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Who dropped the ball? NOT RABIN... This toxic financing was NOT Rabin's doing. The guy who is most likely to "blame" passed away (Bill Caldwell). Further, I'm sure Caldwell got the best terms he could on the deals, but ACT was about to go BANKRUPT, so he had to take what he could get at the time in order to keep the company in business. If this financing hadn't been done, I suspect we wouldn't be having this conversation today because ACT would likely not be around.
I'm not the biggest fan of Rabin either as I expressed here before. I believe a more qualified candidate should be the CEO of ACT but listen, the guy has done nothing wrong since he became interim or permanent CEO. I challenge anyone throwing a fit right now to name ONE thing (and DDLS, Rabin took over as interim CEO in Dec 2010 when Caldwell died suddenly of a heart attack, since you stated previously that you didn't know when he took over as interim CEO, so there's your beginning point of reference) that Rabin has done wrong. He stepped in totally unexpectedly at a pivotal time in the company's history and kept things moving forward. He got the clinical trials started on time, and he's doing exactly what he's supposed to be doing: focusing on the clinical trials, not worrying about the day to day stock price. Despite that, on two occasions when warranted due large unexplained declines in the share price or events that could be misconstrued and lead to large share price declines, he's issued PR's clarifying the situation to stop the decline. He says as much as he can possibly say about the trials without getting himself in trouble w/ the FDA, so you need to read between the lines, it's pretty obvious that so far, based on the only public information available, things are going well, as evidenced by Rabin's comments and the unanimous approval by the DSMB for them to proceed with the injections for the next two patients in the first cohort.
The share price is going down and it sucks, but instead of trying to point fingers at the CEO without even knowing when the he took over, who was responsible for the financing, and the circumstances under which the financing was done, just deal with it. All the complaining and errant finger-pointing in the world isn't going to change that. That's the stock market. You're invested in a speculative penny stock. Fortunately, despite the disappointing recent share price action as well as the large number of shares outstanding, this is still one of the best risk/reward plays in the market, IMO. Take a deep breath and relax. I keep saying this: if the clinical trials prove what the animal models have shown, the share price will take care of itself. Is it guaranteed that the trials will go well? NO. But if they do, rest assured you'll be extremely happy you hung in there.
Hey Fordwill. It's actually about 428,000,000 shares altogether, or roughly 25% additional dilution based on 1.62 million shares outstanding as of the most recent 8k. 40 million for Alpha and another 388,000,000 for all of the other companies who are now starting to sue them and will probably win.
Not sure if you saw my post from last night, but if you look at when this most recent decline started (.1625 or so) and the intraday low it hit after the 8k announcing this was filed on 09/22/11 (.115 or so), I have little doubt all potential dilution is already priced in and the professionals involved in this stock read the filings, knew ACT was going to be the hook for these shares/warrants and dropped the price accordingly. A quick look at the chart and the date this most recent decline (and volatility) starts in earnest tells me that the filing of the 8k was the trigger for this sell-off, otherwise why did it really start dropping the day after 8k announcing the potential liability was announced? It certainly wasn't because there was any bad news regarding the clinical trials, so what else would've caused as much as a 29% decline in the share price from the closing price the day before the 8k was filed until the recent intraday low a few days ago, with no other bad news in the interim? 25% dilution maybe? A stock doesn't just lose 25% of it's market cap over the course of a few weeks for no reason, so I'm sticking by my theory that the dilution has already been priced into the stock, and I actually believe once this mess is settled, the share price will actually increase as some of the uncertainty will have been removed. I've seen this happen plenty of times before, it's all doom and gloom and everything feels hopeless, but the market already knew about it ahead of time, had priced it in and stole a lot of shares right at or near the bottom.
Some may feel that my theory is too sophisticated, but I disagree. I believe others who have a vested interest in the stock who are a lot brighter than I am had the foresight to sit down and do the same math I did, which took approximately 20 minutes. Hell, I hope they do take it back to .112 and I have my doubts that it'll happen, but hey, I've been wrong before and my order is in for tomorrow in case they do decide to take it down.
Thanks Rocky. Unfortunately I just read that a few minutes ago and when I came on here to post it, you had beaten me to it.
Hey farview. My intent was really just to explain exactly how I came up with the numbers/timeframes that lead me to my conclusion re: the recent share price decline.
To put it in very simple terms, I think all of the potential bad news that you mentioned is already baked into the current share price, so basically, I would disagree with you that anything you've mentioned will have a significant negative impact on the share price if/when it comes to pass in the future, and I also believe that the stock has bottomed, but that's what makes a market I guess.
It doesn't really matter to me either way, because if the stock drops again on no unexpected bad news (i.e. something doesn't go wrong with the trials), it will present a good opportunity to add more shares, IMO.
I don't think Rabin will do the reverse split now. I'm not sure why the consensus is that a reverse split will solve our problems. It won't generate any additional cash for the company, and moving to a higher exchange doesn't mean the price will stop falling, even after the initial split is done (look at GERN for example). I personally am not in favor of a reverse split at this time and agree with Rabin that it should be done from a position of strength instead of a position of weakness. I don't think Rabin going to proceed with the reverse split right now. I think the company needs to keep on doing what they're doing, and that's focusing on getting these trials completed in a timely fashion, hopefully with good results. At this point, that's all they can do, and I really don't think it's going to matter what exchange we're on. I'm personally in this for the payoff when these trials are completed and (hopefully) successful. I don't like to watch it going down day after day, but right now isn't what I'm concerned about. Institutional interest would be nice, but at this point it's not really necessary. Ideally, this is how it will play out: the trials will be completed and the results will be as good or better than anticipated. At that point, they'll either be able to sign a partnership deal for the next round of trials, or at least do a reverse split from a good position due to strong trial results. They have enough cash to get through the first phase of these trials and they have immediate need for financing, so I'm not sure why at this early stage of the game, so many people are clamoring for a reverse split. My suggestion is to just sit tight. This is going to be an all-or-nothing deal, and I don't see there being positive results and it still being a "nothing". As a former hedge fund manager, if Rabin knows nothing else, he likely knows how to manage the stock price so it's in the best interest of the shareholders over the longer-term. Despite the fact the board awarded him shares, he and Lanza both still have options for good amount more that are good only if the share price increases above somewhere around .16, and I guarantee that they don't want to see that money left sitting on the table. I don't get any sense of panic on Rabin's part regarding the share price, so I'm going to continue to assume that as long as the science is good, the share price will take care of itself eventually.
Rocky, question on the convertible bonds/warrants:
I don't think I've heard anyone mention this here yet and I'm going off of memory as to what the conversion price would be and I don't see it mentioned in the 78k, but if I recall correctly, it was mentioned here that the conversion price of the Alpha warrants would reset to .02/each. I'm not sure what price all of the others would reset to if ACT loses/settles all of the lawsuits, but assuming they were similar deal and that they too would have a conversion price of .02 as well, wouldn't ACT end up raising an additional $8.4 million (428,000,000 x .02) assuming all warrants were exercised at the conversion price of .02 each? If so, it would be a small consolation, but at least it would be something. I'm not saying this IS the case, just asking the question...
Farview, I was referring to ALL of the shares/warrants that could potentially have to be issued if ACTC were to lose ALL POTENTIAL lawsuits as well as the Alpha lawsuit and had to issue the entire 428,000,000 shares/warrants (about 40 million for Alpha and potentially 388,000,000 for all of the others). As of right now, there are 1.62 billion outstanding. For ease of math, let's say that they would have to dilute by 25% (428,000,000 / 1,620,000,000 outstanding). The price of the stock on the day that the Sept 21, 2011 (the day before the 8k announcing the Alpha lawsuit and potential liability for all other lawsuits was filed) was about .1625 the best I can tell. Since the 8K was issued, the share price has dropped as low as about .115 and closed as low as about .1325. From the closing price on 09/21/11 to the recent intraday bottom was a total drop of around 29%, so in total, it overshot by 4% more than the potential total additional dilution and based on the recent low closing price, it dropped about 18.9%. Maybe the market is giving them a small premium after the additional dilution for the safety results coming back positively thus far, who knows. If you look at the recent chart and see when the decline started and the volatility started, it was on 09/22/11 (the day the 8k re: Alpha and the other potential lawsuits was filed) when it really began in earnest. I'm sticking to my theory that the potential TOTAL additional dilution for the lawsuits has already been priced in, and I believe barring bad news, .115 will be the low.
http://stockcharts.com/h-sc/ui?s=ACTC
All of the other issues you bring up besides the lawsuit and potential for additional lawsuits were already known issues prior to the 8k being filed, so I believe all of that was already priced in prior to the decline starting. They likely aren't going to need additional money prior to at least preliminary results of these trials being announced since they've already said they have enough money to complete the current trials, and if the results are good as Rabin has implied they are, the share price will move higher. I have possible silver lining (albeit a small one) to this whole lawsuit thing as well, but I'm going to put it in a separate post and maybe Rocky can answer it for us.
This price action sucks and I hate to see the stock moving lower seemingly every day, but based on the % decline I'm calculating since the 8k announcing the Alpha lawsuit and potential other lawsuits (and total potential dilution) was filed, I think one should expect a decline that corresponds roughly with the % of additional shares/warrants that may have to be issued. I don't think this decline is indicative of anything other than that. Based on the sentiment I'm seeing on this board, I think it's almost time to start adding some more shares.
Hi farview. Given that we've have nothing but positive news re: the trials thus far (what we know is limited but all of the information released has been as positive as it could've been), don't you think that a lot of this recent decline is the market discounting the share price for the potential issuance of new shares should ACT be required to issue all of the shares for all toxic financing? If you look at the % the stock would be diluted by should this occur vs the % the stock has moved down since Rabin announced their potential libaility, I think you'll find it's fairly close to the same % and there was no other reason for the share pricew to decline since all other news has been positive. I hear what you're saying, but I think the major potential negative has already largely been baked into the share price. Guess we'll find out soon enough, but from my experience, when things look and feel like they're only going to continue to get worse, that's about the same time something positive happens and the stock reverses.
Are you referring to when Loeb was on the PDGI conference call a few years ago and said "I look forward to watching your company melt down"?
A couple of comments/concerns:
1) I think that the market has already priced the worst-case scenario of the additional dilution of 380 million shares were they to be sued by all those who may have similar claims. The reason I say this is that I believe the stock was trading at somewhere around .16-.17 (feel free to correct me if I'm wrong) when the lawsuit was announced and management came forward with the potential liability in terms of shares and warrants. So if we're now trading at .13 or so, most if not all of the addtional dilution has already been priced in.
2) IMO, NONE of the good news from the prelim results of the AMD and SMD trials have been priced in. So far, at least at the 50,000 cell dose level, it's at a minimum safe and based on the comments Rabin has made, seemingly efficacious as well.
3) One thing that I noticed that Rabin made mention of in at the World Stem Cell conference that I don't recall anyone mentioning here: something to effect that they would move onto the 250,000 cell injections if necessary and seemed to indicate that they weren't sure that they would need to go that high, which to me means that this trial could actually be concluded more quickly than we're anticipating if they don't actually end up needing to dose patients at the 250,000 cell level to produce the results they were trying to produce. Combined woth the fact that he said they were "surprised" by some of what they saw with the 50,000 cell injection, it makes me wonder if maybe they won't need to dose the 250,000 cell cohort at all and the trial will be ended early. This would obviously be fantastic news in terms of time, money and safety/efficacy. Not sure if anyone else heard this or has any thoughts/opinions on this possibility.
4) The main concern that I have in regard to ACTC is that I've heard in the past about companies who weren't in the greatest financial position but had a ton of potential, valuable IP etc basically being naked shorted to zero and their technology stolen. I hope that's not what's going on here, but the share price just sees to go down every day whether the market is up or down, whether the company has good news or not (while, somtimes when there's good news the share price will move higher briefly but it never fails that it gives it all back plus some within a couple of days) etc. It's really discouraging considering it seems like things are going even better than expected thus far in the trials. I know the lawsuits and potential additional dilution as a result is probably weighing on the stock, but this just seems a little excessive. Hopefully if they win the case brought by Alpha, the share price will recover most of what it's lost almost immediately and won't get hit much more even if they lose given the beating it' already taken. I've been thinking of adding more, but at this point, I just don't know where the bottom is.
Anyway, just some thoughts on my part. I'm still very optimistic about the technology but concerned about what I perceive to be a huge disconnect between the improving fundamentals of the company and the terrible price action on the stock...
Interstate, to answer a question you posted in your e-mail, regarding if both the 2nd and 3rd patients from the 1st cohort of each study have been approved for injection, or if ACT has received clearance to inject only the 2nd patient from the 1st cohort of each study, I'm about 99% sure that the remaining two patients in the first cohort for each study have now been cleared for injection by the DSMB based on the following two quotes, one from today's PR and one from the recent Rodman & Renshaw Investor Presentation...
"The unanimous recommendation of the DSMB to proceed with the next four patients represents a significant milestone for our clinical programs. We hope that the positive trend in clinical results derived from treating the first patients with our RPE cells will continue," said Robert Lanza, M.D., chief scientific officer of ACT." (from today's PR)
"–For each cohort, 1st patient treatment followed by 6 week DMSB review before remainder of cohort" (from Rodman & Renshaw Presentation)
Fordwill, I would have to disagree with you to some extent. I can point out several examples of companies whose share price skyrocketed long before they were ever approved based on strong Phase II clinical trial results. HGSI, NBIX, VRTX to name a few. Even EXEL recently has had a market cap of over $1 billion a couple different times over the past few years, and as far as I know, they've never even had an FDA review.
I think it depends on the nature of the company we're talking about. Given how novel ACTC's technology is and the revenue potential in the Dry AMD market alone (not to mention any of the other treatments they're working on), I think we could see a large share price increase well before the FDA ever reviews it, however, like DNDN, since it will will likely be the first HESC company to be reviewed for final approval by the FDA, it will probably face great scrutiny and may take more than one try to get passed by the FDA.
The thing that bothers me the most in reading your post is the fact that our esteemed CEO was likely one of the guys doing everything negative you describe just a few short years ago...further, I'm sure he made a few enemies along the way who would love to return the favor.
I've been around here for awhile (though not as long as some) and I've been overwhelmingly positive on almost every aspect of ACTC. As I said, I have no problem with the compensation package Lanza received because IMO he's irreplaceable, however, Rabin is a different story. I understand very well what CEO's do, and it's not at all unreasonable to want a permament CEO with biotech experience (which Rabin didn't have prior to working for ACTC) as the CEO of a biotech company. I find it hard to believe that there weren't many qualified people with biotech experience who would've been interested in filling the CEO position at ACTC on a permanent basis, but then Rabin wouldn't have been able to issue himself 10 million free shares if someone else was hired as the permanent CEO and Rabin simply resumed his old role as CFO.
Rabin is just much better suited for the CFO role. When the company was in desperate need of financial restructuring to remain viable, it made sense to have a guy like Caldwell being at the helm, however, once that task was completed and Caldwell unexpectedly passed away, IMO a former hedge fund manager and pro poker player wasn't the right choice to be appointed permanent CEO, especially given that they're now in clinical trials and having a CEO experienced in dealing with the FDA is critical. I'm still long the stock, mainly due to lanza and the promise I see for the science, I just wish they'd made a better decision when appointing the permanent CEO because there's just something about Rabin that I don't trust.
It's all part of Lanza's compensation package, I wouldn't necessarily call the shares he was granted a "gift". While I wish they'd stop diluting shareholders every time we turn around, I can justify Lanza's deal because cash will be tight and IMO, Lanza brings a helluva lot more irreplaceable value to ACTC than Rabin does. I was aware of the 15 million options as well, but I believe the exercise price is the market value as of the date Lanza signed the employment contract so if nothing else, it may bring a little bit of additional cash into ACTC's coffers eventually, and the options will only be beneficial to him if unless the shareholders have benefited from the hare price appreciation as well.
After seeing the specifics of Rabin's deal, I'm no longer a fan of his and believe that he'll ultimately end up taking a lot more value than he'll ever provide. I believe Caldwell got them to where they are today (both in terms of being a financially-viable company as well as getting the FDA's blessing to commence the Dry AMD and Stargardts trials, and he was well compensated for doing this), and now IMO Rabin is riding his coattails and cashing in for himself. I also think that as these trials proceed, it would be better for ACTC to have a CEO who is experienced in dealing with the FDA as opposed to a former hedge-fund manager. I love the potential of the company as much or more as I did when it was first brought to my attention, but my gut is telling me not to trust Rabin. Hopefully my gut is wrong. Just my .02.
It doesn't appear to be anything new to me, it just looks like the SEC filing related to the 15 million shares Lanza is being granted as part of his new employment contract with ACTC.
Thanks for clarifying Rocky, I'll have to go back and listen to it again. It was late when I listened to the replay of the parts I missed during the original call.
Hey farview. I was just agreeing with you and adding to the below comment that you made based on what Rabin stated during the CC.
"To the best of my knowledge, if there was any negative safety factors emerging already, the FDA would know and further trials would be compromised in some way and there was no contra indication of that, was my read."
I was wondering about the preferred stock comment myself because I didn't remember them receiving any, but that's what Rabin stated they received in the past on the CC.
In regard to the options, I believe Rabin said it will be more heavily weighted with options. I guess we'll have to wait and see what the SEC filings show in regard to the how much they'll be receiving in options vs stock.
Just listened to the replay of the entire CC. Here are a couple of other key comments from Rabin that I wanted to point out (and I'm paraphrasing here):
"We would love to tell you everything we've seen in these trials so far" and then he gets into the reasons why he can't at this point.
"We're not going to partner out the Dry AMD trials in Europe because we would have to give up way too much value considering how confident we are that these trials will be successful".
I also like the fact that he said the new compensation packages signed by he and Lanza will include more stock options instead of preferred stock, which clearly aligns their interests with those of the shareholders, and will hopefully prevent, in large part, he and Lanza needing to sell shares to cover tax liabilities as they did after being issued shares of preferred stock. By accepting options (which would presumably be exercisable at a higher share price than the current share price), it further demonstrates both he and Lanza's confidence in the outcomes of these trials, IMO. I didn't hear anything that gave me any pause at all, and in fact, quite the opposite. I think the writing is on the wall, and it's all positive thus far.
I believe Rabin said he is looking forward to the next two patients being injected in the near future. This tells me everything is going fine with clinical trials so far. I think he gave numerous hints throughout the CC that everything is going fine with the trials, and the fact that he took the permanent CEO position and Lanza signed another long-term deal with ACT indicates that as well. The price per share is getting pretty close to my buy point to add another 50% to my position. I wasn't able to listen to the entire CC but from what I was able to listen to, all indications are that everything is coming together nicely...
Lanza signed a new, long-term agreement
Rabin is now the permanent CEO and interim CFO.
I'm already locked and loaded at an avg of around .19. I can't put any more into it because as much as I love ACT's potential, the fact remains that it is a speculative biotech stock. I probably already have more invested in it than I should, but I also see it as a unique opportunity that doesn't come along very often....
I must've been thinking about when they started giving them the immunosuppressants not when they actually administered the first injections, my bad. And yes, management did say it will be October before we officially hear anything (as I believe I stated, prelim results will be released every 4 months or so). If, like in the preclinical trials in mice, evidence of improvement in vision starts to occur within 6 weeks of the initial injections, word could and likely would start leaking out in the near future. I'm not saying that it WILL, I'm saying that it COULD. My general point is that I wouldn't want to be out of the stock now that the clinical trials ahve started because it could make a violent upside move in the near future depending on the results.
Welcome 2ez. I personally do not expect the ACTC share price to double overnight and up until now, it has required a lot of patience. What I do believe is that assuming the clinical trials go as well as the pre-clinical trials indicate that they may, that 12 months from now, the stock could be at least a 10 bagger from here. I don't know when it will happen and it likely won't be a slow, steady climb but rather a violent, parabolic move that happens over the course of a couple of months if positive results are released (it may not be the first preliminary results in October because they only injected 50,000 RPE cells, but assuming they are safe and well tolerated, they will be steadily increasing the number of cells up to 200,000 and at each higher dosage I think the probability of convincing positive results increases and interim results will be released throughout the trial in roughly 4 month intervals). I don't after which interim results announcement it will happen, but I'm not going to risk being out of the stock because it could potentially happen any time now (if positive results leak out prior to the results actually being released). In lab mice, there was evidence of vision improvement within 6 weeks after the initial injection. I belive we're about 4 weeks in since the first injections occurred. In humans, who knows how long it will take or if it will even happen, but vision improvement isn't actually even the purpose of the clinical trials, the Phase I/II study is to test for safety (i.e. the body doesn't reject the cells, no tumorgenicity etc) and hopefully show some indications of efficacy in slowing down the progression of dry AMD. Vision improvement in the patients would be a nice kicker though.
I suggest you keep reading the board regularly. There are a lot of great posters here who provide invaluable DD.
It's all relative because it's about market cap, not number of shares outstanding. Being that the price per share is so cheap because there are a lot of shares outstanding, I can BUY A LOT MORE SHARES than I could've if the market cap was the same but it had less # of shares outstanding.
You simply don't seem to want to get past the # of outstanding shares. I doubt you even watched the video I provided you the link to. The fact that you made zero comments in reference to the video but again simply zeroed in on the # of outstanding shares again confirms what I already suspected.I really posted the video to see whether you were here because you were actually interested in learning the basics about ACT or if you had some other agenda. Now that I believe I know the answer, I won't be responding to you anymore.
Funny the nice share price appreciation and volume increase we've had since "they" showed up a few days ago...typical.
ACT issued shares to stave off bankruptcy, and are now in the best financial position the company has ever been in. Had they not issued those shares, we wouldn't be having this conversation right now as there would be no more ACT. Besides the current clinical trials ACT is performing now for dry AMD, (which has a world-wide market potential of $25 billion), I don't think GERN has anything that can touch the ability to produce a potentially limitless supply of blood that can be given to anyone regardless of their blood type as well as vascular repair in people that have heart tissue that died due to heart failure. Go read the PR on the hemgioblast program and do some DD on it. ACT also has other exciting treatments in their pipeline as well. This video is a great overview of the company, their programs etc. Take a few minutes and watch it.
http://www.youtube.com/user/eigenman40#p/a/u/2/MPBiNlUFIww
I'm not sure what your goal is here, but one thing is clear: you know nothing about ACT other than their share count. Watch the video I provided and go do some DD and then come back when you can have a reasonable debate without issuing blanket statements which evidence you have no clue as to what you're talking about.
For the record, if embryonic stem cells DO work, IMO ACT will receive FDA approval and will be the first to market with the first embryonic stem cell treatment long before GERN will simply due to the fact that success or failure in the eyes should become evident much more quickly than will success or failure in a crushed spine. We should start getting some preliminary results within the next 3 months or so on their current trials for AMD/Stargardt's. If all goes as well as expected, ACTC may be able to terminate the Phase I/II trial early (not right after the prelim results but maybe after a year instead of 2 years) and head straight to Phase III, and if Phase III goes well they would likely be fast-tracked for FDA review...
I don't think "most" are getting worried. I see a couple of bashers showed up lately (which I think is GOOD news, not bad news) and one guy who has been around for a little bit (Gastrodamus) who is always complaining about something. Other than that, I don't see any of the names I recognize that have been here for awhile getting nervous at all. If anything, some may be getting a little restless because the share price didn't appreciate as they had anticipated when the injection were announced, but I wouldn't say they're worried. Maybe a little impatient. But the sense I'm getting is mainly that of excitement and anticipation.
The stock market is a big waiting game. Anyone who has done their DD knows the potential of what they're holding, and every day that goes by, we get one day to seeing exactly what promise this technology truly has, for better or for worse. All pre-clinical studies strongly suggest it will be for better, but only time will tell. Until the results are known, the best info we have to go off of are the pre-clinical results.
We have the top stem cell scientist in the country and likely the world on our team. We have a technology that can change the way modern medicine is practiced in terms of treatments. We had the foresight to choose to specialize preliminarily in a part of the body that's least likely for reject the hesc's thereby increasing the probability of success, and also in which success or failure can be determined fairly quickly as compared to the parts pof the body/ailments that other embryonic stem cell companies are targeting, making it likely that if the trials are successful, we'll be the first to market with the first-ever FDA-approved embryonic stem cell treatment for a $20+ billion market. This doesn't even mention our deal with Roslin, our patent and potential ability to license the single-blastomere technology which is the only technology proven to be able to extract embryonic stem cells without destroying the embryo, or any of the other embryonic stem cell programs that are sitting idly by for now while we complete these first clinical trials.
As long as people don't worry about the day to day price fluctuations (or lack thereof) and remember why they're invested here, though the lack of share price appreciation is annoying at times, holding this should be a no-brainer when the risk/reward is considered.
You don't seem to get people's sarcasm. What atom was trying to say is that everyone here is informed enough to understand all the negatives the bashers who have appeared here recently are trying to point out, but that most here believe the positives far outweigh the negatives and won't be selling their shares despite the efforts of those trying to cast ACTC stock in a bad light.
I'm actually extremely encouraged that we've attracted some bashers. I think I've stated here before (and on Investor Village) that once ACT started making real progress (i.e. the clinical trials had started), the bashers would start showing up to try to cast doubt in the minds of those invested here. I believe that there will be one more attempt at a washout before the first preliminary results are relased to try to create the impression that the trials aren't going well or that there is some sort of a problem. I don't believe this attempt will be successful because by and large, it appears most understand exactly what they own and the risks involved and aren't going to be scared out of their positions. I think ACT management also made it pretty clear by their response the last time somthing like that occurred that they'll respond publicly to any such attempts, should a large drop in the share price occur with no bad impending news.
I would hope if they have something positive to announce, they'd wait until Monday morning pre-market for maximum impact, especially considering the beating the stock has taken over the past couple of weeks.
Thanks elllk, much appreciated. So based on that, I think it's safe to say that while these treatments may not be able to reverse the progression of the disease itself as I originally stated, it may be able to restore some of the patients' lost vision, which to my way of thinking has somewhat the same impact/outcome as if they were actually able to reverse the progression.
Thanks for the clarification rumit. I'll go back and listen to Lanza's youtube presentation again tonight, because I was pretty sure that he referred to "vision improvement" but I could be mistaken about the exact term he used. It's also confusing (at least to me) because on slide 17 under visual acuity, it states "restored 70% of normal healthy animals". To me, "restored" means the animals' visual acuity improved, not simply deteriorated more slowly, but other slides in the presentation do state they deteriorated more slowly etc. Hopefully we'll know soon enough if they may have been low-balling the actual results in the animal studies, because my impression (along with numerous other people's I know) has been that vision improvement is a very possible outcome in these clinical trials and I believe that management has alluded to that in the past...guess time will tell.
Please help me understand what I'm missing/misunderstanding: this is from slide 17 of the presentation that Rocky posted. How is what this is stating different than what I stated? Further, I believe Lanza said the same thing in the youtube presentation from a few months ago. Not trying to be argumentative, just trying to understand.
"– Improved Visual Acuity
• 100 percent improvement in visual performance over untreated control
• Restored to 70 percent of normal healthy animals."
If the result of the AMD is vision loss and vision actually improved in 100% of lab rats and mice would that not be a reversal? If not a reversal of the disease of the itself, it's a reversal of the result of the disease, which is vision loss.
I think the recent price action is disappointing and has some a little antsy. The injections haven't even happened yet so we know this isn't due to bad trial results. I think that's the most important thing to keep in mind right now. Let's not start attacking each other, most of us are on the same side and do the best we can to provide meaningful contributions to the board. Just take a deep breath and remember that we have the best stem cell scientist in the world in Dr Lanza on our team.
Though nothing is ever certain, based on the results of previous testing in lab mice and rats, 100% saw VISION IMPROVEMENT, meaning this technology doesn't only slow the progression of AMD, IT REVERSES IT. As hard as it is, don't worry about the day to day share price as in the long run it's unimportant. If the science works as earlier testing has indicated, the share price will take care of itself eventually. Keep your eye on the ball and don't get discouraged by the share price, as it's certainly not indicative of the potential of ACTC at this juncture.
Farview, I've pointed this out before here and will point it out again: SIRI went from as low as a nickel to over $2/share with almost 4 billion shares outstanding, so I don't believe it's implausible that ACTC's price per share can rise substantially with 1.5 billion shares outstanding given the right news. If the science proves out, nothing is going to hold it back, IMO. Patience is the key. Hopefully get some very positive preliminary clinical trial results in October, and at that point we'll get a better idea as to how the stock reacts to positive news. I don't believe we've had any recent catalysts that I wouold expect would've driven the price per share substantially higher. I would've hoped for a pop on the Newsweek and Time articles, but it would've been short-lived anyway. My personal opinion is that at this point ACTC doesn't need to do a reverse stock split. If/when we see a major catalyst and the stock doesn't see the gains I would expect, I'd reconsider that position, but until then, I think the company's efforts should be focused solely on the clinical trials.
Any idea why there was so much excitement as evidenced by the price/volume action when the trials were initially approved by the FDA but now that they're about to begin, no one seems to care based on the current price/volume action?