Register for free to join our community of investors and share your ideas. You will also get access to streaming quotes, interactive charts, trades, portfolio, live options flow and more tools.
Register for free to join our community of investors and share your ideas. You will also get access to streaming quotes, interactive charts, trades, portfolio, live options flow and more tools.
Come clean, Blue. You had never heard of Edleman until you read this message board tonight, and the so called friend of yours at the big wall street firm is a figment of your imagination.
Impressive track record the fund has. Hopefully as the market sees that such a successful biotech investor took a large position in ADXS it will create another "Adage" effect helping to push up back up to the teens or higher.
Since you have chosen to highlight only the negative/large holders that sold, I'll throw in an offsetting positive development. Renaissance Technologies, a hedge fund that has one of the most successful track records in the world doubled their ADXS position in the first quarter, adding 500,000 shares to bring their total ownership to 992,394 shares.
"Just throwing this out there.......what's the probability of this being at $15 by end of June?"
Keith, I think the best way to answer this question is with an analogy. Below is a scene from the movie Dumb and Dumber.
Lloyd Christmas:
What are the chances of a guy like you and a girl like me...ending up together?
Mary Swanson:
Not good.
Lloyd Christmas:
Not good like one in a hundred?
Mary Swanson:
I'd say more like one in a million.
Lloyd Christmas:
So you're telling me there's a chance.
I spoke to a fund manager who passed on investing because he thought Missling was all about "spinning" a pitch but the fund manager didn't think the data supported his claims.
Yes but it's far from certain we will get conditional EU approval.
Frankly, I have been somewhat in disbelief the stock dropped below $5, which IMO does not reflect the platform but simply taking advantage of poor, self serving management over the last four years. So yes it has been scary seeing how much value has been destroyed, so I will be grateful when we are back up to $6 and above reflective of the value of the company.
I will start to get excited when we are back up to $6 and above, which is around a $300 million valuation, which is the minimum of where we should be as a Phase III company with a solid pipeline and $500 million NEO with Amgen.
I'm not going to start getting exciting until we're back to $9 to $10 where we were a year ago when it was confirmed that Dan The Con Man O'Connor was in fact the emperor with no clothes.
Wake me up when we are back to $10. The stock is ridiculously valued with a "bad management discount" still in the price. Only a matter of time before we are fairly valued because Dan ("I will lie, steal and cheat to take unearned shareholder assets for myself") O'Connor is gone, as is Tony ("I will do nothing until I collect my retention bonus then dilute at an all-time low before retiring") Lombardo.
That would be good for you, right shorty?
Time will tell, hopefully we get back to the $8-$12 base range we were at for so long before O'Connor's crash course strategy finally permeated with the market.
Hopefully a deal in the works for HOT or AXAL.
How can you be that positive when 80% of shareholder value has been destroyed? It logical to worry a bit whether the remaining 20% will be destroyed and imvestors lose all the money they put in the company because the market is valuing the platform, net of cash, at close to zero.
No ADXS was responsible for pre clincial, Amgen is responsible for Phase 1, 2 and 3 I believe.
I think it is very attractive risk reward. I just think at this point the company been managed so poorly with dilution and unsustainable cash burn taking its toll and lost imvestor trust, I see the end game valuation more a round $500m/$10 rather than a multi billion valuation. Frankly, if Astra had seen a platform with multi billion potential they would have likely struck a deal with us but instead they passed, which in hindsight was a catalyst for tutes becoming to sell. Hopefully Berlin can strike a NEO like deal for HOT.
That would be an incredible development but IMO it's not realistic given how low our market value is and the fact we had to dilute at an all time low stock price. They sold 20% of the company for $20m. If Lombardo had even been able to get $20m upfront in a AXAL deal that would have been preferable to what he did. So it begs the question is there not much interest in AXAL or was Lombardo simply an unmotivated terrible deal maker.
Sellas - that deal included 0 upfront and up to 350-400 in milestones, but look at the company's markrt cap. I wouldn't hold my breath waiting on any money from them, similar to O'Connor's Asia and India deals. Also milestones are contingent payments based on future events. ADXS has already dragged it feet more than a year on starting NEO, while ADRO just announced prelim data on their. The story of ADXS is poor execution with no sense of urgency except for when it comes to management compensation.
No way they are getting 200-300 upfront for AXAL US in Europe. If they were able to get even a fraction of that upfront they wouldn't have diluted at $2. Lombardo made a comment at the annual meeting implying AXAL was getting old, which reiterates O'Connors flawed strategy of holding out to get more. Now we're getting less be cause O'Connor did strike when the iron was hot early on when Aduro struck $1b deal with Aduro with an estimated $100 upfront.
Unlikely a 20m milestone for the NEO start especially since O'Connor negotiated it. I believe Aduro recently got a 5m milestone for starting its Merck trial, which is pretty normal I believe.
Short interest down another 55k. The stock collapse coincided with tutes selling. No one is buying until Berlin does a deal to shore up our financial situation and steer us away from the crash course O'Connor put us on. And the answer is not the easy road granda took diluting at an all time low stock price while doing nothing and collecting a pay check for 10 months. IMO we should be at least $300m now as a Phase 3 company if it weren't for poor management and mistrust of the company now.
Mostly like their index funds so not a fundamental active position in ADXS.
I should change my tune to your style.
"Sell it, $50 is a minimum low ball offer."
"The current stock price is meaningless. A buyer is likely to pay at 30x our valuation. Duh."
"I sense a bidding war starting for the company. The recent offering at an all time $2 stock price was pure manipulation, fiction."
"I've raised my minimum sale price to $100, because heck Kite was bought for $11 billion and $100 stock price on ADXS is only $5 billion. So realistically we will likely be sold for around $200."
"if the ship were sinking he would not climb aboard"
Meaningless naive statement. That statement is similar to when Adage bought ADXS in the $19 offering saying, "ADXS will not go below $19 because if that were the case Adage would not have purchased."
Just look at the company Ken came from, truly a sinking ship, so he had nothing to loose coming to ADXS, similar to when Mayes came to ADXS from DNDN as it was sinking. Like it it not, ADXS' history of mismanagement, mistrust and destroying shareholder value has limited the company to recruiting third tier management.
"Kevin did not join a sinking ship. that much is absolutely certain"
Gajj, I'm optimistic Kevin will turn the company around and believe the stock is significantly undervalued. That said, your statement is naive. Open your eyes. Our stock is down to below $2 from a peak of $30 in 2015 and a weighted average price of $12 that investors paid to recapitalize the company under O'Connor. How could that be called anything other than a sinking ship?
It's far from over IMO. The science and trials still appear solid. No doubt poor management has resulted in significant shareholder value destruction, but the platform looks promising which is why I continue to hold. The valuation is in the gutter largely because of O'Connor's poor and self serving management for personal financial gain followed by a do nothing interim that should have been in retirement. Better days ahead I hope.
The article below is from the current Barron's. I wish an interested party would take this type of stance with us. For the the last five years at ADXS we have never had but desperately needed: management accountability, management accountability, management accountability...
The Activist Spotlight
Aratana Therapeutics (PETX)
Business: develops and commercializes biopharmaceuticals for pets
Stock Market Value: $232 million ($5.07/share)
Investor’s Avg Cost: $5.00/share
What’s Happening:Engaged Capital has nominated three candidates for the board at the 2018 annual meeting.
Key Numbers:
$12 million: money raised by PETX last quarter by selling small lots of shares through brokers
$10 million:the amount of the $12 million raised by PETX that likely came from Engaged
5.2%: PETX common shares owned by Engaged
Behind the Scenes: Aratana is one of the few businesses in the pet-care industry that, as an independent entity, is successfully commercializing drugs. It has three early-stage drugs currently being marketed, with several more in the pipeline. While there is a lot of potential here, Aratana is not yet cash-flow positive, and only has about 12 months of cash left. That’s created a lot of concern among the shareholders.
Engaged has nominated one director with bankruptcy experience, one with industry experience, and one with operating experience. The directors will have two objectives: first, streamlining operations and holding management accountable to stretch the remaining cash as long as possible; and second, instilling a sense of urgency in management about exploring a sale of the company so they do not end up in a fire sale, running out of cash.
Aratana could be an attractive acquisition for a larger pharmaceutical company such as Eli Lilly, Zoetis, Bayer, Merck, or Sanofi, who can eliminate corporate overhead, easily absorb other expenses, and leverage its infrastructure to market the acquired drugs.
Bourbon, similarly (perhaps worse) I was a philosophy major undergrad then MBA.
The $125 million was an "additional" equity investment Merck made in Moderna. Separately, the terms and upfront payment of the KRAS deal were not disclosed I don't believe.
Why would he buy out of pocket. If he can get the price back up to just $11, which is only break even for most LTSH, his combined RSUs and options will be worth $10 million. The silver lining is that his grants may motivate him to sell the company sooner rather than later, because if he kicks the can down the road the effect of dilution will lessen the value to shareholders. IMO he may be motivated to get the price up and lock in a sale for around $500 million/$10-$11 pps net of cash then he takes home $10 million. Given the value destruction we have seen, that would be a good outcome.
Scott, I remember as well, Fidelity bought the majority of the shares in the last capital raise in August 2016 for $13.50 a share. No wonder Bonstump was fired. Epic failure in her duties as CFO going from a capital raise at $13.50 then abandoning the ship and any semblance of financial discipline such that the company is forced to do its next raise at $2.
If you think about it, Lombardo's 10 month leadership at ADXS was a colossal failure. It took him two months to asses the business then he unveiled a new strategy that would create greater value, and other than that he was pretty much silent besides given a couple low-energy investor presentations that failed to inspire confidence. Then at the end of the year, he announced the exec team was underpaid according to a consultant, so they all got raises. Then the climax and final spitting of a big lugar in the face of shareholders was his doing a dilution at the lowest stock price in the company's history, literally selling 20% of our Phase 3 company for $2/$20 million buying only 3-4 four more months of operating runway. Just pathetic. Grandpa should have been in retirement all along, not running a company. Nice transition and succession planning Sid"rat"sky that resulted in another 75% of shareholder value destroyed.
I agree, but you were saying there was nothing he could have done to prevent the decline of the stock as if management's actions have no impact on the stock price.
Admittedly, I completely misread the situation. I thought his deal-making background coupled with his silence and lack of communication with shareholders was part of a quiet confidence in which he knew he was finalizing a large deal or sale of the company that would ultimately deliver value. I couldn't have been more wrong. In hindsight, at 70 years old, he was too old to have any motivation to do anything and simply waiting to collect his retention bonus and RSUs while the BOD searched for a permanent CEO then he would retire comfortably. The $2 offering was the culmination of poor management originating from O'Connor and more recently to the BOD's pushing O'Connor out while scrambling to figure out what's next as they had no succession plan or strategy at all.
If he had managed and assessed the company's circumstances better, he would have raised capital when he stepped in last July when the stock was at $7 rather than dragging his feet and waiting until the company had less than a year's worth of cash and he was forced to sell at an all time low price. That squarely falls on him.
"morally right"
Hope so, but looking back historically across Dan (I will lie, steal and cheat to get my RSUs) O'Connor, to Tony (do nothing except wait for my retention bonus and dilute at an all time low) Lombardo, to Sid (the rat overseeing the lining of insider pockets and turning investor capital to waste) Ransky, I'm not sure this company has any moral compass whatever.
The most frustrating part about our current state is that the BOD just wasted 10 months by firing O'Connor without a succession plan so we got a worthless interim CEO who should have been in retirement but instead sat on his hands and did nothing for nearly a year while the stock collapsed another 75%.
I literally cannot believe ADXS is in a Phase 3 and trading at cash value. Just sickening. If that's not a testament to how poorly this company has been managed from a business and strategic perspective, I don't know what is.
How nice that our resident science PhD who is a relatively new investor in ADXS sarcastically pokes fun at long-term imvestors who have stood by the company through thick and thin and lost 80% of our investment, yet the implication is that we are impatient.
Sd, how can we remove Sid(the rat)sky from the Board. It's sickening that they commisoned another consulting firm to tell them the exec team was underderpaid to justify raises a few months before they diluted at an all time low stock price. That's reminiscent of O'Connor using the consultant to justify his RSU grab. Ultimately the Board is responsible for corporate governance and we have none at ADXS except for lining insider pockets, which is why the majority of our largest institutional holders sold out of their positions.