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8 months to the "pre-IND stage". What is amazing is after 10+ years of investing exclusively in healthcare, I have never heard of the "pre-IND stage". I've heard of lead nomination stage, toxicology stage but not "pre-IND". This is not a "stage" or "phase". This is a phone call with the FDA. What I'm interested in is the time to an IND. When that time frame is undetermined, I can usually safely assume there is not an IND coming. If the company has not identified the gating factors to filing an IND, then it is unlikely that they will be able to conduct the activities required to make progress against these gating factors.
This is simple logic. I am not interpreting ANYTHING. You cannot argue with syllogism, axioms and facts. Tricking yourself into thinking you're right is not what you want to do when you're risking your hard earned money.
Speculation on $1 support
I am aware of a short seller who had/has a roughly 1,000,000 share position in NNVC. I am speculating that he is covering his short at $1.00 per share. Given the volume he may almost be done. If this is the reason for the support, he may be close to done, so I am excited at the next leg down in the stock.
Good luck to all, long and short.
They are. Norvir isn't used much. There are 20+ approved HIV drugs. We don't need the 21st. The old class of HIV drugs has side effects. Learn something about HIV drugs, please.
Sounds good. I wish they disclosed who was on the BOD. That is one of my basic checks to see if I want to invest. I'm sure its on other investors' checklists.
What does that mean? Is there an actual Board of Directors that only you know about? LOL.
It's actually a great R/R. $150m company with little cash resources and no clinical candidates nominated for the normal battery of IND-enabling studies. That means it will be $200m fully diluted. There are no companies remotely near that valuation. Given the technology has been described before I doubt there is significant IP. There are substantial clinical hurdles and the delays in reaching even a lead nomination stage are suggestive of formulation/PK problems. The management team is vastly underqualified and no investors have stepped up to the table to acquire any position in the company, even a small one. I see the stock trading at book value with time. Many healthcare stocks do - this one is not noteworthy enough to warrant a premium.
Most healthcare companies have a SAB as well as a BOD. However every public company is largely required to have a BOD for the number of benefits they're supposed to provide: checks and balances, networking resources, advice, impartial compensation decisions, strategic quorum, audit trail. A SAB is just a group of scientific advisors - it is very informal. Whereas a Board of Directors has the ability to hire and fire management. The rules of Corporate America are - the shareholders elect the board at the annual meeting. The Board selects management and holds them accountable to their duties. The Board meets every month to discuss strategic perspectives. Many Boards members are retired executives who can provide resources current management does not have access to. Board roles are a labour of love - they pay very little, often only small amounts of stock.
NNVC does not have a Board of Directors.
Yes, I'm short the stock. If you're long, you should ask why there are no independent board members. The Board seems to consist of Diwan and Seymour ONLY, but I can't even verify that. Shareholders are supposed to get a proxy where they can nominate board members. Large shareholders in particular, have rights with respect to who gets to sit on said board. Getting the former CEO of Novartis or someone like that, on the NNVC board would only help them get access to a broader range of people. Even some of Seymour's acquaintances over the years could sit on the board and lend expertise. I don't neccessarily want what is best for this company. But if I were long, I'd want to know why there is no independent Board of Directors. (I'd also push for a CFO!).
$1 downside? Addressing the myth of short-selling
Investing is about compounding returns. Thinking that you can buy a stock at 1 and have lots of room for it to go higher because the share price is low is a fallacy, just as thinking 1 is "too low" to short.
Think in market caps. NNVC has a $150m market cap. If that went to $75m (I think the company is worth $10m or so), then I would make 50%. I have put about $500,000 into this trade, and would put 10x that if I could (limited short availability).
If NNVC had just 15 million shares outstanding instead of 150 million, it would have a share price of $10. I would still short it, hoping to cover for a 50%+ gain. The share price is irrelevant. My % gain is. The time it takes to make my % gain is even more important.
If one can make trades like that consistently, for many years, one can get very wealthy. 100,000 turns into $4 million after 20 years of 20% compounding. Shorting NNVC from 1.20 to 1.00 is year 1. The next 19? We'll see.
This works whether you're starting with 100k, 1k, 1m or 10m. Compounding is a beautiful thing. Think in terms of what is your annual return rate. The faster you make money, the better. The more the better. This will never change. Thinking in terms of how much you might make if the stock goes up 20-fold is foolish. Think about realistic returns building on top of each other. Identifying a 10% move in a stock is not that hard. Over 6 months? If you can do that twice a year you're up 20%. Use margin and you might be up more. Learn to trade for 3-6 month periods and ditch your losers. "Don't water your weeds and pluck your roses" as they say. Let your winners ride and get rid of your loser stocks. Shorting a stock that goes down 10% in a month or 30% in a year is a fantastic investment. Doing that consistently puts you in the pantheon of the greatest investors. There are hundreds of NNVCs out there - ANDS AVII ACHN etc etc. You didn't find something incredible. You found a low-quality company with poor infrastructure and funding that is unlikely to keep them competitive. The technology is a bankrupt concept that has been bandied about by just one person for 25 years with no success despite aggressive efforts. Find a stock going up and ride it. That is a reasonable and easy way to make money. Hoping and praying this will work out is not going to make you wealthy.
NNVC in pictures
"Holders' List"
http://i55.tinypic.com/2ziws2f.jpg
AVII Holders' List - What a typical real company looks like.
http://i56.tinypic.com/15xwdxv.jpg
http://i53.tinypic.com/jv63yc.jpg - page two - yes they're supposed to go on for pages and pages
ANDS Holder's List - Another significantly more real anti-viral company - WITH A SMALLER MARKET CAP
http://i54.tinypic.com/2j0jnd0.jpg
NNVC "Board of Directors" - note it costs almost nothing to hire a director! You just call your friends who you've done business with over the years.
http://i51.tinypic.com/29can3o.jpg
AVII's Board
http://i54.tinypic.com/9ih82u.jpg
http://i54.tinypic.com/2cp5irl.jpg - yeah they're supposed to stretch out to two pages. Board of Directors. Prerequisite for a legitimate public company. Find another company that doesn't have a stinking BOARD.
ANDS's Board
http://i55.tinypic.com/1zd9jqe.jpg
NNVC VWAP over the last 12 months = 1.52. OUCH. That's $150m traded. Quite a tidy sum.
http://i51.tinypic.com/jsy0y1.jpg
NNVC Analyst Coverage
http://i51.tinypic.com/11261jp.jpg
Almost got it - that's actually the SAB, not the Board of Directors... I think Anil and Eugene are the only two members of the Board of Directors.
Not good considering they're supposed to be the checks and balances!
What I usually do is type in NNVC Equity MGMT into my Bloomberg terminal. Then I click "Board" and the Board of Directors pops up. It only says Anil and Eugene here. That can't be the Board of Directors. Every other company has many directors. It's easy to get people to sit on boards. Most boards require a Compensation Committee, Audit Committee and Strategic Committee. The Board is the tired and true way to protect and create shareholder value.
Who is on this company's board of directors? That is a simple question. I have not traded NNVC today. Every other public company I know has a Board of Directors between 6 and 12 members deep with industry experience, helping to govern the company and serve as a check and balance to management. Shareholders elect the board at the annual vote. The board selects management.
What is happening at this company?
Serious questions
Who is on the board of directors? Every company has a BOD. Who is on NNVCs?
Who is the CFO?
When does the annual meeting occur?
These basic corporate governance tenets rule every public company.
What is wrong with what I said? Is filling the body with fake decoy cell membranes 1) in the hopes that they won't get destroyed themselves and 2) there are enough of them that all of the viruses will attach themselves to said membranes and self-destruct a great idea?
Why not just kill the virus as it mutates like everyone else does. It's not a perfect approach but it does work. Interferon or TLR and other immune system boosters work for some diseases (hepatitis C) but were bad ideas for HIV. Direct antivirals make sense.
Two simple questions
Why doesn't NNVC have a CFO?
Why does Seymour work from his home in California instead of the Nanoviricides office in Connecticut? The job isn't exciting enough to move to CT??? How does he direct his employees?
They recognize the limitations of the mouse model in the abstract. Humans would be useful but then again this NNVC we're talking about LOL.
I don't think flooding the body with billions of fake, decoy cell membranes is a great idea. Viruses replicate so fast there is no chance to stop these fake membranes. Human lymphocytes will also eat them up. They'll have a normal excretion, distribution profile. Who knows what kind of toxicity there will be. It's just a long list of impossibilities that need to be surmounted. My experience tells me that far-fetched ideas like this one will fail. Their silence on when they can get an IND filed is deafening and supports my thesis that they haven't addressed the myriad of problems they have coming.
Meanwhile direct acting antivirals have worked for generations. Dengue is just a flavivirus which has antivirals available. Telaprevir probably works for dengue and will be available soon. HIV has dozens of drugs available. There is no need.
That's not the way investing works. There is a range of doubt surrounding this company on ALL fronts. There is not a single thing they have going for them. I am MOST concerned with management and their ability to execute a plan and intelligently discuss their progress and shortcomings.
I am ALSO concerned with the core scientific hypothesis. I'm concerned with the HISTORY of the company - both things that have happened (financing route, people involved, etc) and things that haven't happened (pharmaceutical partnership, financings, Wall Street exposure).
Do you understand the way logic works now?
Very well written and I think you make a great point about looking backwards at scientific data. Despite that, posters and abstracts CAN be presented in real time at scientific congresses. The publication progress can be quite long-winded as you mentioned, but it doesn't have to be.
I take more issue with the constant missteps the company has made regarding the IND process.
All of these great Dengue presentations but nothing about Nanoviricides. The thing about these thought-leader researchers is, everything crosses their lab - they see it all. Doesn't mean any of it is any good. One shouldn't be excited by shipping some research material to a lab.
The only board you should be worried about is their Board of Directors. Corporate boards are usually responsible for crafting and executing a strategy--they are the folks that are supposed to have the rolodex required to get partnerships and financings done.
This silly board is just a game for a few people. The stock is controlled mostly by retail brokers who NNVC does their best to motivate to buy the stock in their clients' funds. What is said here has no significance, other than it can influence the limited number of people who read it and their shares. For instance, I am short roughly 400,000 shares, and I will cover if someone can explain to me the issues I have with the stock. I am also happy to go long 1,000,000+ shares but it doesn't look like it's in the cards.
Very, very responsible and well said. Hats off to this poster.
Profits. My clients and I are interested in maximizing our assets. Shorting companies where the stocks are highly likely to decline is a great way to do so. We can fix the world after.
Capitalism functions only when asset prices are appropriately priced. Shorts do a great service by keeping those who are looking to eat free lunches with no risk poor. This is a company who cries wolf. Since Diwan's business school days he has been promising results and failed to deliver. Seymour has promised an IND for a long time and failed to deliver. At some point investors will just give up. HIV treatment has advanced to the point where no one is interested anymore. Check out IDIX who had to firesale their HIV assets. Or Avexa in Australia who had a perfectly great HIV drug and failed to sell it, even for a million dollars. Wasting time in a competitive business like pharmaceuticals is not a good thing. HIV is GONE. There is no more business to take. The drugs go generic soon and it's over. Not like these nanoviricides work, anyway. That's a whole other risk.
Why doesn't Seymour work out of Connecticut like "everyone" else? I'd be angry if I were a shareholder and Seymour was telecommuting. This company isn't worth relocating to CT?
Why isn't there a CFO?
Why isn't there a VC or institutional shareholder?
Why 5 years without a phase I study? 2011 doesn't plan for a phase I either according to the 10-K.
Why are there so many intercompany relationships? Menon has KARD and Cellceutix. They do business with KARD. The old CFO left to go to Cellceutix. Meanwhile there's the whole AllExcel, TheraCour, situation. Going public through a reverse and using Seaside to raise money... why not a legitimate investment bank and IPO process?
That was a joke. I "follow the board" because it's a short, like NNVC. Stem cells don't do anything - sorry. Having no phase I projects will always be worthless - sorry. BTIM and NNVC have something in common I guess! Two companies that can't move a drug into phase I.
The only deception is your own. Have you put together a statement of promises made by the company that have not been kept? It is astonishing.
50% survival rate but NO details. Which animals? Sample size? Cohorts? Any sort of publication that isn't some BS press release written by Seymour?
I have no interest in getting you to sell NNVC. I'd rather you hold like sheep or buy more.
I do have an interest in prevent scams and frauds. This is a company that is on a never-ending mission to overhype and capitalize on whatever they can get their hands on (as some would joke, the definition a biotech company).
I have an interest in you growing your wealth and not shrinking it. I feel bad when I see stock after stock evaporate people's wealth because their greed gets in their way of investing success. EVERYONE wants a stock that will go from 1 to 40. EVERYONE would love to believe that these nanoviricides are the next best thing. NO ONE has filed that they own any NNVC. This is purely amateurs buying this stock. Why do you think the entire world has written this off?
You're right he is the first one to admit it.
At one point he was investing a VERY small amount of money. Warren E Buffet partnership 1965. He made a FORTUNE buying micro cap value stocks. Not micro cap JUNK. He has always, ALWAYS hated stocks like this. Only a fool would be attracted to something like NNVC.
I at least appreciate that you don't think it's certain. I think it's impossible this company exists in just a few years. I've seen this hundreds of times and have shorted so many of these into oblivion. I've never been blown up on a short that has gone from 1 to 40. This company has undeniable fraudulent characteristics.
Yeah who cares about the #1 investor of all time. The guy who had ZERO and never advertised but became the richest person in the world. Let's listen to the guy who can't go one sentence without hyping it. Forget honesty and principled wealth building.
I think you understand the humor in my post. NNVC hasn't been a very good investment lately and I think it's days are numbered. Patrick Cox "success"? How wealthy is he? I can look up how wealthy fund managers are, folks with real track records. He operates a scam website. Total 100% scam. He picks stocks where you can't easily disprove the ridiculous hype - that does not equal a good investment opportunity.
It's not apples and oranges. At one point Buffett had a grand total of $100. Then he invested his friends' money totally less than $1 million. Funds like SAC, Greenlight and others started with less than $10 million. This fallacy that you have to stoop to companies like NNVC that continuously move goalposts on you (Pre-IND, really?)... is a way of trying to associate and legitimize one's interest in gambling with investing - the two are very different. INVEST. NNVC is at best a gamble.
This isn't the Patrick Cox message board where you are guaranteed to triple your money, LOL. We're guaranteeing 10x for NNVC, AT LEAST. One time special! 9.99!
Alarm bells don't go off when you see the terms "penny stock fortunes"?
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Why would you follow Patrick Cox when you can determine what Warren Buffett, Lee Ainslie, Steve Cohen, Steve Mandel and the other greatest investors in the world own, for free?
Bingo. Improvement before the 'pre-IND stage' (something Nanoviricides has made up - you are either in lead optimization/candidate nomination) or toxicology - is not good. They still don't have a candidate to move forward into tox. That will take anywhere from 6 to 12 months. At their pace, likely never. But let's give them 6. Toxicology takes another 6 to 12 months. So we're talking likely 1 year at best to file an IND for dengue. Meanwhile AVII, MacroGenics, Sanofi and others are working on the very limited opportunity Dengue represents.
Neither of which are great surrogates for human antiviral activity. Sort of like oncology - animal studies are of limited value for most diseases. You just don't know until Phase I/II.
There are dozens of working HIV drugs for Africans - the problem is logistics and education. Logistics make it difficult to penetrate the rural areas that need help - lots of these folks don't have water let alone continued compliance to HIV drugs. There's crime and stigma associated with the pills so education stops the successful treatment as well. HIV in Africa is not a lack-of-drugs issue, sadly.
You need FDA approval to market a drug for animals - you don't need it to conduct toxicology testing - but you do need a certified cGMP facility. Those facilities are expensive and no companies have captive ones. You go to a provider who has capacity (takes months to get) and pay them. Chimps are very expensive and not great HIV surrogates - most people roll the dice and do two-species tox with smaller animals and don't bother with disease models - trust the cell culture ADME work and hope efficacy happens in humans.
Technically one can begin a study in any non-US jurisdiction without FDA involvement - regional approval is neccessary. Lots of companies do them in Europe with the CTA process and then file INDs here, years later. VRTX and many others did this to save time and money.