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I agree a lot to look forward to, but Lombardo failed miserably. He didn't cut cost or close a deal or raise capital early or show any leadership so the company was in a position having to do an offering on the worst terms/lowest price in the company's history.
The insider buys represents the first signal Berlin is committed to regaining the lost imvestor trust and misalignment under Dan (The Con Man) O'Connor whose talk ("We could be a $50 stock in a couple years") were at odds with his actions (free reckless spending of our money while padding his own pockets with unearned comp acquired through less than ethical tactics) which investors paid for by seeing 80% of their capital destroyed. New era now with a renewed trust in the company hopefully.
Yes, he and Bonstein and Petit had around 10% of their monthly paycheck debited for off the market stock purchases. He essentially inflated his salary to make these small token purchases so, like you said, he could brag he was buying with his own money, however, the amount of his free unearned share grants that he took for himself not tied to performance or aligned with shareholder value represented more than 90% of his stake in the company. He never made any "open market" purchases of ADXS with his own money.
Great news, insiders finally with skin in the game. Ken Berlin did something in his first two months as CEO that Dan O'Connor didn't do over his four year tenure: buy shares of his company in the open market with his own money (why would Dan when he was a master at taking our money for himself)
It would make sense, arguably, for Amgen to license and test HOT alongside NEO. ADXS announced the Amgen NEO deal before the IND was filed, as I recall. Hopefully the same will happen before the HOT IND is filed and we will get another $40 million in non-dilutive upfront cash.
ADXS announced the Amgen deal before the NEO IND I believe. Hope the same will happen with HOT.
Sell side analysts are known for being reactionary with their price targets (rather than managing real money and being held accountable for the results). When ADXS was trading between $10 and $20 they had price targets in the low $20s, yet we instead saw the stock collapse to $2, so now they are reacting to it. It's actually a good contrarian signal that the stock is about to start rising again.
Intially ADXS was working with Bristol to conduct a Phase 3 using Opdivio and AXAL for cervical cancer. Now that Merck has AA for cervical cancer with Keytruda, perhaps Merck is interested in running a Phase 3 using Keytruda with AXAL.
Bourbon, getting $100 million for AXAL would be great, but I don't think it's likely. Why would anyone pony up $100 million for AXAL alone when the entire company is valued at $100 million?
Wall Street analyst fair valuation price for Advaxis now only $6.67. So sad for a once promising company. The valuation downgrade reflects mismanagement of the company over the last four years, reckless lack of fiscal restraint and reduced likelihood we will find a buyer for AXAL to get it to market.
GB, not sure about the exact terms of the Amgen deal with ADXS for NEO, but I believe ADXS sold global NEO rights to Amgen so wouldn't Amgen now control the NEO IP? It raises the question, if ADXS is not able to strike a deal for AXAL, HOT or PSA and goes bankrupt, would Amgen in effect get the entire NEO franchise for itself without having to pay ADXS the agreed upon $500 million in milestones and sales royalties?
Keith, while it is nice to explain the current low price on conspiracies, it may unfortunately be a much more straightforward explanation. While shorts have covered, there is little buying demand for the stock currently because investors, having been burned and lost a lot of money from Dan O'Connor's mismanagement of the company over four years, no longer trust the company and are in a wait and see mode, waiting for Berlin to strike a deal in which a partner puts skin in the game and provides the company non-dilutive cash for either AXAL or HOT to strengthen our cash position.
Batermere, good luck in whatever you decide. Just my two cents worth, I would think twice before selling down here. On the one hand, I very much feel your pain and one could argue considering the company has lost 80% of its value over the last several years, selling now will ensure we won't loose the remaining 20% (should the stock go to $0). That said, look at what transpired since 2013. O'Connor raised $250 million and squandered it via reckless spending, unfocused and misguiding business strategy and show boating and self dealing to pay himself unearned compensation. He basically burned the bridge to investors and lost all confidence Wall Street had in the company. This became apparent when a year ago he was let go because of the unsustainable spend coupled with another deceptive tactic to transfer unearned shareholder assets to himself and not delivering any monetary deal on AXAL. Now we learn that AXAL, which he spent the majority of his time spending money on and holding out on partnering to go it alone for the better of four years, may be scrapped because it is becoming outdated at this point and there is little demand to pay up for it. You can't make this up. Harvard Business School should write a case study on ADXS about how poor management can decimate an investor ROI despite impressive advancement of the clinical program and attractive technology. My point is, unlike O'Connor, Berlin is a real CEO with alignment with our interest and IMO he is honest and will rebuild investor trust. We've finally gotten the management equation right IMO. If the technology is still valid, which the clinical data would say it is, Berlin should be able to rebuild the value O'Connor (and Lombardo) destroyed and get us back up to fair value of $10+ pps ($500m+ market cap).
...unless that upfront payment is weak and embarrassingly low (i.e., we are talking about Dan O'Connor who negotiated it).
Thanks, I am sure you know more about the Biocon deal than ADXS management does.
Numbers being thrown around, what are you talking about? Lombardo tried for ten months and couldn't find a buyer. He couldn't find a deal for AXAL better than selling 20% of the entire company for a lousy $20 million.
$50 million for AXAL sounds on the low side. Blue said AXAL was worth $1 billion and James Salmon said holding out from licensing AXAL as long as we have means we will command more now since "you don't hold out unless you know what you have."
We already sold all of our vet platform to PETX, only problem was it was another O'Connor crap deal only worth a total of $28 million in potential milestones.
Barnie, I like Berlin and think he is a real CEO. A few promising differentiating characteristics out of gate compared to O'Connor (no need to even compare him to Lombardo since Lombardo was a joke, should have been in retirement in the first place instead of leading ADXS for ten months because the Board failed to have a seamless sucession plan).
1) Berlin is clearly more qualified from an experience standpoint to run Advaxis than O'Connor having actually been a biotech CEO prior to now and not just a biotech general counsel.
2) Berlin is more intelligent (he went to Princeton), which is already manifesting itself in a more thoughtful, financially analytical approach to running ADXS as he conducted a net present value analysis of each of our assets to prioritize scare shareholder resources (O'Connor's version of that analysis was called the spaggetti approach: throw as much money at everything under the sun and see what sticks.)
3) Berlin is aligned with our interests and sees himself as a financial steward of shareholder assets, as evidenced by the hard choice he made to layoff 24% of the workforce, whereas O'Connor ramped up the workforce and spending like ADXS already had a drug on the market neglecting shareholder interests but instead using "other people's money" to pay employees lavish compensation and non-merit bonuses so the place would be recognized as the best place to work in NJ and help O'Connor network politically.
4) Berlin comes across as honest, versus O'Connor during his first six months at the helm lied to investors and pushed through a huge increase in non-merit based comp for himself through deceptive tactics in the proxy process before he had proven himself in any way, shape or form.
All of the above finally caught up with the company in the spring of 2017, when Dan failed to deliver any AXAL deal during the annual meeting, coupled with talking about starting more trials and further expanding our unsustainable spend and pushing through another excessive bonus comp proposal that would increase every year engineered such that it would circumvent shareholder approval. That was the nail in the coffin that led to the exodus of institutional investors selling and pressure to remove Dan. Unfortunately, things apparently unravelled faster than our Board had planned for...as they in fact had no plan, hence letting an true amatuer beyond his prime run ADXS (further into the ground) for 10 months before hiring a real CEO, Berlin.
I do think we're now in good hands with someone who will create the most shareholder value out of the platform.
Good points, but regarding #3 It's not really three months since ADXS has stated since early 2017 that they were actively seeking an AXAL Europe cervical commercialization partner. It sounds like now the scope has broadened to all AXAL possibly plus combo rights, which makes sense, seems misguided that O'Connor thought he could sell off a market as narrow as EU cervical cancer for a technology that is older than our newer HOT and NEO.
Blue, you could also make the argument that based on the clinical progress and pipeline of Advaxis, our valuation should be much higher than $5 today if it weren't for the self-dealing, lack of fiscal restraint and mismanagement by Dan O'Connor. So as a gesture of goodwill toward long-term shareholders who have stood by the company, extending the warrants would be a shareholder friendly nod in light of past misalignment with our interests as O'Connor used the company as his own personal piggy bank and platform for self-promotion and political networking. Berlin seems to be the man for the job, turning the company around and setting us on the right path finally, so he has nothing to do with past mismanagement, however, Sidratsky presided over the massive shareholder valuation destruction we witnessed under the O'Connor/Lombardo regimes and IMO should extend the warrants. Plus, when the stock gets back above $5 and the warrants are exercised that is more money on the company's balance sheet.
Dan was a disgrace, wasting all that money on ramping up staff prematurely for the sake of his own "empire building" and putting extensive sharehdoler resources into AXAL to "hold out" yet now the technology appears dated and could be shelved. Would make a good case study on how bad management and poor business strategy can destroy significant value on an underlying platform that is worth a lot more if executed properly.
It will be interesting to see what valuation NEON has at the IPO. It looks like NEON is doing a combo Phase 1 with Bristols PD1 similar to our Merck collaboration (with Bristol supplying the PD1 but no financial skin in the game at this point). If ADXS trades up to even half of NEONs valuation when we start our NEO trial, that would be a good starting point. After ADROs IPO we hit a valuation of half of ADRO in 2015 (ADROs peak valuation was around $2b while ours was around $1b).
There has already been huge short covering by way of some 7m shares the last several months. The current level of 3-4m shares is expected for a micro biotech. This is about where we were in 2013 when the stock dipped down to between $3 and $4 before moving up into the $20s.
Yes, Amgen is paying for it but gets to keep around 90% of the sales.
It's been for sale, the issue is they have not found any buyers to date.
Agree Gantor, seems add to shut down AXAL when we have an ongoing Phase 3 an EU application pending for conditional approval. The data to date is solid, I would think it's worth something to a larger pharma or biotech. Perhaps one of Dans missteps was the combination of sitting on hands not trying to partner AXAL earlier thinking he would get much more later. Fast forward, the reality has been the demand to pay up for AXAL the way originally thought appears not to be there.
Glad to see the tide is turning, but the Board letting Lombardo stay 10 months without a successor in place after O'Connor was an epic failure. O'Connor put the company on a crash course through terrible financial stewardship. Most on this Board recognized the first necessary step to curb spending through cutting the bloated staff. Why didn't Laombardo and the Board act? Complete incompetence between doing nothing for the last 10 months and the original misguided strategy and fiscal irresponsibility from Dan that got us here in the first place.
Berlin finally cutting back the reckless spending binge O'Connor went on for four years destroying 75% of shareholder value while the Board sat back and did nothing to stop it until it was too late.
Barnie yes but IMO we should not overplay the impact of potential EU approval. It's a small market for cervical cancer. Also remember there was big expectations that getting vet approval would have a large impact on our valuation being the first product to market, but it didn't move the needle at all. Granted a lot of it was O'Connor practically have away the rights and royalties for nothing. It's yet to be seen what kind of deal Berlin will be able to strike for EU.
Island, sorry, you bought in right before the emporer with no clothes was fired and exposed as having no viable strategy and putting the compnay on a crash course, then the Board stood still like a deer in headlights and put a retiree in charge who did nothing for almost a year. Today's PSA data shows at least the company truly has the goods. Hopefully Berlin is the right guy to finally generate value for his investors instead of bloodsucking the company for personal gain which happened from 2013-2017.
Agreed, the science and potential looks very promising. The problem is the management of the company over the last five years has been rotten to the core and lost all investor trust. The market is saying you have burned your imvestors so we are valuing you ridiculously low until you show us you can stike an accretive deal rather than just continuing to dilute and give yourselves unearned non merit based excess compensation.
Very encouraging, if it weren't for incompetent and self-serving management of the company over the last five years, we would likely be at least valued as much as Aduro's $700 million market cap, which is around a $14 share price for ADXS. With the right business deal, hopefully Berlin will get us there soon. He has the science on his side (then again so did O'Connor, but he chose to use it for self enrichment at the expense of the interests of his investors).
Thanks James, this is encouraging looking at the separate Merck monotherapy next to our monotherapy data and the combo data. While we can't directly compare the Merck monotherapy data to our recent monotherapy data because of different populations and pre-treatment regimes, generally speaking it would appear that our monotherapy data is within the ballpark of Merk's monotherapy data, but combined the two therapies represent a meaningful improvement. Hovacre may want to weight in from a scientific background.
Merck PD1 Prostate Monotherapy = 19% PSA declines
ADXS PSA Prostate Monotherapy = 15.4% PSA declines
Merk & ADXS Combined Therapies = 40.5% PSA declines
Hovacre, regarding the statement below, this trial involves ADXS PSA combined with Merck PD1 compared to ADXS PSA monotherapy. Do you know if separately Merck has any comparable data on its PD1 prostate monotherapy? If for example, Merck PD1 produced declines closer to our mono therapy 15.4% that would mean the combo is truly superior versus if Merck mono therapy alone produced closer to 40.5% which would mean our vaccine is not adding much to Merck's construct alone.
"The percentage of patients with PSA declines from baseline in the combination therapy arm was 40.5%, and 15.4% in the monotherapy arm."
Unfortunately what we don't know is data from the Merck mono therapy, which is important to understand to assess how much our vaccine is contributing to the combo results.
Agree that we need a development on the business end. The science and platform at ADXS has always been strong, and this latest PSA data is more confirmation of such and validates why we chose to put money into the company. The problem has never been with the science. Rather the massive shareholder value destruction we have see has been from incompetent, unfocused and self-serving business management (which O'Connor master-minded and Ratsinsky rubber stamped, yet when it was clear O'Connor was driving the company into the ground and had to leave Ratsinsky had no contingency plan, which has since resulted in that much more investor losses).
So you are saying the large holders like Adage have turned a blind eye and not done anything about the incompetent way the company has been run because they have been short the stock and benefited from our incompetent management?
Short interest now is as low as it will get for the most part IMO. Short interest was about at the same level in 2013-2014 before ADXS started its big run. There will always be some short interest (around where we are now) given ADXS is a micro cap clincal biotech.
Incorrect, it was no where near half his salary. It was 10% to 20% at most as I recall.