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Deep pockets. Willing to buy a large position. Woodford had endless cash to invest back in 2015 and wanted more nwbo.
He'd still be a seller in 2019, but at better prices, and without so much difficulty. 4 years is a lifetime in biotech.
Reading between the lines of nwbo PRs has cost most of the posters on this board quite a bit of cash.
How often has the "read between the lines" been the correct read? I recall hundreds of posts about how data release is any day now - since 2016.
Yet you somehow still think that it is a good idea?
Please do not put words in my mouth. Most of what you wrote is not at all what I said.
As an investor, Woodford is thoroughly discredited. He took silly risks in concentration and illiquidity, and was badly burned.
Instead of watching Woodford buy on the open market, Linda Powers should have sold him even more stock so that cash came to nwbo instead of sellers. She badly misjudged completion time and cash needed to get there.
Another $50m on hand would have prevented much of the subsequent dilution. Shares outstanding would be much lower. The stock price would be quite a bit above $0.25. nwbo might still be on NASDAQ, and thus on the radar for institutional investors. None of that happened because Linda Powers burned that bridge.
I'd never heard of the new hire before the PR, which makes it hard to have a strong opinion.
Interesting CV. Experience at a top pharma. Market reaction was positive, which seems reasonable.
It would be good to have a more thorough explanation for why he was hired rather than have folks speculate and fill in the blanks. Perhaps an 8-K that does more than repeat the PR?
Woodford would have been the ideal investor for nwbo if Linda Powers had not destroyed the relationship. Deep pockets. Willing to take large positions. Zero history of taking over companies.
Woodford make two direct investments totaling over $100,000,000. He is the only direct buyer in recent history to do so without warrants.
Woodford bought more in the market (sloppily) pushing the price to $12.
nwbo would not have survived to 2019 without Woodford's investment, yet longs somehow paint him as a villain via lots of convoluted conspiracy theories. Truly bizarre.
Only one dilution? You must have a fairly optimistic timeline.
@Longfellow - agree that WEIF is almost certainly out of nwbo.
No idea on PCT. There is less urgency to sell because of the different fund structure.
If they did choose to sell out of both, it would likely be together rather than sequential. Don't want any appearance of advantage to one product over the other, especially given that regulators are all over the situation already.
Recall rather than looking it up, but pretty sure of these numbers...
Woodford held 24.8m total as of the end of May. This from his website reported voluntarily, and matches the last data reported to the SEC.
18.6m was in WEIF, which leaves 6.2m for Patient Capital Trust.
There are no required SEC filings, so we won't have confirmation until Woodford reports full holdings in UK regulatory filings. I have no idea if those filings are impacted by the WEIF suspension.
@Senti, the SEC maintains a list of 13-F securities. This first link is the archive of lists over time.
https://www.sec.gov/divisions/investment/13flists.htm
next link is the current list for 2Q19
https://www.sec.gov/divisions/investment/13f/13flist2019q2.pdf
nwbo last appeared on the 13-F list for the 4th quarter of 2016.
https://www.sec.gov/divisions/investment/13f/13flist2016q4.pdf
nwbo short interst has dropped from 13m to 6.7m since the end of May.
The data does not support your statements.
Once again, no reason to expect any filings. Assuming Woodford was the seller, the only confirmation will come when his funds publish full holdings.
15m at once is a huge change from dribbling out 100k per day. Makes me curious why it did not happen sooner.
This makes me wrong that Woodford could be selling into 2020.
Confirms that folks were wildly off base to claim he was nearly done prior to today.
Refer to the last 10-K. Woodford is no longer on the list of Beneficial Owners as the cutoff is 5%.
We also know that he controlled 24.8m shares between both funds, and that nwbo has over 560m outstanding.
If Woodford was the seller, do not expect a filing. He is no longer a 5% holder. nwbo is not on the 13-F list. There is no requirement for him to file anything.
To get to 10% of volume in nwbo, a seller has to be opportunistic and hit bids when available.
This isn't Apple where you can just plug into a VWAP engine as trade consistently through the day.
While I appreciate your anecdotal observations, they do not change anything I said.
In order for Woodford to be done selling even 18.4m, he would have to have been more than 1/3 of the total volume.
That is seriously unlikely. At a more reasonable (though still aggressive) 10% of volume, he finishes selling in 2020.
So "Straight forward study designs" didn't catch your eye at all?
I know your post is only intended as fun with math, but a realistic assessment of your scenario is that a $100 account would quickly go to zero.
In real life
- Borrow costs to short
- Commissions to trade
- Slippage due to bid/ask spread
- No one would implement a strategy that requires additional shorting (equity from previous day profit) daily.
- Recall risk on a hard to borrow short.
Correct, @Senti.
Woodford has been diluted below 5%, so no longer has to file on that basis.
nwbo is no longer on the SEC's 13-F list, so no requirement to include nwbo on 13-F filings. Woodford has excluded it ever since nwbo was dropped from the list.
The only place you will find info on Woodford's nwbo holdings is when he has to file full holdings for UK regulators. That will likely be months after any trading.
24.8m as of the end of May is the latest public info, from back when Woodford was voluntarily posting full holdings on a monthly basis.
The dart throwing monkeys in academic literature are only allowed to choose from listed shares. It takes special talent to drown in unlisted shares. Pretty sure Woodford's next gig will not be in private equity.
Back in 2000, one of the best indicators that the dotcom boom was ending was when a few hyper-agressive mutual funds were given approval to take stakes in pre-IPO firms.
Investment overconfidence can be so dangerous in so many ways.
None of that says that Taubman is involved in selling nwbo.
If you want to use Woodford selling as the catalyst for nwbo dropping from $0.34 to $0.20, there are a couple of other issues.
1) nwbo price started dropping well before any discussion of Taubman engagement.
2) There has been no increase in volume, which would make it hard for Woodford to be the massive seller some claim.
Let's go to the data. August is partial month, obviously.
Month Avg Daily Volume
Aug 1,128,460
Jul 951,927
Jun 862,885
May 1,436,468
Apr 811,652
Mar 1,490,748
Feb 888,700
Jan 705,557
So where is the elevated volume from Woodford selling? What about those short sellers supposedly getting in front of him? Did all other sellers of nwbo just get out of his way and give him all the volume?
The story I saw said that Taubman was hired to work selling unlisted biotech shares.
That would not include nwbo.
Not what I said at all. We have no way to confirm whether Woodford has sold or not.
My point in the earlier post was that I believe that Woodford still controls what gets sold and does not.
If you want my guess (and only a guess), the data is consistent with Woodford selling some nwbo at a measured pace. That is, less than 10% of daily volume.
Published statements from Woodford make it clear that their selling is going to take several months due to concentrated and illiquid positions. It doesn't make sense that they would push harder (over 10% of volume) on tiny nwbo that isn't going to raise a lot of funds.
I have not seen anything that says that Woodford's positions are being liquidated by another party.
Got a link?
That makes no sense.
We know that Woodford had not sold nwbo before the end of May because he was still publishing full holdings then.
You know enough about markets to realize that the institutional standard is to try to be less than 10% of daily volume.
Go back to 6/3 (or any start date of your choosing after 5/31) when Woodford's problems became public. Calculate 10% of all subsequent nwbo volume. Subtract that from the 24.8m Woodford was known to own.
If Woodford sells 10% of nwbo volume every single day, he'll finish liquidating his position spring of 2020.
Do the math (or maths for our British posters). It does not support your claim that Woodford is near done selling.
Who is buying? No way to know. Also no way to know who is selling.
Is 13-F required? No, nwbo is no longer on the SEC's 13-F list.
7/31/19 nwbo Short Interest was 7.8m
Peak for recent cycle was 13.1m as of the end of May.
Source: FINRA
That might be the most assumptions I've ever seen in a single post about nwbo.
Consider Occam's Razor.
Look for a simple straightforward explanation rather than one that requires myriad assumptions and is quite the convoluted tale.
"ethical" reasons? No idea what that could even mean.
The only new info that was close to time of the hold lifting, and might be explanatory, is nwbo not enrolling beyond 331.
My reason for citing the risk note is that equivalency testing could take quite a bit of time. Perhaps fits the extended period that the hold was in place.
Like everyone else here, I don't know, and doubt we'll ever get a full explanation.
Add some dark chocolate for dessert following the red wine and you'll be even more protected.
From the risks section of the 10-K
Changes in manufacturing methods for DCVax-L could require us to conduct equivalency studies and/or additional clinical trials.
How does the strike price for Linda Powers' warrants have anything to do with "making room" for future investors?
The strike price has no impact on the number of shares available.
Why aren't the terms of Linda Powers' warrants set?
"On November 11, 2018, the Company and Ms. Powers agreed to further extend the 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 have exercise price at $0.35 per share, and have an exercise period of 2 years. However, the Company has not finalized the terms of the warrant agreement."
Seems like a pretty simple detail to still be outstanding 10 months later.
Would she leave that detail unsettled if there was any prospect of imminent news? Seems like that would risk claims of insider dealing.
Seriously?
Linda Powers has insider knowledge of nwbo. She controls how its money is spent. She controlled whether her own loan went into default. How can anyone believe that she was taking risks that legitimately merit 18% interest plus warrants?
Board member loans were not 18% plus warrants.
Les Goldman's loan was not 18% plus warrants.
She gave herself better terms than any previous lender, inside or outside.
10-Q should put to rest the management skin in the game argument, and conclude discussion of the Sawston war chest.
Board of Directors notes were repaid in January, 2019.
Les Goldman repaid in full during Q2.
Linda's 5+ million loan paid down to 1.4m
Cash 6.7m after Q2 total operating costs of 7.2m. Small raises in subsequent events. More to come?
Also found it interesting that Linda has deferred negotiations with herself on terms for her new warrants.
"The principal amount of the obligations related to short term convertible notes to Linda Powers were approximately $1.4 million as of June 30, 2019, which included contractual unpaid interest of $12,000. The Notes were entered into in February through April 2018 as 15-day demand notes, and were intended to be short-term bridge notes. However, the Notes remained unpaid and outstanding throughout 2018. 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 for the loans from Ms. Powers. 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 key terms of this agreement. Therefore, the Company has not recorded the impact of this modification as of June 30, 2019."
Bet the final exercise price is well below the anticipated $0.35.
From the blinded blended data, we also know things about younger, stronger, MGMT status, etc.
If you include only the strongest responders among the 331 (and ignore all those screened out), it's still way below 80%.
Once again, none of that changes the FACT that 80% market share is a ridiculously optimistic assumption, not in any way a "conservative" assumption.
In the investment world, "conservative" is a term with real meaning. Unfortunately it gets thrown around indiscriminately.
I've seen all that.
None of it changes the FACT that 80% market share is a wildly optimistic assumption, and certainly not "conservative".
nwbo's p3 trial that screened out over 80% of patients, yet you somehow think 80% market share is "conservative"?
More like "wildly optimistic" or "win the lottery level fantasy".
You could make that statement about any of Woodford's small/private holdings, not just nwbo.
He's going to be selling some of them, but we won't know which ones or how much until months after the fact.
Redemptions are suspended. That is not the same as closing a fund.
About 18m of Woodford's 24.8m nwbo shares were in the Equity Income Fund.
At a reasonable percentage of volume, Woodford will still be selling nwbo in 2020 if he takes the WEIF position to zero.