I found this post on another ETRM message board... sounds very convincing and possible.. thought I would pass it along.
ETRM is not a big gain for technical reasons, however, it is a big gain because of the potential for news, which, according to what ETRM said, is imminent.
If you read the transcript from the Oct 2 CC, you will come across this paragraph:
"Bill Plovanic: Yes, thanks, guys. Since nobody else is out there, OK I’ll ask questions. When – how long do you think it’ll take for you to gather information and be able to kind of cut and parcel the data and get back to us? Are we talking 2 weeks, 30 days, 60 days?
Mark Knudson: I think that you’re – you know that it’s going to be, I would say, 30 days plus or minus a couple of weeks."
-Now that statement was made on Oct 2, and we are at 30 days plus 1.5 weeks... so their update is imminent. It may even come out tomorrow or friday. Now the question is, is this going to be a positive or a negative for the company? I personally think that the PR they put out on Oct 2 was just about the most vague PR ever, with no numbers given... All they said was that the primary and secondary endpoints were not met (placebo was same as VBLOC).
Furthermore, the stock cratered another 50% from the high of that day, and now we are down nearly 90% from the day before the PR.
If you read the transcript, you will note that they are talking about weight losses of 10% of total body weight of people with BMI's (body mass indexes) of 35-45, which, in an average height person, means that they weigh maybe 225, or maybe even 250 pounds. And that means the weight losses are 25 pounds... which, as commented on in the transcript, is unusually high for a placebo.
Remember, with weight loss, there can be at least 2 different ways the treatment and the placebo can be the same... either they both didn't cause any weight loss, or they both caused a significant weight loss (lets say 25 pounds) but since they were the same, then technically the VBLOC was no better than this placebo.
It may be that the VBLOC leads are actually stimulating the vagus nerve by their mere contact with the vagus, who knows... and so the fact that the sham treatments had weight loss could be significant. Remember that the sham treatments still had the VBLOC device implanted, but it was not turned on. They couldn't just take placebo people that didn't have the VBLOC device implanted in them, of course, as the patients would know that they were placebo.
And if they both caused weight loss, then maybe what ETRM was calling the 'placebo' wasn't really a true placebo.
ETRM commented on this in the CC:
Bill Plovanic: And – OK, and then a mid-teens weight loss (EWL), that corresponds – like, so the whole – that’s like, what, 7% to 10% total weight loss for everybody included in the study?
Mark Knudson: I would think that’s probably in the range, yes.
Bill Plovanic: That sounds a little bit high for a placebo effect, doesn’t it?
Mark Knudson: The data do appear to show a high placebo effect."
I am looking for them to further clarify this during their update, and, as I have said before, I would find it very shocking if they didn't release any information that was the slightest bit positive. This stock has been hammered so hard that if they did, I would expect it to be immediately over 1.00$, likely to 1.50$...
Also, if you read the phase 2 trials for ETRM, there were some pretty impressive results... I am looking forward to them actually delineating the weight loss with VBLOC here...
Remember that Vagus nerve stimulation works, and CYBX uses it for seizures and depression... but they had to go through the same problems with high placebo effects too... it is very difficult to have a 'placebo' vagus nerve stimulator, as you may be able to tell if it is present but not turned on.
http://www.thecarlatreport.com/article/vagus-nerve-stimulation-evidence-convincing
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/pr?s=CYBX
I would expect ETRM to say something like "We have gone over the data and have noticed that the VBLOC is having an effect, even when set as a placebo... we plan to design a new trial to account for these effects next quarter"
or something like that...
and then, the pps would double, instantly. Realize that people have completely written off ETRM... there was not the slightest bit of hope in the Oct 2 PR... and if that is clarified, then we double instantly.