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And if Ms. Powers had to endure dilution like we do that would be an encouraging sign. But her ownership stake has been protected ours has not been. So actually her tenacity in hanging onto control does not mean that our interests are necessarily aligned. If anything you are actually making the opposite point.
Apollo remained the champion, that's how Rocky ended.
As far as Ms. Powers "knowing how to live on a shoestring":
When NWBO is eating leather shoestrings to survive, it is also cannibalizing its own tissues to survive, in this case by dilution. Muscle and fat are consumed and eventually we lethargy which is where we are now, with little being done.
Eventually, the body starves. We by the way are the part of the NWBO body that is getting cannibalize since Cognate does not get diluted.
Having a long wind up on this punch has caused NWBO to be knocked down by heavier counterpunches. Now it is an open question whether NWBO can get up off the canvas before the man counts 10.
Actually the data should not be unknown since NWBO could have and should have kept us up to speed on the Information Arm of the Phase 3 trial. That data was very encouraging when it was fresh but it had grown stale because it has not been properly updated in a long time.
I hope you are right, I really do. But "moving toward" is a very squishy term that could let them stretch this out another six months or more.
This company has used up any reasonable person's patience for vagaries and silence needs to start speaking plainly.
Why does he need to keep implying things?
Prior history shows that NWBO executives are great at throwing out vague hints and letting all of us fill in the blanks with our expectations and desires.
"Ask me at the next conference." is only one of the most infamous examples, this one from Ms. Powers.
If there was no established history here, then I would be wrong to be cynical.
But there is that history and those who fail to learn from it are, as they say doomed to repeat it.
I think Phase 2 could be good depending on the money brought in initially and what the milestone payments are.
The only flaw with that outlook would be that, surprise, surprise most of that money will almost certainly get siphoned off to Cognate or dumped into the money pit known as Sawston.
By the way, if NWBO wants us to believe that Sawston is anything other than a money pit, they could always you know, give us an update.
Even a quick PowerPoint with descriptions and photos and post it on their website and maybe invite shareholders to look at it via a letter to shareholders (which would accompanied by a requisite regulatory filing).
Even a six or seven slide PPT with a few details about expected capacity, expected date of completion etc. would raise confidence in the utility and vitality of the Sawston project.
Unless commencement of Direct Phase 2 comes with real partnerships that bring in real money now, I believe we should heavily disregard that news.
That is because starting a trial, as we've seen with Phase 3, does not mean one will finish it in anything resembling a timely fashion.
Obviously, if news about Direct Phase 2 is coupled with manifestly good news about Phase 3 then that puts it in a different life.
But if Phase 2 announcements are coupled with no news of clear revenues from a partnership, with no news about Phase 3 or bad news about Phase 3, well, anyone who takes that news seriously cannot be helped.
Will there be a webcast of the next two conferences in September 2016? Can they make sure the full Q&A is included.
Failing that will they post the PowerPoint as soon as the presentation concludes?
We have a month to go and I'm sure that someone will bring back a report from talking to Mr. Goldman in that time.
Well I for one never asked for this silence and waiting game and argued vociferously against any retreat from transparency with shareholders when it started to happen after Buzdargate. The disastrous last year has proven that I was right then and remain right now. Even if Ms. Powers pulls a rabbit out of her hat tomorrow, this pain was completely unnecessary for us and there will be many shareholders and option holders who got badly hurt who got hurt.
If Mr. Goldman showed some color to shareholders with one or two pieces of real news then AF's attacks would give us a lower price to buy at with more certainty to buy with. AF can say what he wants but if NWBO comes out with more news a few days or weeks after he pounces on the 1st piece then he would be left with his butt hanging in the breeze.
That is how Mr. Goldman can best reward shareholders not with this never ending "windup"
The fact that he is not giving us anything to help us out suggests that no news is imminent or that our interest is not his first concern.
Did you ask Mr. Goldman why he cannot release a letter to shareholders and go on record with all of this?
Today's Volume was over 4 million shares instead of the average volume of roughly 786,000 shares. I think we can say that this 17% drop in one day was pretty convincing.
By contrast the NASDAQ was slightly up today, which helps explain why the NASDAQ is questioning NWBO's fitness to remain on the exchange.
I once speculated that Ms. Powers had purposefully delayed the Phase 3 trial because she was afraid of the result and wanted good results from Direct Phase 1 and maybe even Phase 2 that she could point to and keep NWBO afloat if as people like Mr. Feuerstein predicted the Phase 3 failed.
But that theory no longer works because Ms. Powers is not hurrying Phase 2 along at all.
The problem is not with having people stay invested but getting people to invest more. Anyone who did not get out before now has little left to lose so they are not going to give up their Lotto tickets before the drawing occurs. But now that they know that each share of NWBO is costs less than a Lotto ticket will not induce most of them to buy more.
The problem is: if your post were dated August 23, 2015 or August 23, 2014 no one would be surprised. I don't think anyone in fall of last year really believed Ms. Powers could have gotten by with our share price consistently carving out new all time lows and yet refusing to be even minimally accountable to us. And yet in defiance of all logic and basic corporate governance standards here we are.
Since we're supposed to focus on risk reward and this is a binary event, what would you say the percentage chance of failure versus success is?
Agreed if results were really coming in September 2016, NWBO would have stopped the bleeding by confirming it. Even if we still had to wait for release of results, confirmation that it is over, one way or another would be great. The only reasonable explanation is that there has been yet another delay.
Indeed! I read Flavius Josephus' Jewish War in class on Medieval Holy wars but I haven't read his Jewish Antiquities yet.
I bet if anyone asked them to go on record and break down what percentage of this new cash raise is going toward Phase 2 vs towards working capital they would decline to do it.
Also even if they are doing anything towards Phase 2 expect most of it to be preparation since that term can cover almost anything whereas initiation gets a bit uncomfortably concrete and specific for a company like NWBO.
You do realize that this company has a history of yanking the prize out of reach just as you start to draw near don't you?
Most famously did that with this Phase 3 at least once and behind our backs by extending it a year and boy has that year cost us!
Now they have still not stated categorically what impact this screening halt has had on the end date of Phase 3 even though this would not expose them to liability if they said September 2016 and then you know, actually stuck to September 2016.
What happened to HE in Germany, let alone HE revenues?
What happened to EAMS in the UK?
By now, there should have been news from one of those and they were certainly not being touted by NWBO executives or people here as 2 years in the future with no updates!
Face it:
The passage of time is just that, the passage of time and positive news with NWBO is not a fixed point in the future at which will arrive if you just wait patiently enough.
Rather it is perhaps a mirage or at best a moving target which the officers of NWBO or the FDA can and will move for reasons of their own.
Big plans for a mere $1,279,885
Now given that NWBO was almost out cash right now, we cannot add too much to this number.
And so with just $1,279,885 they plan to fund the fund the following?:
Preparing Phase 2 trials
Initiating Phase 2 clincal trials
Working capital
NWBO simply cannot do all three things in any meaningful way, even for the next month without raising a lot more money.
I worked in an organization that tried to spread a similar amount of money far too thinly and I can tell you: it didn't work.
So let's call the references to Phase 2 what they are: feel good stuff that sounds great but will produce little tangible result.
Before you discount that, remember that Mr. Goldman did the same early this year when he promised us a busy 1st quarter after a painful cash raise and NWBO turned around and did nothing and PR'd pretty much nothing.
So what does that leave NWBO to spend this $1,279,885 on?
Working capital
What does that mean in practical terms?
Since NWBO is so silent that is anybody's guess. Probably they are figuring out how to manage the next capital raise.
This could have been said a year ago and so in light of that please define, in more precise terms what you mean by "not soon" but "soon enough."
I might give it a shot. Believe me you haven't seen heavy going until you try reading Hegel.
No I kept off of IHUB and didn't do the whole Michonne thing. But since by my holdings I'm a long that only makes sense. Now with respect to longs not changing ID's there are names I don't see anymore and yet I still see similar types of personal attacks from people with different names. Coincidence?
Also you do have a point: Per Festinger's book, true believers often simply shake off a failed prophecy and go right back to evangelizing since it helps them cope with their cognitive dissonance. For people like that, changing ID's would not make sense.
To understand the resilience of NWBO longs in the face of repeated disappointments you should read a book called "When Prophecy Fails" by Leon Festinger. It is a classic of sociology and religious studies.
You think that most are trying to take advantage of gullible investors and there are some who might be on the take.
But others are simply desperate to reinforce their crumbling faith by recruiting new followers or getting existing ones to double down. Festinger talks all about that pattern of behavior in the face of uncertainty and disappointment.
If NWBO refuses to release the investigation until a given court decision comes out they should say that much at least.
Like any employee does to their boss (in this case, shareholders) they should provide the following about this investigation:
1. A clear explanation of why it is late
2. An apology for being late
3. And a description of what they will do to prevent it from happening again.
4. Finish the project as rapidly as possible
Now some people here will argue that this investigation is not late especially since NWBO made not even much of a soft promise on when they would get around to giving us the results.
Fine:
Then tell me by what date that even you would say that yes, it is late.
IN three more months?
In six more months?
In a year?
In six years?
Saying it will take as long as it takes is not acceptable.
After a while if any investigation takes too long its findings will come too late to be relevant. Look at the Benghazi hearings in Congress as an example. Too much windup so by the time the information came out, people were tired of hearing about Benghazi.
Let's stipulate for the sake of argument that Chinatown's motives are selfish: Now explain what part of what he just said about NWBO's history with meeting milestones was inaccurate.
Just mentally add "scare quotation marks" to the word "investing"every time I use it to refer to adding to my NWBO position. I just consider scare quotes around words annoying so I don't always use them. I guess I'll have to be more consistent.
Being an NWBO investor has conditioned me to forget that accountability to shareholders is a real factor in leader's thinking.
I stayed away during that time frame because of endless discussions about other things. The more things change the more they remain the same.
The investigation should not affect Neil Woodford's ability to invest, since he would be a fool not to have done his own due diligence instead of waiting on the investigation. He has to know by now whether he can trust Ms. Powers, the science of DCVax and whether she can execute on that. If he believed he could trust all three, then this is the opportunity of a lifetime and Mr. Woodford would find a way to be buying. I believe that private placements are always possible and yet Ms. Powers keeps doing toxic financing instead of getting help from Mr. Woodford.
Even if Mr. Woodford bought on similar toxic terms, it would be a shot in NWBO's arm a lot like the time Warren Buffet propped up GE by buying preferred shares on tough terms during the financial crisis. Even though Mr. Buffet took advantage of the situation it actually made GE look good because it showed that a historically successful investor was willing to invest in it. That helped GE turn the corner.
So why doesn't Mr. Woodford do for NWBO what was done for GE?
That's quite all right. If you don't understand, you don't understand.
The only strange thing is that they keep calling it investing when it is gambling or more charitably, speculating. I have invested more at these prices in the past few weeks but I called it what it is, in part because I did not want impressionable longs to read to much into my action and get a false sense anyone really knows something good is about to happen. If I "invest" more it will be as an admitted gamble with money I am fully willing to risk.
First, before I answer that ask Ms. Powers or even Dr. Liau to clearly express themselves. Let me know what they say. In my case, at least I didn't take down my vid...I mean comment after someone asked me about it.
I hope you're right about him being a contra-indicator.
10,000 shares? That still works out to over $4,000. I'm glad some people have that kind of money just to "keep adding" to their position. That is more than many families earn in a month.
Speaking on a message board under an screen name is not the same as correcting your views in public under your real name.
This is especially true since you left your positive views out there under your real name while shorting the stock.
At least when Adam Feuerstein showed up here he acted in his public persona as an analyst.
By typical journalistic standards you did, since the retraction is always much shorter and gets buried in the newspaper rather than being in the headline.