimensional, multifaceted.
The reality is the short contingent (whoever they are) has made sure to break the chart at almost every key inflection point over the last 2+ years. This eventually wears down retail and scares away momentum traders who trade almost entirely on technical signals.
While the final reports from the 4th quarter early next year may tell us a different story, we can determine for fact that the entire 3rd Quarter was dominated by hedge fund controlled HFT churning and burning. Because we know (unfortunately always in hindsight) that out of 43M shares traded from July to Sep that ADXS saw almost 2M shorts cover and a net loss of 1.1M Tute shares.
So net changes to Tutes and Shorts were only 7% of that total volume during 3rd Qtr. Yet between those 2 groups they control 68% of the float. That just considers the officially reported short interest, because who knows what the real number is.
So excluding them 93% of the rest of the volume was from retail? Said another way retail which controls only 32% of the float out of a total float (40+M) completely turned their shares over 3 1/2 times in 3 months? Just from retail? Anyone that believes that I have a map to King Solomons mines for sale. First offer of $1M closes the deal.
We'll see what the next reports show but we actually have facts to know that HFT has been dominating trading here for months, even years.
You / we should have expected that news to be knocked down this morning. They have been doing this for years and have successfully done this with news events far more significant than today's. It's right out of the basic playbook.
There is definitely a significant short covering operation in process. That's why it makes total sense the news today that ADXS received another month's worth of cash was met with another low volume HFT suppression algo.
However who is behind it, and whether or not a real and sustained turn is near, we can only speculate.
Unfortunately whoever is behind this has demonstrated over the past 2 1/2 years they can take down the PPS on anything and everything.
An additional moderately positive data point on short interest...
Short interest at its lowest point as percentage of the float since June 15, 2015.
This only includes short interest data thru 10/13.
JD, thanks for the context. Since we missed out on the big run up obviously at some point I am hoping for divergence if the indexes do retrace a bit.
I was also wondering what was behind the opening action. But since my post volume has completely dried up and we appear to be back to water treading mode.
We'll see how the rest of the day goes.
They may be ready to allow this to run a little. I don't know if $3.04 ends up being the actual bottom or not, but I do know if the share mining operation by the shorts was designed to pick off forced margin call shares, the last of those calls had to be covered yesterday.
So now that they have practically just about drained every last penny of available margin out of ADXS shares, assuming they still wanted more shares, the smarter move here would seem to be to let it run a little and then attack it again from a higher level ($4 or $5).
For those looking for a bottom the one good signal is that we are seeing bigger buy blocks and good volume. Since June whenever the shorts have goosed this up intentionally trying to set it up for another take down, the volume has been lighter and the buy block sizes much smaller.
We'll see. Still too early to make any firm conclusions.
To add. My point isn't that any of these announcements from the companies can't have a true positive or negative implication. For example CALA's announcement that started their re-launch was very positive for the company.
However, what we see are massively outsized moves in either direction. These moves clearly have hedge fund HFT jet fuel behind them and far exceed the real world positive or negative implications of whatever the individual announcement is from the company.
100% Agreed.
In fact, until the funds that took this down are ready for it to rise, I am not sure what announcement outside of an outright sale would move the PPS unless they wanted it to move.
CALA may be somewhat instructive. They took that from $30 to $2ish. Ironically the "big announcement" that started to rocket CALA back up I did not even find as impressive as the Amgen deal ADXS announced in August 2016.
I suspect the hedge funds that control the direction of CALA stock had taken the stock down as far as they wanted and now were ready for CALA to launch. They were just waiting on some news that was significant enough to provide cover story for the run up.
If that is what is happening here, when they are ready one of these deals announced in the coming weeks or months will provide the excuse needed for the launch.
We'll see.
Gotcha. So now you want to qualify your original comment with "and has enough equity in their account." With that kind of broad Captain Obvious requalification I now have no idea what you were protesting to begin with.
Unfortunately before you decided to attack what should have been a fairly benign and factual comment, you should have made sure you actually knew what you were talking about. In this case you didn't.
If someone was using the margin funds available from their ADXS shares, to either purchase more ADXS shares or purchase other equities, they lost the ability to leverage every last penny of it on the drop to $3. If one owned a significant amount of ADXS shares I can assure you that was a large amount of margin leverage that went to $0 in the last 45 days.
While it is true a person may have owned other equities to cover the difference, if a person had one of their accounts that was largely concentrated in ADXS, and were leveraging margin, they either wrote a check last week or sold something. They will do more of the same next week.
Fortunately I was in the position to write a check last week. I will write another one on Monday.
Those are the facts.
What exactly is patently false? I have a Fidelity account (among others) and the money I transferred today was very real. The maintenance requirement for ADXS is $3 just like I said. That means at $3 and below, the requirement is 100% funded.
FYI. If you have a Fidelity account, $3 is the minimum margin requirement for shares of ADXS. So while shares of ADXS are still technically marginable at Fidelity, since $3 is the minimum requirement, they now have no value. Anyone that had ADXS shares on margin, or was using the margin equity available from ADXS shares to margin other equities, has now had to cover or sell if they couldn't meet the call.
I can't prove this, but I would not be surprised if Fidelity also shorted against a significant portion of their shares they got in the offering in 2016. If they close out and flip positions now, they will in effect be playing with free shares, house money, because they will have largely covered their initial investment.
Regardless, since Fidelity might have been one of the last brokers to offer some kind of margin on ADXS, I suspect we are now near a bottom. We could still go below $3, but I think the goal of squeezing out every single dollar of margin in retail shares has been achieved, or will be by next week.
We'll see.
Well, I do agree with certain elements of your comments.
Again, speaking from hindsight here, I believe ADXS and DOC seemed completely oblivious that their PPS was being methodically attacked and taken down since 2015. They were powerless to stop it because they assumed that just announcing deals or trial results would end it.
But IMO this takedown was never really about the science or viability of the platform. It's just about money. It was about a short position of 10M shares established around $25. The short cabal was never going to allow their potential $100+M payday evaporate due to a series of extended trading rallies. Especially in a microcap like this one so easily controlled and manipulated. And especially if ADXS so called "friends" were in on the plan from the beginning.
But while I am not surprised ADXS BOD and Management seem completely incapable of meeting this crisis and appear to be overmatched, that still isn't a good enough excuse. I DO NOT agree with ADXS in their total silence and lack of any real communications to shareholders.
The only future justification ADXS will be able to offer, is if this total silence and complete lack of communication ends up being about a major deal or outright sale of the company.
The clue when they might be done is when they start covering in volume. They have finally started to do that, but still not yet in the final totals we need to see for confirmation (probably somewhere under 5M).
The reason we know (in hindsight) a big part of this crushing move down is pure hedge fund manipulation, and that the goal to drive down ADXS PPS was decided probably back in 2015 (when they increased their short position from 3M to 10M in only a couple of months), is just to look at the 3 year chart.
Every positive development (and there have been plenty) since the short position reached 10M in August 2015 has been attacked hard. This partly was so they could keep breaking the chart and scare away retail traders and any real buying. Even back when DOC signed the deal with Amgen and did the offering with Fidelity and had $160M sitting in the bank, what happened? They attacked the PPS as soon as possible and drove it right back down.
ADXS BOD and Management are not blameless in this. They have made their share of mistakes and screw-ups. None of these guys seem destined for the Biotech Hall of Fame. However, even if ADXS management had run this almost perfectly, I am pretty sure the best we might have seen right now is $7 or $8. That 10M short contingent was going to make sure they got their profits. So maybe they would have covered at $7 instead of $3 with no mistakes or missteps from ADXS?
But if you step back and look at the big picture, it seems obvious now that almost no matter what ADXS management did the PPS was going to be taken down significantly from the 2015 highs to a place the large short cabal could cover safely.
If it is true that Adage was part of this shorting block, you can be assured it was a virtual certainty that ADXS was going to be taken down. Because that would mean that even ADXS best "friends" in the investment community were even motivated to take them down.
Nor have I Keith. It is just relentless and brutal.
As I said yesterday, it seems they are not done screwing with the PPS yet unfortunately. They are just in total control of this and will take it wherever they want it.
I am pretty sure that if the forces taking this down don't have plans to run this back up at some point, that ADXS will be forced to sell itself.
Somebody has decided to kill this stock. The only question now is whether they plan on resurrecting it at some point.
Some random thoughts...
- The MMs and whatever hedge funds they are working for are still screwing with the PPS. Until they achieve their endgame (whatever it is) there is almost no way to trust any move in either direction. Even when they pause their takedown they just pin the PPS so it merely treads water (barely).
- I can't ever recall a company so completely controlled and dominated by the short contingent. They were so determined to take this down as hard and as fast as possible they appear to have given up trying to hide their actions in the shadows the way these things normally happen. They are brazen and completely getting away with it. Nobody seems to care, not even ADXS. Unfortunately in today's Wall St retail investors are armed with sticks going up against hedge funds with .50 caliber machine guns in the form of rigged market making and powerful HFT data centers that can overwhelm real buying and selling by many multiples.
- If shorts are actually in the process of covering, we need to see additional follow on evidence of that. Until I see short interest recede to 5M level, I won't be comfortable they are really clearing out and preparing to run this back up. Unfortunately, and I take no pleasure in saying this, the best I can still tell we need help from the same entities that screwed us on the way down, to take us back up.
- I have to agree with Mortman. I would be shocked if the manufacturing facility cost more than $20M to bring online.
Attila, thanks for that recap. I appreciate hearing their official perspective. The next 3 months should prove interesting.