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seeker: by your logic, with Moro "giving RECAF away to ABT without any DD at all", ABT could have easily demanded an exclusive at the same price. your argument holds no water. RECAF may or may not succeed as a cancer marker, but claiming that ABT didn't do any DD conflicts with:
1) ABT's historical pattern of licensing cancer markers *VERY* selectively (2 in the past 18 months)
2) the time it took BOCX to get the deal, which was at least a year base down the PR and filing history where BOCX kept saying over and over "we're very close to signing a licensing deal with a major pharma"
get lost please.
The comment that ABT "didn't do much due diligence" on BOCX deserves a special place in the Internet's history of inane and ludicrious comments. The fact remains that BOCX's ability to procure a deal with ABT (not to mention on a diet of about $2 mil/year) puts us in a rarified air with only a small handful of companies including Vysis, Celera, Europroteome, etc.
Abbott, who GoldSeeker paints as a cancer marker licensing machine who "didn't do much due diligence" on BOCX, is in fact an extraordinarily selective and strategic licensee who has only inked one other cancer marker deal in the past 18 months!
Regarding UroVysion...DC-Steve and I went toe to toe many times on the Vysis-Abbott deal that GoldSeeker is bringing up in an attempt to minimize the BOCX-Abbott deal. The difference is, DC-Steve always did good homework, unlike GoldSeeker who does a google search or two and then shoots from the hip, filling in the gaps with his imagination.
Vysis's and BOCX's relationship with ABT cannot be compared. The fact is that Vysis was a company done "the right way" from the start -- they were an offpring of the giant Amoco (yes, that's right...the giant oil/gas firm also has a general technology holding co called ATC), which right away gave them access to capital and Wall St resources that BOCX can only dream of. They got many millions in funding originally from the prestigious NIST ATP program. I forgot which exchange, but they IPO'd a piece of the business for a cool $40 mil in cash on either the NASDAQ or NYSE, and were a rather high profile company with analyst coverage, a large R&D operation, media attention, etc.
Furthermore, Vysis had and still has a very comprehensive diagnostics pipeline based on their genomics platform which was one of the first in the business. Around the turn of the millenium, genomics became a very, very hot topic on Wall Street, and Vysis had "the goods" so to speak. Thus the $350+ mil pricetag on the company.
BOCX, as opposed to Vysis, is basically a biotech chop shop with one product and no money, resources, or access to Wall St. One of the sloppiest and cheapest corporate formations perhaps ever (LOL), a quirky chief scientist who barely speaks English, and...alas...Phil Gold. It's not hard to understand why BOCX didn't command any sizable upfront payment from ABT. BOCX was a street dog. If anything, ABT did *MORE EXTENSIVE DUE DILIGENCE THAN USUAL*, hence the fact that it took WELL OVER A YEAR from when BOCX started talking about being close to a large licensing deal with a "major" diagnostics company, to when the deal actually happened. I spent time on the phone with lab personnel during that time, and they were doing nothing but blind sample verification for hundreds of samples for potential licensees.
fluffy...i have an old position that i keep around for LT gains, but i am reaccumulating on the way down here. i want to be in the stock going into the fall as that is when we'll see fireworks.
very cute analogy dakota...but don't quit your day job.
fluffy: he's actually in a peculiar situation right now with NFLD...SG Cowen poached him away from Cathay a month or so ago, and unfortunately SG Cowen has another analyst covering the stock (Schimmer, who I was supposed to meet but didn't). So, he said there is still some internal discussion going on about whether or not he will cover the stock instead of Schimmer....he is far more qualified than Schimmer that's for sure. Anyways...he's quite bullish on the stock. He looks at it as extraordinarily undervalued...multi-bil market, no competitors for many years, high odds of approval, etc...he thinks the data will show non-inferiority to SOC, which is a primary endpoint in the study worthy of approval. he thinks the secondary endpoints will show major superiority with long transit times, reductions in MOF, reductions in mean hospitalization duration, and other things that are worth tens of billions to the health care system...his major concern with the stock at this point is management's ability to find the right price point and negotiate with EMS systems and payors...he is concerned that their proposed $1000/unit will price them out of the market if non-inferiority is found. he said there will definitely be a market for 100k units/year or so at $1,000/unit....but to ramp up to the 400k units/year level, which he believes to be the true US market for the trauma indication, he doesn't think $1k/unit will work. he says this is the biggest unknown to him right now in his valuation analyses...
he also has a major concern with the growing short interest. there are now 6 million short shares out of about 28 million outstanding. furthermore, the stock has been a "regular" on the SEC's REG SHO list since it's inception, which indicates that illegal naked short selling activity has been rampant. he believes that the shorts are taking advantage of management's conservatism and tendency to not surprise the market with anything. BUT, he says that the fear that the shorts "know something we don't" is lingering in his mind and makes him very cautious of being overly optimistic.
he says that the "showdown" between shorts and longs should happen very soon, as top-line data will be announced in the fall. he predicts that, if the shorts are simply "trading the trial" (ie the fact that companies have nothing interesting to say during a clinical trial so shorts can operate freely with reduced fear of a mega announcement), we should see a massive covering of short shares before the data is out.
on the flipside, if the shorts have a fundamental concern with Polyheme, they will stand pat and hold positions through top-line data, which could be an extremely profitable or excrutiatingly painful day for them. by and large he doesn't believe that any professional short sellers would remain short through top-line data release though due to the uncertainty.
he also has concerns about
erthang: honestly i don't think he has sold at all (or his wife, if you believe him). also, i don't think he is a basher. re the ABT point, i just think he had his info *wrong* and is one of those people who can never admit it when they are wrong. it was embarassing for him because he said he had been following ABT closely -- so to have it wrong when you're following the issue closely is kind of embarassing.
grandma: new york was great. for those moments during the NFLD conference when I wasn't dozing off, it was quite interesting. as for my dinner, only kammerman showed up not schimmer. i spoke to kammerman mostly about life and NFLD, since he is actually covering that stock. however, we did discuss BOCX for about 15 minutes. we talked about many things...but here is what sticks out in my dusty memory. you have to remember that he does not follow BOCX so most of his input is general:
1) he says cancer diagnostic tech has not caught up with the recent advances in cancer therapy, and that big pharma should be spending a big portion of their cash relocation tax break (bush law) on pursuing novel markers. he likes the sector as a whole but his focus is obviously on the bigger plays like Quest.
2) he says the fact that BOCX has a deal with ABT and is trading for so little doesn't surprise him given that they are not on a real exchange. he said if the company had the exact same assets (an ABT deal and some IP) but was "done right from the start" -- ie IPO'd with real seed money on a real exchange with a professional staff and IR department, it would be a different story. when i told him that BOCX reverse merged in the wake of the dot-com bust, and had no points of credibility whatsoever, he understood that BOCX did not have that option. when i told him about the lowly total cash burn since exception, he nearly fell out of his chair and said it was nothing short of miraculous that a company could develop and license their tech to a tier 1 pharma with that small amount of cash. he said he had never heard of such a circumstance in his multiple decades following pharma. he said BOCX must have spent significantly more money (ie university $$, private, or something) developing the tech before reverse merging, because it simply cannot be done in this day and age with the budget since they've gone public (much of which has been administrative, etc).
3) he agrees with me and most other sane people here that the inflection point of the stock will be when THIRD PARTY, corroborative data is announced. i told him about my frustration about BOCX always releasing internal data, and he said that I'm overlooking the capital needed to get a "real" study out there if you are a small company. I had assumed they could Quest or another turn-key provider to do it for low six figurs, but he said that is not even close to realistic. he mentioned CRO retainer fees, insurance issues, and other expenses that come into play when outsourcing a clinical trial. he said ABT will not ever release data if it comes bad....they will simply terminate the agreement and move on -- BOCX would have to file an 8-k in said circumstance.
anyways there was more but that was the main stuff i remember...
GoldSeeker: please address the issue of Abbott "licensing any and all cancer markers they can". You made this statement several times as a blatant attempt to minimize the Abbott deal. I provided data showing that only 1 other cancer marker had been licensed by ABT Diagnostics pursuant to their corporate news archives. If you know otherwise, I would like to know. If not, please put dust off the old duntz cap on and retract your statement as it was not a trivial statement by any stretch -- in fact it was quite misleading to current and prospective investors.
GoldSeeker: Abbott has only licensed 1 other cancer test in the last 18 months per the ABT Diagnostics archive. It was a lung cancer test. Don't come back here to spew false and misleading statements. Please provide a link that shows ABT "licensing just about every cancer marker they can."
See the ABT diagnostics archives:
2005:
http://www.abbottdiagnostics.com/About_Us/pressrelease.cfm?pr_kw=&pr_yr=2005
2006:
http://www.abbottdiagnostics.com/About_Us/pressrelease.cfm?pr_kw=&pr_yr=2006
GoldSeeker: i'm fine with that, but out of curiosity how do you explain the ABT partnership given your post? Clearly you did very minimal DD before entering the stock (ie you would have known about pacific research center set-up, and the corporate formation history, and that this is about the 10th "canned interview"). But ABT, on the other hand, did extensive DD before signing a licensing agreement. Do you believe ABT is simply stupid, or that BOCX has pulled the wool over their eyes, or ____ ??
goldseekr: are you just a "hobbyist" at this point or did you never really sell? i'll guess the latter.
reverse: nice little 9% pop on that stk
reverse...i think it was a good buy, albeit risky. without doing much DD at all...if they really do have 41 mil in cash they are now trading at a discount to book value. that is pretty damn rare, and usually only found in situations where:
1) the market gets temporarily irrational due to short-term supply/demand imbalance
2) the market is discounting significantly accelerated cash burn or extrarodinary payment.
right now the market is basically saying that the entire pipeline, IP, and other potentially revenue generating assets have NO value. none, zilch, nada. even if you assign a 5% probability of success to ONE product of theirs, the discount to book value makes no sense. it will likely correct a bit to the upside, IMO. but then again i have not done much DD...just shooting from the hip.
re news from the IDMC...honestly it doesn't look too bad to me. not disastrous at least, but definitely a setback. the drug is a walking approvable letter.
re shorting, i agree with goldseeker. not likely..
all i'm heading to NYC for the week will be out of pocket...don't let the bed bugs bite. last call for kammerman/schimmer questions.
reversetaxman: maybe it's because by the time you made the post the market had been closed for about 5 hours. just a guess....
reverse: may i recommend a managed acct for you? LOL
echo, echo, echo, echo......
half_full: nice article. the play on that is CERN. check them out...been in and out for years. fabulous company...
short term trading of little stocks like that is a joke unless you are trading very small lots. ie try buying 50k shares of YMI and you'll move the market .25 at least...probably more.
reverse: just listened to the conference call related to YMI's japanese licensing deal. it is a great opportunity for the company but, as goldseeker said, very far away. daichi has to organize clinical trials in japan -- and that is not like a 510k for an assay. the company said they would receive milestones "in future years" based on the regulatory process. so...that explains the tepid response.
nonetheless looks like a very interesting little company with a lot of pipeline and decent relationships.
FYI -- the market cap of YMI is already at 170 million. Ours is only around $30 million. So, the market is already valuing YMI 6 times more than BOCX.
reverse: that looks like an interesting little company actually, but i'll have to do some more research...i see Bam has a large position...i used to do a ton of business with them and know two MP's there...will see if i can get some info.
are you in the stock?
halffull: celsion is the main competitor to BSM. i've spoken to kammerman at length about the prospects of hyperthermia...he absolutely loves the technology and believes it is the most unrecognized cancer treatment out there, but he's a little cautious about the business plans. reason being that the treatment is HEAT and you can't patent that. what you can patent is the system for delivering/focusing the heat...unfortunately though anybody with a six pack of rolling rock, a garage, and an engineering background can create a hyperthermia system.
all i know is that if i ever had cancer again, i would absolutely request hyperthermia. there are only a few centers where you can get it.
sorry seeker i was just being a grumpy old man as usual...go try 2 hip replacement surgeries in 8 months and we'll see how bright and cheery you are. i guess you really are just a nice guy spending some time answering questions for half_full even though you sold the stock...bye bye.
Much thanks to GoldSeeker for taking the time to write a fullpage post of worthless drivel regarding a stock he is no longer invested in...So thoughtful of you. Or rather, maybe you never sold in the first place. I'll go with door #2.
that's public info...topline data is expected in the fall for NFLD - likely november based on the implied volatility skew in the options market. topline usually includes only primary endpoint and p-value info. the full data set, which will include secondary endpoints, subsets, etc, will be announced sometime in early '07.
grandma i will ask but i bet the answer will be "depends on the product, technology, etc.." a little too general. :)
grandma: i spoke to eli many times about BOCX as i built my position years ago, and i pretty much bring it up everytime we speak, but he doesn't follow the stock. so yes the questions would have to be more general.
all: On aug 8 i will be attending the conference that NFLD is hosting at the Yale Club. Kammerman will be there and I will be having dinner with him and Josh Schimmer who is a colleague of his (a very young guy who i've never met). Let me know if you have any questions you would like me to ask that are specific to the diagnostics industry and/or diagnostics regulatory process. They are both much more knowledgable than all of us combined.
thanks rob.
kag: please answer this question without changing the subject. why is it so hard for you to just say "Bocxman, I'm sorry for mocking you about the restricted shares. I was wrong...there are no such 18 million shares." WHY IS THAT SO DAMN HARD? Answer the question please, without changing the subject. The act is over. Answer the question.
PS (i found the post by using the search tool which capitalizes the searched word so i must have searched for yourself rather than embarassing. but that is not the issue here...stop doing everything in your power to avoid a simple apology and admission that you were irrefutably wrong).
Kag: that happened because I searched for the word "embarrassing" so IHUB capitalized it (see link below).
I still can't figure out how somebody can be caught so blatantly with their pants down and utterly refuse to acknowledge it in the slightest bit. That is the schoolteacher syndrome...Be a man for once in your life -- when you're wrong, you're wrong....admit it and move on. This is not a subjective question -- it is pure fact per the filings. I understand it's harder to for you to admit since you were mocking me on the point, but still...there is no more running.
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?Message_id=12241360&txt2find=embarrassing
Kag: as illustrated by the below post, you brought up the issue of most shares being unregistered in a MOCKING post to me. I'm so dearly sorry for using the same MOCKING tone when irrefutably proving you wrong based on the filings. You are an arrogant pretender who has not the decency to admit when he is blatantly wrong (not to mention being wrong while mocking another for being wrong the issue...LOL).
---------------------------------------
Posted by: Kag
In reply to: bocxman who wrote msg# 4729 Date:7/25/2006 8:31:35 PM
Post #of 4790
Bocxman,
"I know the filings, PR's, etc backwards and forwards for every investment I make."
Wow, with that totally naive statement you sure have me convinced! Do you remember asking me where to find that most of the BioCurex shares are not registered? Bocxman, you should stop embarrassing YOURSELF. Kag
Kag: I realized it was amateur hour at the Apollo but I didn't think it was children's night tonight. Have you even read the full filing? The whole point of the filing (link below) is that the 18 million shares were being SOLD to the public. "How could these shares be sold if they were unregistered?"
WELL, do you see the little box towards the top of the filing entitled "Calculation of Registration Fee". Okay, good. Do you see the little column entitled "Securities to be Registered"? Do you see the entry for 17.5 million shares? Great. Do you see the list of "Selling Shareholders" -- those were the people that held the unregistered shares BEFORE THEY REGISTERED THEM AND SOLD THEM TO THE PUBLIC PURSUANT TO THE FILING THAT IS LINKED BELOW. Gee...could it be that the same people who received the unregistered shares years earlier were the same folks who were selling the 18 million shares in '03?? NAH!! Couldn't be!!!! Those are the Moros, Gazzos, Wittenberg, Bitazol, and all of the other friends and family that we call "Moro's Cronies." Please do some research before running your mouth like an expert. PS: the Note "B" shares in the unregistered securities section don't add up to a hill of beans so stop the BS please.
You are truly an amateur. You took three days to respond and that is what you came up with? Get the F out of here and take your duntz cap I'm finished with your arrogant refusal to a) apologize and b) admit you were wrong.
http://yahoo.brand.edgar-online.com/fetchFilingFrameset.aspx?FilingID=2523855&Type=HTML
OT BSM's PDUFA date approaching...remember that one guys? Was fun. I will jump on any strength going into PDUFA for a short-term trade...
Kag oh Kag...still waiting for an answer or apology. The duntz cap looks great on you though...very suave.
mysscat: if you're having trouble buying it means that the MM is still on the bid covering his short from our latest rally. that typically means we will head lower until he is fully covered.
Kag and other folks who've lost confidence please follow GoldSeeker's lead and sell so the MM can flatten out his book for the next rally. Thanks in advance.
take care GoldSeeker...
Can someone pass the Kleenex I think I'm going to cry...
amen...great posts half_full
fluffy: still not convinced they are "bashers". and i don't even think they are the same poster anymore. Kag is just a typical schoolteacher (per his own words) who's stature in the classroom has gotten to his head. GoldSeeker is not as bad -- just a bit naive and annoying. The reason why I'm pretty sure Kag is not a basher is because if you read his early posts, he was EXTREMELY enthuasiastic about the stock at first...I mean bigtime. He would craft very lengthy posts about the upside potential. It was only until he started losing money that he soured...Bottom line is both of them are losing money in the stock and are using the board to vent and be reassured of their investment by playing devil's advocate. There's plenty of those types on the MB's...they are not bashers IMO but I could be wrong. Either way it sort of keeps everyone on their toes during these more painful periods.