Your link shows daily shorting by market makers doing their job to balance the books.

That is not the same thing as "short interest" as reported by FINRA.

It is not evidence of naked short selling.

6/30/2021 - Everything related to nwbo takes longer than expected. No idea what will delay it, but taking the "over" bet on any nwbo date is usually a winner.

Everything related to nwbo naked shorting is a red herring.

You are correct that it originated with Larry Smith, who was banned as an analyst. His only justification was fails-to-deliver data, which the SEC says is wrong. When this was pointed out to him (on SeekingALpha), his response was "crickets".

Any ihub expectations for a short squeeze are either inexperience or deliberate attempts to deceive.

The idea that nwbo management wants to "trap shorts" is laughable given that they feed 30m to 50m shares into the market every quarter.

The 5.7m nwbo short interest reported on the FINRA site is all legal shorts. There is no requirement for those to be covered.

There is no "naked short list". The SEC does have a "fails to deliver" list. nwbo was on that 3 times in late March, for less than 10,000 shares each time. That's just noise.

In addition, the SEC has made it abundantly clear that fails-to-deliver should NOT be interpretted as an indication of naked short selling.

"Please note that fails-to-deliver can occur for a number of reasons on both long and short sales. Therefore, fails-to-deliver are not necessarily the result of short selling, and are not evidence of abusive short selling or “naked” short selling."

Source: https://www.sec.gov/data/foiadocsfailsdatahtm

There is usually a PR to announce the results of the votes at the annual meeting, so definitely expect that much.

It will be interesting to see if the PR includes anything more.

“Trial is do do”... is that a technical term?

Yes, the FDA uses that term to refer to any trial that has gone more than 3 years without an update on clinicaltrials.gov

Serious question - Is this some bizarre sort of British humor, or are you just being deliberately daft?

Anyone who follows nwbo knows the period for nwbo falling 98%. Anyone not living in a cave without internet has a good idea of the period for market impact of COVID-19.

I am utterly amazed that anyone could read Brightboy's post and have any doubt to his meaning.

The original email is obviously comparing peak-to-current loss, which are different time periods for nwbo's $12 to $0.17 slide and the recent S&P 500 drop from peak.

I suspect it will be mid-August that you get real clarity on warrant expirations.

The next 10-Q will be reported as of 3/31/20, so not reflecting any April/May expirations. The overall average expiration may give us some color on Q1 warrant extensions and new warrant issuance.

The section on Subsequent Events might add some detail on the 4/9 filing, and anything that happens between now and 10-Q publication.

@Senti, your guess is way off. Let's look at data from the 10-K and 10-Q filings for the last four quarters.

Date warrants avg price avg years
3/31/19 369m $0.29 1.72
6/30/19 361m $0.29 1.47
9/30/19 352m $0.28 1.53
12/31/19 359m $0.27 1.42

The difference between March and June is what happens in a quarter without modifications. The average term drops by 1/4 of a year.

Between June and September, you see the start of modifications, both for strike price and term. Same for September to December.

In the 7/17/19 prospectus, NWBO told us that 33.3m warrants were extended by 12 months. Subsequent documents do not specify the number of warrants, just language like "certain existing warrants".

7/17/19 - extended 33.3m warrants by 12 months.
10/18/19 - "certain existing warrants" by 6 to 18 months, reduce strike price .05
10/28/19 - extend by 12 months, reduce strike 1.5 to 2.5 cents
1/3/20 - extend by 12 to 18 months, reduce strike 2 to 8 cents
1/15/20 - extend 12 months
2/24/20 - extend 3 to 12 months (and in one case 21 months), reduce strike 3 to 8 cents, 50% warrant coverage
4/9/20 - extend 9 to 12 months, reduce 2 to 10 cents, 50% warrant coverage, 3.25m additional warrants

If your guess about 250m expiring by midyear was correct, the remaining 109m warrants must have an average life of 3.53 years in order to produce the known weighted average of 1.42 years. Seems highly unlikely, at odds with any known warrant data.

If 100m expire midyear, the balance on the remaining 259m would be 1.77 years (21 months). More believable, but even that may be too high.

The other data point we can examine is the average strike price. This is messy because we don't know the exact number of warrants modified, and have a variety of ranges for the reduction values. If you assume the average reduction was .05, then about 40% of the warrant total (143m) would have to be modified to reduce the overall average strike by $0.02. Assuming .04 reduction, then half (180m) would be modified.

There isn't enough data to know the correct answer, but there is more than enough to say your guess is not correct.

That's funny. You know they won't provide that answer at the ASM, or ever.

We won't have any data until August when nwbo reports Q2. That's the first time financial statements will reflect any warrant expirations, and even then with a lot of other moving parts.

There were 359m warrants outstanding as of year end. You think 200m expire soon.

If there aren't at least 200m warrants outstanding as of the June 2020 data, I'll make a modest donation to the charity of your choice. Over 200m, you donate to my choice. Deal?

Note that you could also win if nwbo explodes and there are millions of warrants exercised. It would help my cause if nwbo issues more warrants. The data is going to be noisy as usual.

A = 0.17, B = 0.165

Guessing a small drop from Thursday dilution news, and routine business only at the meeting.

Scotty, I was a quantitative PM on Wall Street. I don't care if you had the best accountant in the country do your work.

Either you gave her the wrong data, or she did the math wrong.

The math is high school algebra. Everyone reading this board should be able to follow it.

You can't have 220m warrants expiring and have the average life of 1.42 years shown in the 10-K unless the other 139m have an average life over 3 years. We have zero evidence that there are any warrants that long, even with 12-18 month extensions that Linda hands out like candy.

Either you did the math wrong, or you made some wild assumptions. From the 10-K as of 12/31/2019.

359m warrants outstanding

1.42 years avg life

In order for your 220 expiration to be correct, that means that the average life for the other 139m is a bit over 3 years.

359 * 1.42 = (220 * 0.4) + (359 - 220) * X

X = 3.03

Since there is no data to indicate there are 139m warrants with an average life over 3 years, your 220 expiration estimate is clearly way too high.

There have been several warrant extension deals since 12/31/2019 that make your number even more implausible.

nwbo filed the Prospectus after hours the day before a market holiday and weekend. Give them credit for trying to bury the news as deep as possible for US markets.

It seems likely that most of those shares were sold in advance of the offering. In a way, the buyers were almost guaranteed a modest profit. Not too far from "gift" status.

Shorting to cover with offering proceeds would be illegal if it was a public offering, but passes muster for a private deal like this.

We've seen this pattern several times where there is a price rise in front of a dilution. Seems like folks should have learned not to interpret every price increase as a harbinger of news.

A virtual theater, where only virtual results are presented to a virtual audience, would be perfect for nwbo's communication strategy.

I agree that password protection is reasonable. It would be nice if nwbo was sufficiently confident to make it an open call, but they are within their rights to restrict access to shareholders.

I suspect the motivation is to keep control of the meeting lest an unfriendly journalist (AF) sign on and ask an embarrassing question.

Interesting to see what is on the list, and what is missing.

nwbo is basically financing month to month, yet just one question touching on the topic made the top 10, and barely.

Nothing about dcvax-direct. Very little forward looking at all.

I wish you luck with the list and gathering more information, but will be surprised if you get straight answers to any of it.

Since nwbo has figured out how to have a virtual annual meeting, when will they have quarterly calls like every other company?

I never said anything about the equity being worthless. If he believed that, why would he be a Director at all?

Instead of a cash purchase, what if the transaction was really JJ taking his Director fees in stock rather than cash?

Perhaps because cash was tight and it was either shares or an IOU?

As of the last 10-K, there were 466m "potentially dilutive" securities; warrants, options, convertibles, contingently issuable.

The more recent proxy shows 648m common shares outstanding as of March 14, 2020.

At nwbo's current rate of issuance, there is potential to run up against the 1,200,000,000 authorization limit. However, there are a few mitigating factors.

1) A small number of warrants may expire soon. Based on an average warrant life of 1.42 years (as of 12/31/19), I expect this to be a fairly small number.

2) Warrants can be exercised cashless. This would not add cash to nwbo, but would lower the number of shares issued. The higher the stock price, the fewer the number issued.

3) Linda's ace in the hole is authorization for 100m Preferred, which she has used in the past. Currently none outstanding.

In the past, nwbo issued Convertible Preferred even when there was insufficient common authorization to convert. Remember this from back in 2017:

"The Series B Preferred Stock is subject to restrictions, under which it is not currently convertible and will not become convertible into common stock until common stock is available therefor"

Here is the text of the 4 latest warrant extension deals, none extended by longer than 18 months.

we have exchanged previously issued warrants for an equivalent number of warrants with an expiration date that is 12 months after the expiration date of the warrants for which they were exchanged.

we have exchanged previously issued warrants for an equivalent number of warrants with an expiration date that is twelve months after the expiration date of the warrants for which they were exchanged. In some cases, the weighted average exercise price of warrants was reduced ranging from 1.5 to 2.5 cents as well.

we have exchanged previously issued warrants for an equivalent number of warrants with an expiration date that is later than the expiration date of the warrants for which they were exchanged (with the extension ranging from 6 months to 18 months). In some cases, the weighted average exercise price of warrants was reduced by $0.05 as well.

we have exchanged previously issued warrants for an equivalent number of warrants with an expiration date that is 12 to 18 months after the expiration date of the warrants for which they were exchanged. In some cases, the weighted average exercise price of warrants was reduced by an amount ranging from 2 to 8 cents as well.

Before looking any further, please make sure that you are not lumping options and warrants together.

I am not aware of any 7-8 year warrants, but there may be some employee options in that range.

Otherwise, please point to a link, filing, or PR that indicates 7-8 year warrant terms.

No, I never said anything like that. You have confused me with some other poster.

My point is entirely based on 10-K facts. Not about conversations. Not about TLD.

You have confused me with another poster.

My point is that either nwbo lied in its filings about warrant extensions, or there must be relatively few (less than 50m) warrants expiring in the next month or two.

That is based entirely on data and math, not conversations.

Does anyone on this board bother to read the 10-K?

There is a table about the warrants. The data includes:

359m warrants outstanding

Average contractual life 1.42 years (as of 12/31/2019).


Unless you somehow believe that nwbo secretly extended some warrants out 10 years, that average life is inconsistent with the thesis that there are 100m+ warrants expiring in April/May. The math fails.

It would be so easy to hold the meeting online. The tech is readily available.

The only argument against that is that it would make it really obvious that they could hold quarterly calls like a real company.

I have plenty of expertise in investing and statistics.

It is naive to expect a regulatory agency to act in a way that is different from its history, and incredibly naive to base investment decisions on such a low probability outcome.

The most dangerous words in the investment world are "it's different this time".

In my experience, most medical professional are poor investors. The one exception was a Bogelhead index diehard. They are successful in one field, and overconfident in their ability to succeed elsewhere.

Yes, and Linda's comment to the FDA makes it looks like she is lobbying for such approval without running a new properly controlled trial in that subgroup.

If fact, you have identified a logical explanation for the endless SAP delay. nwbo keeps trying to identify a path to subgroup approval without another trial, and the FDA keeps saying no.

"more than sufficient proof" - by your standards, but not by the FDA's.

It's hard to imagine a scenario where nwbo is remaining blinded for medical or statistical reasons. They're way past the point where additional maturity adds value. Let's see the data.

Don't know about "desperate", but it does not inspire confidence.

Lowering the bar of p-values - Seems unlikely, with the possible exception of trials where the patient population is tiny.

Subgroup approval - I could only see this happen if subgroups were defined in advance and part of the original protocol. Allowing retrospective subgroups opens the door to all sorts of evil data mining. Run a large enough trial and you could always find something.

Positive medical news would be great. However, it is not likely to be measured in weeks. There will be immense economic damage before this is over.

Flattening the curve is a necessary strategy. The goal is to lower the peak so the medical community is not overwhelmed; and to buy time to improve SOC, produce equipment, work on vaccines, etc.

Look at the area under the various curves. That's the number of folks infected. To me it does not look like it is reduced by flattening the curve, only spread over a longer period.

It may not be a single peak curve. Picture a sine wave with each peak dampened. Eventually the waves are so small that covid-19 becomes a regular fact of medical life like seasonal flu.

Obviously the curves are based on mathematical models with uncertain inputs and a lot of assumptions. Good guesses rather than facts.

That could happen. Unfortuntely the market could then crater on shockingly bad unemployment numbers.

Agree.

Comparing mortality rates across countries is fraught with data problems; coding of deaths, timeliness of reporting, breadth of testing, testing broadly or only those with symptoms, etc.

Italy's demographics are close to a perfect storm in this case:

1) Very popular tourist destination.
2) Older vulnerable population, 2nd oldest in the world after Japan.
3) Densely populated.
4) Culture of large extended family gatherings.

In addition, they didn't take it seriously enough at first, letting the virus establish a strong presence before the threat was fully understood.

There is a note in the 10-K under Subsequent Events:

"During February 2020, the Senior Vice President, General Counsel advanced $0.2 million to the Company."

We only have aggregate data with regard to the warrants. I believe that is sufficient to say that very few are expiring in April/May based on an average life of 1.42 years. However, there is not sufficient granularity to say much more.

The issue with regard to terms of Linda Powers' warrants was still there in the 10-Q published last August. Bolding is mine.

"The Notes entered into in February through April 2018 were 15-day demand notes, and were intended as temporary bridge notes. However, the Notes remained unpaid and outstanding throughout the year. On November 11, 2018, the Company and Ms. Powers agreed to further extend forbearance on the notes to a maturity of one year following the respective funding dates. In consideration of the continuing forbearance, the Company agreed to issue warrants representing 50% of the repayment amounts of the Notes. The warrants were anticipated to have an exercise price of $0.35 per share, and have an exercise period of 2 years. However, the Company has not yet finalized the terms of the warrant agreement."

There is no such mention in the 10-K. Either it is resolved, or they have chosen to no longer include that detail.