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To your point about $3.11 it's interesting that buy volume slowed down significantly after some very large block buys pushed the PPS past $3.16. That makes me suspect the activity today so far is part of the same "controlled cover" program that started in Dec. If that is the case they will try to suppress the PPS at key levels while also trying to cover some or a majority of their open position.
We'll see if volume returns later today and where the PPS ends up.
Yes, there seems to be some real buying / covering demand in volume. Looks like shorts tried to block $3 and lost. They may now let it run a little and try to suppress again at a higher level. I still think they won't allow the chart to repair itself until they are ready. They are still acting as a drag on the PPS.
Because 2017 isn't the real story, outside of the recent covering we have seen.
Chess isn't about the move that takes you to Check Mate, it's about the 10-15 moves before, that gets you to the final couple of moves that ends the game and gives you a victory.
The short interest today, or as of September 2017, was largely positions taken over a 3-6 month period in 2015 that peaked and have hovered around 10M give or take a Million since then (until recent covering).
Short interest from 10M has only fluctuated as they adjusted to events over the past 2 1/2 years, but always their agenda has been to pin the PPS in a reasonable range ($7-$8ish) from which they knew they could eventually crash it from to cover, as they have done since July and especially since September.
For example you can see their efforts after the Amgen deal to drive the price back down by dramatically increasing their short position to regain control of the PPS and break the chart again. The last thing they could have allowed was the PPS going back into the 20's.
Here is the short interest history...
Oct 15, 2015 - 10.21M
Sep 30, 2015 - 9.60M
Sep 15, 2015 - 7.90M
Aug 31, 2015 - 7.73M
Aug 14, 2015 - 7.29M
Jul 31, 2015 - 7.07M
Jul 15, 2015 - 7.38M
Jun 30, 2015 - 5.65M
Jun 15, 2015 - 3.39M
May 29, 2015 - 3.46M
May 15, 2015 - 3.04M
Apr 30, 2015 - 3.70M
Apr 15, 2015 - 3.72M
Mar 31, 2015 - 3.33M
Mar 13, 2015 - 2.48M
Feb 27, 2015 - 2.15M
Feb 13, 2015 - 1.75M
Jan 30, 2015 - 1.65M
Typically retail shorts are the last to cover.
I think the short cartel has started to cover because I think it's possible that is what Adage selling the shares they purchased at $7.50 and $19 was about. I think it's possible they used them to deliver, at the same time booking the tax loss on them to offset profits. Just my suspicion, I have no proof of this.
However, I would agree that if the professionals are not covering then the suppression could be about more than just profits.
2018 will be interesting, no doubts.
MM2K, agreed. I think you and I are probably close to the same position on any licensing deal. It has to happen soon, but the question is for how much?
Since AXAL is the most valuable piece of the ADXS puzzle (at this point in time) what they receive for any licensing deal is really the key to 2018 and 2019.
Since AXAL seems to have the potential to eventually be a $1+B indication, I am hoping that any deal is significant.
In fact, I think if ADXS can't land a big licensing deal for big dollars then they definitely need to consider selling the entire company sooner rather than later.
ADXS released 3rd Qtr financial results on Sep 11. On the previous week the PPS rose on very light volume, and it appears that the rise was mostly HFT generated...not real buying...because the volume was very light and you could almost see the PPS being pushed up artificially.
The reasons why they pumped the PPS up the previous week became evident on Monday, 9/11/17. They crashed the PPS from the opening bell on 9/11/17, before ADXS and Lombardo said a single word. By raising the PPS to $7.41 from $6ish made the crash look so much more dramatic. They want shock and awe to trigger stop loss orders and trigger panic in retail shareholders.
My point is that the attack that started on 9/11/17 was pre-planned. They have crashed the stock to $3 so that they could begin covering, and sure enough they have covered over 3M shares so far.
Unfortunately we need to see them cover another 3M or so before ADXS is in the clear.
One can be critical of management and question the results of trials, but also recognize the clear and heavy handed influence on the PPS of the major short contingent here as they operate with almost absolute impunity to cover their position.
Personally in all my years of investing I have never witnessed anything so blatant and one sided. If I didn't believe in the underlying value of the LM platform I would have probably surrendered long ago.
Even if we all agreed for argument's sake that ADXS management was the worst in the history of Biotech, the value of the LM platform and intellectual property as it currently stands, current inked deals (Amgen, Sellas, Aratana), and current cash and equipment...should still be around $750M to someone.
In respects to the BOD and Lombardo I have made some glass half empty comments. On the flip side, here is a (sort of) glass half full view hypothesis.
Lombardo scheduled the year end financials and conference call last week to get that out of the way in 2017 and clear the decks for a series of positive announcements he knows is coming in 2018.
Beyond that it's possible Lombardo has a general sense of who the major players are in the short contingent (possibly Adage is part of it) and has decided that the pragmatic course of action is to not fight against their plan to crash the PPS and cover. Lombardo may feel that there is no point in wasting any bullets until they get done and get out of the way.
Lombardo also knows that tax loss selling was going to happen anyway, so he sort of had a free shot on goal to get any messy news or uncomfortable topics (cash position) out of the way before the end of 2017.
Okay, so I hope that is along the lines of what Lombardo, the BOD, and their advisors were thinking. I also suspect the reason Adage kept a 10% stake is to make sure they kept a seat at the table (so to speak) to have a voice, or at the very least to assure they would be clued in to what was happening and when.
I don't agree with this opinion at all. First of all Big Pharma wasn't making offers to hardly anybody in 2017. It was one of the least active Biotech M&A years of this decade. Second DOC never had any plans of selling at this stage, he made very clear his strategy was only to sell after products were commercialized.
It's only in the last six months that selling the company seems like it could be something that could happen. We still don't know what the new strategy is, or if it will be successful.
I won't bash Cantor as being worse than anybody else, but it should be noted that Cantor also provided underwriting for past ADXS placements they received compensation for.
Personally I think any analyst targets provided by a Wall St firm that also provided any recent underwriting for any company should be discarded as potentially biased.
This happened yesterday. As soon as the major volume dried up around 2pm they turned up the dial on the HFT algos and bled the PPS down a penny at a time into the close.
This is so blatant and obvious to be honest I'll just be glad when they cover and take their boot off the PPS.
Short squeezes that retail longs love to claim is right around the corner rarely happen these days.
Computer trading dominates everything and algorithms don't "panic" the way human traders used to. Another reason short squeezes used to happen 15-20 years ago is because people lacked access to real time information. Today everybody has an iPhone or Galaxy with them 24/7 and can make and receive mobile calls and get updates on the internet almost instantaneously.
Go check out ACAD. From Sep 15 to Sep 30 shorts there covered 10M shares out of 16M short, or 62% of their position. The PPS went up less than $1 in that span from $36.83 to $37.67
Steve, I think JB22 provided a similar response already, but trading on Thursday, Dec 21st was a perfect microcosm of what the shorts have been doing, especially since September 11.
The "collapse" from $3.40 to $3.07 immediately at the open was almost entirely shorting. They have been using these brutal takedowns at the open very effectively to jam down the PPS hard, then they let off the gas right at the 10% mark, frequently stopping at 9.5% or whatever so they don't trigger the uptick rule. Then they sit back the rest of the day and glean shares from stop loss orders and panic retail sellers.
They have done this so blatently, and followed such a clear pattern, that I can only explain the absolute impunity they have been able to operate under by the fact that the long tutes (at least some of them) were short against the box and are determined to cover their massive gains before allowing ADXS to go anywhere.
I do agree that this probably won’t change direction until they start delivering on some of the milestones lined up in 2018. And it will be interesting to see if they are able to monetize and how much. I also agree with you that they need $50-$75M from a deal or some combination of deals. ADXS management does have a lot to prove in the coming months. No doubts.
But I also know that somebody big has been sitting on the PPS for 2 ½ years and has made sure to keep the chart broken. It has been intentional and unyielding. Even when ADXS signed the Amgen deal and had $150M in cash, they went right back to work and drove it back down to $8, where they kept it pinned for most of 2016 and the first 6 months of 2017. They never let the PPS get away from them, because they always intended to crash this thing so they could cover when the timing was right.
It is going to be very interesting to see what happens here in 2018.
I think short squeezes have almost become urban legend. They rarely happen anymore because of HFT enhanced naked shorting.
I also think the reason the PPS has done nothing while they covered is because I suspect part of the short position in ADXS was held by supposed longs like Adage and others.
With friends like those who needs enemies.
The only question for me is do they have plans to run ADXS back up the flagpole once they cover their shorts.
Totally agreed.
My number of 3M to 4M is based on the short interest reported on June 15th, 2015 of 3.39M. From that point at 3.39M it surged to 10.21M by October 15th, 2015.
I am guessing that the cartel that has controlled this for the past 2 1/2 years represented about 7M-8M of the 10M total. So I'm guessing they might be about 50% covered? If so they may still have another 4M or so to cover, give or take.
Again, just trying to make an educated guess.
Good list. But my overall short theory is summed up like this...
The same "friends" of ADXS (like Adage) that took the PPS to $30, also took it down here to $3 so they could cover the 6M or 7M shares they shorted between $22-$27ish.
So just as the PPS was artificially pumped up to $30 in 2015, it has been artificially deflated to $3 by those same folks so they could now monetize their massive profits.
When they cover and get re-positioned they will flip the HFT back to pump mode and we will see the PPS rise. How much is the question. May only be $5, could be $10, could be $15, could be more depending on what ADXS delivers.
Again, just my own view of the situation. Time will tell.
Yep. And short interest as a percent of the float is lowest in the June 15, 2015 report.
We are just over 25%. We were at 16% on that report. So we still have a ways to go. I said yesterday or the day before that I won't feel like they have declared final victory and left us alone until we see short interest get back under 4M. Maybe even under 3M.
Fortunately yes. I thought I have seen covering activity, but mostly in the last 2 weeks. So I was really curious if this specific report would confirm that covering started earlier or the number was the same or slightly higher.
This number is better than I expected.
It's hard sometimes to know what are true buys and sells, but over the past couple of weeks, since the 12/15 period ended, it sure looks like there has been even heavier stealth buying / covering. I think this is where the volume has come from. Just in the last 4-5 trading sessions I have seen multiple large buy blocks of 75K to 108K come thru.
Again, I could be proven wrong, but I am thinking that was more covering. Just like I think yesterday's big takedown at the open was designed to trigger some selling and then they spent most of the rest of the day covering.
They have been pinning this around $3 for 2 months now(give or take .25 cents). I think with the intention of keeping it here as long as possible for the major parties that were short ADXS since 2015 to cover in volume.
Good news. Looks like they covered 700K shares since the last report.
I’ll tell you one thing that bothers me…
Lombardo was named interim CEO in July. In September we were told that Lombardo would remain interim CEO, but they had no plans to replace him for now. In December now we are told they were looking for a new CEO again?
As I have stated a number of times, you don’t let the short term, interim CEO negotiate the most important deals and partnerships in the company’s history and then hire the real CEO afterwards.
Especially when those deals or partnerships could introduce significant complexity as to who owns what of the overall platform, and complicates value assessments of what the company might be worth in the future.
It just seems completely backwards to me.
So from DOC, to temporary Lombardo, to not so temporary Lombardo, back to temporary Lombardo…I do seriously question the ability of this BOD to ever deliver on the immense promise of the LM Platform. It almost feels like they are trying to feel their way thru the darkness and figure out where they should go.
After 10+ years of alternating between failure and struggling to make progress, they should be better than this by now.
What makes this even worse in my opinion is that in the last 6 months it seems that Auduro may have been forced to acknowledge that their LM Platform technology was never as good as ADXS to begin with. ADXS clearly is or should be the dominant player of the overall platform.
There’s my glass half empty position.
I am hoping so. It seems logical that we would see a surge in M&A activity.
2017 ended up being a terrible year for Biotech M&A. One of the slowest since 2012. So it's not just ADXS that didn't attract any buyout offers, it was most of Biotech that was stuck in a holding pattern.
Seems like the general consensus was that Big Pharma was waiting to see what happened with Healthcare and the Tax plan (especially the repatriation tax rate of offshore cash). I think both questions have either been fully answered, or at least much of the ambiguity that existed thru most of 2017 has been removed.
It will be interesting to see what 2018 brings.
No, what I'm say is that they can create the appearance of real selling all the way down to 10%, and pile on until the uptick gets invoked. Once the uptick gets invoked they can still short, but their job gets more difficult.
If you look at trading during the week of September 11-15, you will see a perfect example of what they have been doing since June. You can see from the trades that they attacked hard from the open, but they still tried to protect the uptick rule.
When they have attacked the PPS, they prefer to try and bleed this thing down 8%-9% a day and trigger stop loss orders, panic selling by retail, and forced liquidations by tutes. They want to create a waterfall effect on the PPS. Although some of the tute selling we saw I believe was those tutes delivering up their own shares to cover their shorts because they had shorted against the box (i.e. possibly Adage).
Right now, for all the drama they are trying to generate, the reality is that the PPS has for the most part been pinned at $3 for the last 2 months.
The only question is what happens after January 1st when the new tax code takes effect and they can book short profits in 2018 and then pay the lower effective tax rate in April 2019?
After the last report, I'm not sure what to expect. Assuming the shorts plan on covering, whatever that plan is, they need volume...and lot's of it. So was the last report showing a 400+K increase them creating volume to cover? (this may sound counterintuitive, but it does happen) Or was it them adding to their position?
Whatever is reported every 2 weeks, until the short's go from 7.5M to under 5M, or preferably under 4M, I won't feel confident the professionals are done taking this down (or at least continuing to try to).
For all the criticism that can be leveled against ADXS management, for the life of me I don't get the risk/reward scenario of staying short below $3. But as they say, the market can remain irrational longer than one can remain solvent.
It has not. The most frustrating part for me watching this closely since the post Investor Day in June has been how the shorts have played this like a fiddle. They repeatedly have jammed this down hard at the open on heavy volume, take it right up to the 10% line, and then let off the gas.
Then they sit back and hope that real selling takes over from there. If it doesn't on that day then they keep jamming it down again the next day or the next until they get their desired result.
They have also done this to cover, they take it down hard to trigger selling then then jump in with buys to cover their position.
This has been so predictable and effective, it's why as we have discussed for months now I can only explain the absolute impunity they have been able to do this by assuming that the institutional "longs" must have been in on it, or also benefitted from it in some way.
2018 should prove to be quite interesting.
The worst part about it is that the stolen equity is lost forever, they didn't get it either. What they got was profits from $25 down to $3. The material damage to the company's future potential value is lost to shareholders. Like air leaking out of a balloon, it's just gone with no way to be re-captured.
Unfortunately, I do think DOC was probably correct in his view that ultimately the company would have been worth a lot more someday if he kept most everything in house and under company control.
While I understand the current necessity of it now, I for one am not super crazy about the idea of selling off a bunch of chunks of the company. To use Dew’s term, I am concerned the “balkanization” of ADXS platform may give them needed cash now, but will reduce the value of the overall company by creating a maze of rights and claims.
In other words, let’s hypothetically say the company and platform is worth $1B today. If they start carving everything up for cash now, and then sell the company in the future, I think future returns will be somewhat reduced because any buyer in the future will be buying a conglomeration of licensing deals, not buying total control of the LM platform.
But it is what it is, and ADXS has to deal with the reality of now, not what might have been.
This is a good example of why I think shorting in the Biotech sector should be heavily regulated and have different rules. Shorting in biotech literally changes outcomes of what companies might have been versus what they end up being. That is not good for human health overall.
Dead cat bounce from what? We've been locked in this range since the end of October. $3 is the new $8 (they kept us pinned at $8 for almost all of 2016 thru June 2017). Outside of wacky Wednesday and the fallback on Thursday, we closed Tue at $3.03. Currently at $2.97 that's a net change of .06 cents in the last 72 hours.
At least you seem to be taking advantage of the swings by accumulating more shares. Good for you.
For what it's worth, there seems to be some really strange action today in the PPS and Bid / Ask. At various points there are big blocks, bigger than normal spreads between Bid/Ask, big swings in the PPS based on blocks that would seem they should have a relatively benign impact on PPS change (relative to overall volume), big ask blocks thrown up at points, etc.
Interesting week overall really.
Not sure what it means or portends. Just a little bit different look to the price action than what we normally see.
No offense intended to you or any other poster here. I know some of the folks here are very capable of asking good and probing questions during a quarterly call.
My point is that you can't take the risk of opening up conference calls to any retail investor that wants to ask a question. It doesn't matter whether the company is Amazon, Amgen, or Advaxis. Nobody does it or allows it, for good reason.
Let's say for argument's sake that everything you stated is 100% correct.
I usually try to figure out what the most powerful motivator might be behind any strategy. What is the incentive for the BOD or Lombardo or any member of senior management to keep the status quo going?
Whatever anyone thought of DOC, the fact is that under his leadership the BOD and senior management got absolutely loaded collectively speaking with millions of options and RSU's. They are much larger shareholders than any of us on this message board.
These guys could be multi-millionaires many times over if the PPS got back to $20 or higher.
Why would they want to do anything to prevent that from happening or stall forward progress?
Management has made their share of mistakes, but opening up conference call lines at a live event to random people is a bad idea, for any company.
I am all aboard if someone wants to criticize some of the moves the BOD or DOC made. Or critique Lombardo for his questionable presentation skills or his seeming lack of knowledge of the LM platform, etc, etc. I just don't feel he should be called gutless for not being willing to do something no other company would do...because everybody knows it's a bad idea. You can't have general random people, most whom don't understand securities laws asking any question they want. It just turns the whole event into amateur hour.
And the professionals and Wall St firms that dial into these events because they are following ADXS don't want their time wasted having to listen to 4-5 retail investors possibly asking dumb or inane questions in between actual analysts.
JMO.
I believe no retail investors should ever be allowed to ask questions on a live conference call event like this.
That is just an invitation to disaster.
Here's a question, what NASDAQ or DOW company do you know that allows non-vetted retail investors to ask questions on a live investor update call like this?
I agree that Lombardo has no idea what questions are going to be asked. But surely beyond your chagrin about being stiffed personally on your question, you have to understand why it would not be a good idea for any company to open up investor update calls to any Uncle Joe or Aunt Millie to ask whatever they have on their mind? Right?
By the way, I would pay $1,000 to get you and Petit in an investor conference call and see how he responds to your claim that Big Pharma knows AXAL is going to be a dud.
While I do wish you had a chance to ask your question, you understand why retail shareholders probably can't be allowed to just jump on and ask any question they want right?
While you or another retail investor could ask a good or legit question, you would agree that any wingnut could get on and ask something stupid or corny?
Bad news? Okay, maybe. But did anybody really expect major news in Dec 2017? Let's say you were the CEO of ADXS and owned over 1 million shares in options or RSU's. Would you announce a major material event in late December 2017, knowing you would be competing against tax loss selling, or save that in your back pocket for 2018? I know what decision I would make.
I totally get that they have to raise cash. And quite frankly they have to prove the value of the franchises, or at least their ability to monetize anyone or all of them. So they definitely have something to prove.
But I think smart management would line up a series of positive announcements for 2018, and wouldn't waste any fire power in what's left 2017.
But we'll see, they do have a lot to prove over the first 90 days of 2018.
But with respect, the mistake you and some others make is that the PPS erosion didn't just start recently. It started in July 2015 right after the 10.5M short position was established.
Even the Amgen deal only created a minor temporary blip in the PPS take down. The PPS was only $8 a little more than a month after a freshly signed Amgen deal and $152M in the bank. Think about that for a little while.
And for all the handwringing over all the supposedly bad news today the stock is currently down .03 cents from Tuesday's close. The only thing that's changed is the perception that something terrible has just happened. Which of course is the whole point of the exercise and exactly the reaction they want to provoke.
Maple,
I'm not sure why they moved up the call 3 weeks for sharing nothing really new.
Although it is possible it was part of a larger strategy that involved clearing the decks for a series of announcements beginning in early 2018. It's possible management knew the CC today would be met with more pressure on the PPS, so maybe they wanted it out of the way before 2018.
We'll see.
I continue to believe in the underlying value of the science, but not as confident in the management or BOD.
The PPS closed at $3.03 on Tuesday. The current PPS is at $2.96. We'll see what the rest of today, this week, and this year brings.
Take out the roller coaster ride from yesterday till today, and the net difference is .07 cents. So far anyway.