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The CEO bought ~142K shares, the chief development officer bought ~570K shares, John Wilson, a director, bought ~1.7M shares, Aisling Capital bought ~1.1M shares that were reported under Steve Elms on a form 4 as he is a director of Marker and managing partner at Aisling, and NEA bought ~5.7M shares. That brings NEA's total ownership over 10% so all their partners who have indirect ownership filed form 4s. All the form 4's that were just filed claiming 5.7M shares are reporting indirect ownership of the same shares. They are not separate individual purchases of 5.7M shares each. A lot of people are not realizing this.
The volume is definitely nuts.
I'm not entirely sure where the PTs all sit but that seems accurate. I would only go off the two that were updated recently. So Oppenheimer at $8 and Cantor at $6.
Aisling and NEA have proven themselves to be in it for the long haul. Steve Elms, a managing partner at Aisling, is on the BoD of Marker. Like previously mentioned NEA were instrumental in bringing the Marker merger to fruition. Additionally, with their new purchase they now control over 10% of the company which limits any selling they can do. For any insiders and 10% owners it is a little more difficult to unload there positions even if they desperately wanted to. These limitations are detailed in Rule 144 under the Securities Act of 1933 if you are interested in looking further into it.
The form 4s are for the offering. NEA purchased 5.7M shares. Anyone at NEA who has control over the shares needs to file their own form with the SEC. These forms are all disclosing control over the same 5.7M shares. Not separate purchases. I've seen some of confusion over this.
I agree that it looks weird. Not sure what any investigation will find though. I have to believe that if anything serious could come from them purchasing part of the offering they would not have done so. FWIW I sent an email to see if I can get some clarification. I don't expect much info on this topic though other than to hear back that everything is kosher.
They are not at all connected to Dart. Dart was a big buyer of Tapimmune but I don't know he holds much weight here anymore. I highly doubt NEA tries to purchase the entire company to take private. Not their MO. Ali Behbahani, one of the partners at NEA, was highly instrumental on bringing the initial merger to fruition.
NEA bought part of the initial offering that was done as a contingency of the merger between Marker and Tapimmune back in 2018. With their new purchase I believe they will be the largest holder. They'll be holding for a while.
Yup. Peter ($250K), Juan ($1M), Steve Elms ($2M), and John Wilson ($3M) made purchases from this offering. It's nice to see insiders making big purchases but It would have been a lot better for those to be on the open market. The upside is, I would assume, these shares won't be sold anytime soon. It definitely opens them up to criticism on the terms of the offering since they clearly benefitted from it. I want to see where the rest of the shares went. I'll be a little miffed if the majority went to NEA, Aisling, and other current holders because then it will look even worse for how and why the terms were set where they were. Again though, the upside would be that these entities have proven they are not selling.
I think we are speaking on two different things here but correct me if I'm wrong.
The way I read the question about being secure was in terms of the patents themselves being questioned. That is going to be something any company may have to deal with. Patents can always be challenged and it is up to the courts to then decide the outcome should a challenge be presented. This is what I meant by having no proof for or against. This is not going to be questioned until a claim is made against the company.
In terms of who owns the patents there is no question. Marker has exclusive rights. The only way they lose those rights is if they screw themselves over. There really are no explanations required of the company on this as everything was detailed out in their filings. That is probably why no funds or major investors have ever brought it up.
Technically it took them three months to clear the reagent issue and that included FDA review. The FDA put the hold on the trial in November of 2019 and lifted it in February of 2020. At that time they put a partial hold on the trial which would be lifted once they were satisfied on the safety of the new reagent. The new reagent was to be delivered to Marker by the end of Q2 2020 at which point they could begin dosing for the safety lead in. They said at the time that that they expect to have the requirements needed for lifting the partial hold to the FDA in the 2nd half of 2020. The FDA lifted the partial hold at the beginning of January this year and Marker does the first patient at the beginning of this month. Who knows how long all of this should have taken but there were multiple points that required FDA review which is usually not a quick process. Can't move much faster than they will allow. I believe the scrutiny here from the FDA was because the trial is pivotal and can be used to request approval without the need for a PIII. Regardless, it's over with now.
Typically you file a shelf for more than you need. It stays active and supposedly makes it easier to raise at a later date. Without proof I am almost certain they intended for the SP to rise after the pancreatic data release at which point they would have 100% tapped the shelf. Obviously that didn't happen and they re-evaluated their next steps. You are probably right that they should have just tapped it for the $50M back then though. Like you said, hindsight is always 20/20.
I don't know exactly when the trial is supposed to be complete. cliniclatrials.gov has a primary completion date of May 2021 but these are not set in stone dates and I personally don't like to use them when trying to determine trial timeframes. They should be estimates at best. If you look at the Primary outcome measure they have the timeframe listed as six and seven months for the two primary outcome measures. I don't remember when when the trial was fully enrolled but we should be nearing this time frame soon if we haven't hit it already. The one hiccup we know about is Dr. Smaglo left BCM for MD Anderson and they had to assign a new principal investigator to the trial. Regardless they should have some data they can present somewhere I would think. Peter did touch on the trial in yesterday's conference. Link HERE if you didn't already listen. It was during the Q&A and starts at about the 30 minute mark.
I just responded to some of the IP concerns in my last post.
"But if they sold their position it would show as red on Fintel. This looks like a 4M share purchase." Lol.
LOL. Yea, I've noticed that too today.
I'm in agreement with you about Dr. Leen resigning as CSO in that the company should definitely have issued something. I however don't find it alarming that she resigned and I'll give my reasoning below. All my opinion.
As we already know Ann Leen and Juan Vera founded the technology that grew into AlloVir and Marker. Ann served as Chief Scientific Officer at both companies while Juan served as Chief Product Development Officer at both companies. I would argue that it highly unusual for any one person to serve in a senior management capacity for two public companies. Please feel free to correct me if I'm wrong with other examples though. Prior to AlloVir going public it wouldn't be much of an issue but that's changes since their IPO last year. This is why I believe she stepped down. I also don't believe for one minute that she is completely gone from the company and will remain involved in some way whether it be as an advisor or similar capacity. Just not a senior officer. When Elevate brought on AlloVir they announced Juan Vera would remain as their Chief Product Development Officer. If you look at AlloVir's website there is no mention of this. Vera is only listed as a member of the board of directors. Again, I'm going back to the fact the it is not normal for individuals to hold senior officer roles at two public companies.
Regardless of my opinion the company should have issued something informing the shareholders whether they gave a reason or not. I don't like the fact that they remained silent either.
As for the patent "issue" you bring up do you have any evidence that they would not be enforceable? Unusually if someone makes a claim like that they have reason to. I'm genuinely interested in what your thoughts are there as I have not done a ton of looking into the patents.
You are 100% correct. I never thought we would be diluted down here and I did state that. My conviction was strong and clearly I was wrong. It's unfortunate and I'm just as pissed off as others but there isn't anything I can do about it. Regardless, I still believe the company is severely undervalued here and certainly hope with the financing out of the way the company can finally get their act together and communicate better.
Even though I think the chances are slim of there being any sort of buyout offer on the table so it really doesn't make sense to even be discussing this I will entertain you but respectfully disagree. No company needs to go around issuing PRs that they have buyout offers on the table. It's just going to open up a whole can of worms if they disclose something and then the deal falls through or the original agreements change. At that point I can almost guarantee the share price will slide even further. Technically they aren't required to disclose it until they've officially entered into an agreement.
To illustrate my point we'll use MDtoB22's reply to your post saying that it seemed to have worked for Sorrento. I don't even know where to begin with this. They buyout offer was reported on 1/10/2020 and the SP hit a high of around $5. On 1/27/2020 they announced they rejected the offer and their SP ultimately slid down to a low around $1.50 over the next couple of months hitting the low around mid March 2020. So clearly announcing a buyout offer that never came to fruition did wonders for them. To make the claim that them announcing the buyout offer is what led to their increase in SP is asinine and completely ignores all the other progress the company has made. If you look at the largest jump in SP they had from ~$2.50 to $10 in May of 2020 you will easily find it was because they released data on a Covid treatment. Absolutely nothing to do with the fact they received a buyout offer, which they rejected, earlier in the year. The next jump came in August when they filed an IND for their Covid treatment and entered into a merger agreement to acquire another company. Don't take my word for it though. HERE is their chart and HERE is all the corresponding news.
So back to my point, no, Marker, or any other company for that matter, should not disclose buyout offers. They should only be disclosed once a deal is ultimately accepted. Obviously this is my opinion and I respect that you are entitled to yours.
I was expecting it closer to the end of the year and initially thought they jumped the gun doing it this early. Financing overhang was definitely keeping the SP down though so hopefully this helps. I still don't like the terms of the deal but with the financing out of the way there should be nothing holding this back.
I really hope that tomorrow is just the beginning of many other conference presentations. The major knock on the company is their lack of communication with shareholders. Like I've stated before I personally can write this off as long as they are progressing trials. Up until now they didn't have much to even share other than rehashing old data. Now with plenty of cash and the AML PII trial initiated with interim data readouts realistically expected early next year and complete data from the active arm mid next year they have no reason to keep quiet. They need to be presenting at every conference they can. If there was a time for the company to remain quite it is not now.
It's time for them to put up or shut up. No excuses.
Big pharma's interest, or lack thereof, has nothing to due with the cash raise and if they did have an offer from BP they have every right to decline it. Regardless, who cares if BP is interested or not. It has no bearing on anything here unless they are actively seeking a buyout or a partner which they are not.
They do not have an "ATM deal". An ATM is where the company sells shares on the secondary market at their own discretion. They have a purchase agreement with Aspire Capital for up to $30M. It is still active. If you were paying attention you would see that on the past two quarters of financial results this is included in their cash runway. So even with this purchase agreement fully executed they would still be short on cash by Q1 2022. The capital raise they just did was inevitable even with their active purchase agreement.
You keep bringing up this SA article like it holds a ton of weight with the company and everyone else. Literally anyone can write an article for SA. Nothing in the last SA article was new. It's information that has already been available.
I'm definitely not missing "the point." I know exactly what I own and I understand all risks that come with it.
The data is mature but there are definitely reasons for hesitation. The obvious one being the small sample size but the bigger one being that the PI data is single center data. There is a lot of control in a single center trial and initiating a multicenter trial like the company has done can definitely see some issues pop up. Very smart people in big pharma know this though. FWIW the manufacturing improvements the company just reported last week will help address this.
It sounds like you are stating that big pharma would have bought out Marker if the therapy works. Even if a buyout was offered I doubt the company would have accepted. So you are right in saying that leadership was not interested.
They did issue shares at a ridiculous valuation but we all knew their cash runway was only going to last into Q1 of 2022 so they would have to raise cash before then. Unfortunately when you start running out of cash you don't typically get to dictate the best terms for raising more.
You are 100% correct that the company definitely lacks communication with shareholders. I've agreed with you on this before but I personally just don't care as long as they are working to progress the trials. I think the issue with their communication style is they usually just give progress updates along with reporting their quarterly financials. Outside of this they don't tend to issue many PRs. The information is there, it's just not released in a manner that some would prefer.
As an example they provided an update of manufacturing process improvements last Tuesday that should significantly improve their chances at success in the AML trial. The company even stated back in the November operating results that they were working on these improvements. I would think this could warrant a separate PR with some explanation on why they think these changes will help them secure an approval but this just seems to be their style. Stick it in with the quarterly updates. Unfortunately I don't see this changing.
As far as the only hope they have being the AML trial you are half right. They obviously have other indications that they can progress forward when they are ready but at the merger they identified AML as being their best chance at approval and decided to more or less put all their resources there. Definitely risky but agree or disagree it is what it is so now they just need to execute.
If one doesn't think they will be able to get this done then now is the time to start looking for an exit strategy as we can probably expect data by early next year. If the data is good who knows where we go but if it's bad anyone holding will be in a world of hurt.
Where did I say that?
I think you would be hard pressed to find anyone on this board that would agree with you in the fact that I "blindly" gave loyalist comments. I did no such thing. I've been bullish on the science since day one but that's not the same thing. Every bit of information I posted came with supporting links and logical rationalizations. Anything that was my opinion was stated as such. I've been vocal in the past that you need to do your own DD and not believe everything written in message board posts, and that includes mine. You spend enough time on the boards you quickly learn who can be trusted and who can't.
Clearly you are frustrated that you blindly followed random posters on an internet message board rather than doing your own DD. Maybe a good lesson for you to learn.
You aren't going to get any information on the TPIV trials. The ovarian trials were shut down and with the exception of the TNBC trial, which to be honest probably isn't going anywhere as the company is clearly focusing resources elsewhere. The rest are all sponsored by Mayo. Marker is strictly supplying the vaccine. Marker will have no information on these trials until Mayo provides it. That's just a fact that you should already know. It has been made pretty clear that the company's focus is on MultiTAA at this point.
You have made it very clear that you have done no DD and aren't paying attention to much regarding the company progress. The only thing you have ever done was complain that management isn't meeting your expectations and blaming everyone else for the fact that you are down on your investment. You have no one to blame but yourself.
A little DD might do you some good rather than sitting here complaining about something that takes two seconds to look up.
https://www.markertherapeutics.com/board-of-directors/
You made a claim, or theory in your words, that didn't come with any proof or evidence. You provided exactly 0 information and have the balls to point out my rebuttal lacking logical support. Give me a break.
You are correct. I have said in the past the float will not allow institutions to buy a large position without drastically moving the share price. A secondary offering via the shelf would be the best way for them to increase their position by a lot in a short amount of time. Completely logical. You insinuating that Perceptive and Baker wanted larger positions and when Marker didn't give into their demands they sold their positions however is flat out conspiracy. Do you have any proof or evidence to this? You talk like this is all fact when it clearly isn't.
Shelf registrations are pretty damn common. No way Perceptive sold just because of it and Baker didn't sell until the year following the shelf filing so you can't really insinuate that was the reason they sold.
Regarding the FDA hold it was pretty well explained. Can't blame the company for the fact that you just didn't understand.
I do find it comical though that you think filing a shelf is crossing Perceptive and Baker and now the company must pay for their wrongdoing. How dare the company implement a ridiculously common financial tool that helps them procure future funding. Shame on them.
I can almost guarantee that NEA isn't going anywhere anytime soon given their past history with Marker. If you did any research you might realize this too. What the hell is it with everyone on this board making a bunch of false claims to make themselves feel better?
I get the frustration but making things up to fit your own agenda isn't going to help anything. It just makes you look like an idiot.
It's no wonder the posts here are few and far between when every other one is just people complaining and making false statements.
I wish everyone here the best of luck. With how many are conducting themselves it's clear they are going to need it.
Anyone who thought TPIV would have been worth $7B was delusional at best. That was never going to happen so you can't really compare where we are now to where a couple posters with their heads in the clouds thought the company should have been.
I know you are constantly complaining about the lack of transparency but you have never given your opinion on what exactly you want the company to share. They can't manifest news out of thin air. It's clear right now that they don't have any news to share so you can complain all you want but it isn't going to change anything.
Making claims like "many now do not trust the science" is flat out wrong. You don't know what everyone else is thinking. It must be that you don't believe in the science anymore (or just your frustration spilling over) and to make yourself feel better you pretend that everyone agrees with you.
Obviously TPIV200/100/110 are not "dead" but you have to be ridiculously naive to believe that they will bring much value at this point in time compared to MultiTAA. Without the company coming out and explicitly stating it TPIV200/100/110 have essentially been tabled on their end.
Between them there is only one open trial sponsored by Marker which I would not be surprised to see terminated in the near future. The others are all sponsored by Mayo with DoD grants. This means we won't get news from Marker because they don't have any. Mayo will provide any updates as they see fit. That being said I would not expect many updates from them and would caution against using the timelines listed on clinicaltrials.gov as these are arbitrary dates and don't mean much in the grand scheme of things. They come and go on many trials with no updates given.
This study is not sponsored by Marker. It was funded fully by the DoD so they did not "flush" any money down the drain for it to be conducted. They just supply the peptide vaccine. The company also does not get any updates any sooner than anyone else. When Mayo releases data is when we, and the company, will know something.
No clue. This isn't the first time we've seen a large uptick in volume with seemingly no news though. Unless the volume continues I won't think much of it.
Nope. Have only added. I'm assuming he meant that he is getting ready to sell his position for the third time. Explains his frustration I guess. Getting ready to sell for the third time at a low. Can only assume he sold the other two times for a loss too.
Super fraudulent. You should probably sell an move on.
I got a response to my email this morning regarding the pancreatic trial.
It basically said right now they are actively watching arm A which is fully enrolled at 13 patients. They are looking into avenues to further advance this group beyond just monitoring the patients for progression free survival and overall survival. Once the company has this figured out we should be getting an update. No timeframe though so it could come by the end of this year or sometime into next year. If I had to guess I would assume sometime Q1 would be reasonable.
Company is fairly busy through he end of the year but I am trying too get a call set up for early January. If anyone has things they would like to have addressed let me know and I will see about getting some answers. Keep the requests respectful and logical. Trial info, financing info, etc. I do plan on addressing the company's communication, or lack thereof, as I know that has been a sticking point for many here.
I don't think there really are any "milestones" for the trials. At this point it's all about the data.
Last I recall the anticipated PII AML trial timeframe was somewhere around 2 years to be complete. The clinicaltrials website has the primary completion date set to July 2022. I know the plan is currently to gain approval based on this PII trial so that's the only timeframe I can see. The trial is open label so the company will be getting the data in real time. How and when they choose to release that data is another topic all together and I don't think we will ever know until it happens. Which is normal.
The pancreatic trial is fully enrolled and has a primary completion date of May 2021. If final data is good then I would assume this will be the next company sponsored PII trial. I don't have any more information than was said by the company which was updates will be shared if and when the company gets them and sees them fit for release. I do have an email out regarding this trial and will update if I get any sort of meaningful response.
Two completely different companies with two completely different approaches. There is nothing to compare.
Currently Covid is definitely the higher priority than AML or Pancreatic cancer due to the amount of people it is affecting. It is what it is. The FDA is not intentionally trying to slow up trials but they do apparently have a high standard when it comes to manufacturing.
THIS was published when the hold was removed on Marker's trial. Towards the end it touches on Novartis having issues with manufacturing and the FDA too. Obviously this is after their product was already approved but none the less it shows the the standard the FDA has when it comes to manufacturing as they set the bar higher for Novartis than what was the standard during the actual trial.