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Dawson,
Thanks, but I’m not sure me still being here should offer solace to anyone. I have violated so many rules of investing when it comes to ADXS that it is embarrassing. The missed opportunity cost of having money invested in ADXS during one of the greatest bull runs in history is tremendous.
I cannot stress enough my disappointment that ADXS spent so much on the AXAL program, but has been unable to generate any revenue from it. With the failure (so far) to monetize HER2 and now AXAL, I have to agree (in principle) with those that say that ADXS has reset itself to a Phase I company for NEO and HOT.
At this point I think our best hope is that AMGN sees something so positive with early NEO results that they don’t want to wait until 2020 or 2021 to do something bigger than the current partnership.
I’m not expecting it either, but I expect additional dilution to get dropped on us eventually anyway (if no deal). I don’t really see the warrants adding materially to any potential eventual dilution?
I did laugh out loud on this one. Clever.
About 45 days away from Warrant expiry. Will be interesting to see if ADXS let’s them expire or extends them.
I would lay most of the blame at the feet of the BOD, notably Sidransky. They have presided over most of the decisions over the last 10+ years. They picked the CEO's and fired the CEO's.
Either a fund with a major position is selling, or the major short contingent (after locking in profits at $1.70ish) are initiating a new position.
Either way ADXS has been without money or true (powerful) friends for years now. I am not sure why I continue to hope that changes, but I do.
What Biotech really needs right now is 2-3 M&A deals to bring some interest back and highlight some of the values in the space.
I agree mostly.
Although I still wonder if the BOD still believes that ADXS is worth the $6+B floated by DOC a number of times? And now they have collectively dug in their heels against any deals suggesting a significantly lesser valuation?
Unfortunately my personal view hasn't changed in the last 12 months. All of ADXS is worth between $500M to $750M in a sale, maybe $1B with future data readouts and European approval for AXAL.
While a AMGN or Merck might be able to capitalize ADXS portfolio and convert that to eventual realized annual sales of $5B to $10B, ADXS does not have the financial or human resources to ever come close to that.
It's like a poor man owning a piece of prime real estate. The poor man will never be able to get the funds to fully realize it's full potential. They can only hope to sell it to the highest bidder and receive the value of the undeveloped real estate only.
Doh! Thanks! That's right and no doubt what it was.
Amazing. A block of 2.77M shares just crossed at the close. Didn't move it a penny. This was one of the strangest and most inexplicable weeks of stock action I have seen in months.
I swear, I feel like I am invested in organized crime owning this stock.
Today was one of the oddest trading days in ADXS I've seen and I don't really know what to make of it. Buy volume appears to have about evenly matched Sell volume, yet the PPS was down 4.5%. In theory it should have been almost flat for the day.
While it might be true that combo trial with Astra was never going to proceed further, I do think the Hold matters. Until the FDA officially clears ADXS and AXAL that is a cloud of uncertainty hanging over the company.
I don't think it's a coincidence that institutional buying volume has been largely absent since the hold was announced. Best I can tell there has been some additional short covering and some institutional selling, but no significant institutional buying volume.
And for now it appears that none of the ADXS institutional longs are interested in helping the ADXS chart to heal itself to attract the volume from the technical chart traders.
Do you see the ZIOP "hold" as damaging as the ADXS hold? Even though I am 99.9% sure ADXS had nothing to do with the reported death in the combo-trial with Astra, and ADXS will be vindicated, it was still a death.
The ZIOP hold is really just a pause to answer some questions before the trial has even started. It's sounds more like a "hey we have a few questions before you start" kind of thing?
Although no doubts the shorts on ZIOP will try to press it hard.
Something I find perplexing this year outside of ADXS is the relative lack of M&A activity in Biotech since Jan/Feb.
With clarity on the new tax plan resolved, and Billions available to be repatriated by Big Pharma, this was universally expected to be a year of huge M&A activity. So far it has not been.
So when talking about what ADXS can demand or expect for HER2, AXAL, HOT, etc...I am not sure why there is not more money flowing to Biotech than what we are seeing. It's not just ADXS that can't agree to terms with a Big Pharma suitor. The same story is being played out across the Biotech sector right now.
It's certainly not what I expected in 2018.
You could very well be right.
But I know for a fact that sometimes conversations with funds being courted for investment includes questions like what do you need...or what would you need...to see from us to make you comfortable investing in us?
I can't or won't say that's what happened here. But it is a possibility...even if remote. As I alluded to in my previous post I am still not convinced (yet) Edelman is here for more than a cup of coffee on his way passing thru.
Was is Ken who was behind those purchases or what is possibly directed by one of the funds that recently invested in ADXS?
I have been trying not to make too much out of Edelman's investment. Mainly because it's still a small position relative to Adage and Amgen, and unfortunately we have seen funds come and go here a little too regularly.
However this does make me wonder if the "request" (I.e. directive) for the BOD and officers to purchase shares came from outside the company.
I do agree with JCKRDU that the Hold needs to get lifted. I think the Hold is preventing some buying from institutions and it potentially muddies the water for any AXAL deal negotiations.
Today's announcement and move better explains the price action I saw Monday and Tuesday. They capped this at $1.85 at the NEO announcement and did not let it run.
To me this looks like somebody knew this was coming and started initially covering on Monday. Today, since 9:36am (after the initial dump of about 100k shares) it has been almost all buying volume, with relatively light selling.
Obviously things can turn on a dime and reverse hard later today, but so far my cautious optimism from watching the price action since the Investor Day call remains.
I will disagree with you on this. Not all volume is created equally.
Today the majority of the volume is big Buy blocks. Same as yesterday. It looks to me that somebody with juice has the MM sweeping up shares for them and they are covering in large chunks. This type of price activity is exactly how they covered 2M shares last Fall, even though the PPS remained stuck in the mud.
My on the back of a paper napkin hypothesis is that once the remaining smaller hedge fund shorts saw that the Big Hedge funds that have owned this PPS for years now didn't crash ADXS at this Investor Day, like they did the last 3 years, the signal went out. Combine that with another big reduction in short interest yesterday and the message to the remaining shorts seems clear. Time to bank your profits.
We'll see. I'm cautiously optimistic for the first time in a long time.
Well, the sell block didn't explain yesterday stuck at $1.85 for hours. But the sell block today is now gone. We'll see where this ends up the day.
Another 100+K Buy block just passed and nothing happened to PPS.
It's hard to be certain of anything, but the last 2 days activity (so far) looks very much like additional short covering.
Question: How do you tell when shorts are covering in ADXS?
Answer A: When big buy blocks go thru but don't really change the price.
Answer B: When 4M-5M shares in a 10M offering disappear into the wind, and short interest drops by a similar amount.
It looks like some more shorts may have covered a 50+K block at the open. Price barely moved. Just like the 136K block yesterday afternoon.
My comments are not to be taken as positive or negative. Just a simple observation that yesterday and so far today games are afoot. To what purpose I can't tell yet.
Obviously you know I definitely agree that somebody has been capping the value of this company. I believe it was the 10+M short contingent.
Now that they have (largely) cashed out and banked their short profits I am curious to see if they flip and run this back up when they are ready.
As I mentioned it does appear that they have stopped collapsing the PPS.
So what now?
I guess we will find out soon enough.
Why not give the company some more time? After all you and I both have waited this long. You still have plenty of time to sell and take the losses if you wait until this Fall?
It's possible the Big Fish are now lining up to take this in another direction?
About yesterday, the algos were definitely turned on with the goal of locking the PPS at 1.85. It stayed there for hours in a straight line with no deviation. There was even a Buy block yesterday afternoon of about 136,000 that was absorbed without the price moving a penny. I suspect there was some additional short covering taking place yesterday before the official short report was released to us retail lemmings.
I still view this past week with cautious optimism. Ken Berlin projected a strong presence at the Investor Day, legitimate cost cuts have been implemented (finally), first patient dosed in NEO, and more short covering.
Think about the last 3 years of Investor Days previous to this one (2015-2017). The PPS was crashed 20% to 30% by this time 3-4 trading days after the event. The Short cartel with 10.2M shares short destroyed the PPS after every Investor Day for 3 years straight.
This may not sound impressive, and I understand the impatience, but we are currently more than 10% higher than we were before Investor Day 2018 started. That hasn't happened in 3 years.
I am curious to see where we go from here.
Yesterday was possibly significant in relation to the PPS. It's still too early to say exactly because we have had so many head fakes.
But during the last 3 Investor Day's, the hedge funds that represented the majority of the 10.2M shares short, and who exercised relentless and brutal control of PPS took this down hard.
Sometimes the attacks were almost surgically precise as they would take ADXS down right up to 9% (being careful not to trigger the uptick rule) for 2-3 days in a row, and then only on the 3rd or 4th day of the takedown would they allow the uptick rule to be invoked (which usually signaled the end of that specific attack).
Yesterday it would have been very easy for them to do the same. In fact there were some large sell blocks in yesterdays volume, but the algo's were running to protect the PPS, not destroy it.
Again, too early to tell exactly what the coming weeks portend in relation to the PPS, but I think yesterday might have represented a significant milestone.
At least I hope so.
FBG,
My belief is that DOC's mindset was shaped by a biotech world pre-Fall of 2015, before the Biotech nuclear winter hit.
I also am not sure if DOC was fully aware that the PPS of ADXS was not going to rise no matter what he did when so called supporters of ADXS were likely short against the box and in the process of milking $10's of Millions in easy profits from their coordinated short strategy.
Viewed with benefit of hindsight, one can partly understand DOC's confidence in the platform. But what started as confidence seems to have morphed into overconfidence and instead of making a major pivot in his strategy, it appears DOC doubled down with the go it alone approach.
If ADXS had the $2 Billion DOC really needed to pursue trials across all the different areas he had in process, they might have eventually succeeded on their way to being worth $10B or so.
But ADXS was cash poor, then the Biotech meltdown happened, and DOC never seemed to grasp until it was much too late (if he even understands it now) that his PPS...his only ATM...was in the death grip of hedge funds far more liquid and powerful than ADXS was.
Maybe, maybe not. I suspect there is a bit of gamesmanship taking place right now between ADXS and 2-3 potential suitors. No matter how much Big Pharma might like a micro Biotech company, they usually try to play hardball on partner / purchase negotiations.
Ken Berlin is doing the same thing ZIOP just did. Slow down spending on programs that might actually have significant value, but are costing an arm and a leg to continue going alone. That requires funding the company currently doesn't have. So slow things (i.e. spending) down to try and buy time for additional negotiations and to get better offers.
JMO.
Well, for whatever it's worth, listening to Ken Berlin run a conference call was a huge upgrade from Tony Mumbles.
And for that matter, I enjoyed Berlin's command of the topics and control of the call more than DOC as well.
One thing you have been right about for a year is that it was obvious they needed a workforce reduction at least 9 months ago.
As you correctly point out there is no real excuse for that not being done sooner.
This company has most certainly operated without a clear sense of urgency going back to the DOC days.
However, while I think this BOD is terrible, and I believe ADXS has made some mistakes, I also believe ADXS has been guilty of the same problem many small Bio's have in today's market.
They were not savvy enough to understand what being in the death grips of a coordinated and relentless multi-year short attack would do to their PPS and to their company's prospects. I mostly blame the BOD for that lack of vision, perception, and insight.
These days baby Bio's are almost forced to partner as soon as they can, even if it means sacrificing a huge chunk of their ultimate worth, which ironically is only really possible to achieve if they had the luxury of time and the SEC protected them from the brutal manipulative short attacks they are prone to.
I don't think a CELG or BIIB would be possible to build from scratch based on today' market dynamics and total lack of protection offered to micro Bio's from predatory hedge funds that work together to control a company's PPS.
The last 3 Investor Day's have been disasters for the PPS and for actual investors in ADXS.
But the PPS attacks started in those events before the CEO even opened up his mouth and said a word.
Why?
Probably because the powerful consortium of hedge funds who made up the majority of the 10.2M short position had their algos tuned to full scale crash mode.
Unlike the last 3 years, today...at least so far, the algos do not appear to be set to crash mode.
We will see if 11am thru 4pm demonstrates a follow thru of so far, or a reversal.
Only time will tell.
So it's still early, but here is a moderately positive sign...
Although there has been mountains of circumstantial evidence available that ADXS has been under a manipulated and coordinated short attack since summer of 2015, today is looking like it might actually be another brick in that wall of that circumstantial evidence.
While it's possible we may see a reversal at some point, maybe when Berlin starts talking at 11am, in past Investor updates we have seen a wicked takedown of the PPS before the event has even started.
Now that almost 7M shorts have been covered...likely by some of the same institutions that were long ADXS...we might see them begin to take ADXS back up. After all, now that they have likely banked well over $100+M on their short gambit, the real money to be made now seems to be sitting there on the long side...assuming they get the developments from Berlin and his new team to justify a proper pump.
JMO.
Agreed. Everything I just read seems reasonable and right.
However, this also seemed obvious a year ago.
Thanks to maybe one of the worst BOD's in Biotech, ADXS has basically wasted the last 12 months.
Well said. Unfortunately that certainly appears to be the case here. I have seen BOD's get removed or replaced for far less egregious issues and who were historically much better performing than this ADXS BOD.
It would be very easy for an activist investor like an Adage to take them out if they wanted to. The fact that Adage has stood by them for 3 years as the PPS collapsed from $25ish to under $2, and with how they handled the entire DOC tenure, raises questions for me why any major holder would do that?
If we believe that hedge funds would only support what is profitable for them what explains this and what does that suggest?
I will leave it to the reader to draw their own conclusions.
I too am curious to see what happens after this update. The last 3 updates were made during the time a coordinated entity of shorts had stranglehold on the PPS and were in process of driving the PPS from $25ish down to $2.
This started in June / July of 2015 and might have ended in March / April. I think that network (which I suspect included certain companies that held large blocks of ADXS stock the whole time) have largely covered their positions during the time we saw short interest go from 10.2M to 3.5M today.
The remaining short interest is probably for hedging, some index related shorts, and some hedge funds and retail shorts who were not members of the major short posse, but acting independently.
But no way of knowing for sure until after it happens.
Whatever flaws DOC had, it's hard to believe the PPS would be in worse shape if he had stayed at the helm.
The real disgrace in my opinion, wasn't the decision per se to terminate DOC, but rather how it was done and that the BOD had no qualified candidate to take his position. Lombardo's tenure appears to have been a flop.
It's also added to the disgrace that the BOD gave free reign to a CEO who took almost 5% of the company, before deciding to suddenly fire him with no viable replacement.
To me this is the dilemma that ADXS has always faced. It's why I understood at the time (in principle) why DOC took the approach he did. It might sound nice to raise cash by carving up all the franchises and selling them off whole, or even splitting them further.
But the reality is that creates a giant bowl of spaghetti if they ever want to sell the entire company. A company buying ADXS in the future, will pay more if ADXS still owns the lion's share of profits and don't have to deal with a half dozen companies only paying them royalties.
Good questions. Although to this specific point one thing I have found somewhat curious in the last 3 months is how relatively quiet it has been on the M&A front. Not just ADXS but for all small to midcap Bios. There was a flurry of deals to kick off the year and then mostly silence since then.
Big Pharma is still sitting on a mountain of cash and recently it sounds like the Big Pharma pricing model may not come under the political pressure many were concerned about.
So why the silence? I can only guess that there must be lots of games of chicken taking place across the sector. Big Pharma is dangling cash for a Bluelight Special purchase price, and Baby Bios are maybe saying "thanks but that is not enough money for what we have."
P.S...As a WMT greeter I thought you would appreciate the throwback to when Kmart was king.
It might also answer the question of how a BOD that allowed the give away of almost 5% of the company to a CEO they then fired with no viable contingency plan for a replacement, and oversaw a PPS collapse of $25ish to $1.60 was allowed to remain unchallenged with no activist investors taking them on.
Instead they each received about 10+M votes in support. How and why?
Even BOD's with the purest and most honorable intentions usually pay a heavy price for such wretched decision making.
I still see nowhere near 10M shares added by institutional buyers on the most recent reports.
Where did all those shares go? Most probably they were used to cover and this is why we saw the short interest drop so rapidly and dramatically.
ADXS may someday be a good case study of what a professionally run and perfectly executed "short and extort" campaign looks like.
I've been seeing glimpses of evidence since the Amgen deal and it accelerated last summer. What I did not fully appreciate until the last 9-12 months was that this plan was likely set in motion back in early 2015. The entities behind this might have made $100+ Million in profits.
As I have mentioned a number of times, now I am forced to hope their Greed-O-Meter is being set to run it back up the flagpole based on key future events.