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It's actually pretty funny how spot on and accurate all our opinions about "Lanza" and "the science" were. It looks like everyone else has disappeared...any activity over at the magic stem cell thingy?
I would like to know, if anyone can tell me because I'm not an expert on ADRs, if there is any benefit to investing in an ADR of a foreign corporation at all rather than in the home market?
Got the cash from the tender in my IRA accounts. Time to go shopping!
Well that's it folks. Celebration for a successful tender and moving on to our other investments wherever they are (energy!!!)--buy low, sell high-- great time to get in on some great dividend stocks for a bargain. I just want to thank you personally Captain Kirk for all your great posts and to Elysse for your great posts too and for being great interlocutors about all of this.
Cheers everyone!
Everyone is ready to move on, I think even the dreamers from the stem blog thingy... tick tock... news soon?
Couldn't agree with you more... I'm definitely "feeling the Bern". Also whoever is elected president needs to work to fix the overly onerous FDA process while still maintaining safety standards. There should be a kinder regulatory climate in this country for stem cell research that avoids the pitfalls of the big pharma dominated political economy too.
Yes, I agree, some people will blow quite a bit of money with lawyers suing a multi-billion dollar corporation over a 100% legal sale in Delaware courts. Sounds like a great use of time and money, if you are Gary Aronson. For the rest of us, who don't have tens of thousands of dollars to spend suing over an 8.50 tender price, tendering is the 100% right thing to do. Almost none of the shareholders are fat enough cats to waste money fighting such a futile fight--if there were so many rich shareholders, they would simply have bought up enough positions of the company on the open market to have had leverage over its future in the first place. The only certified major shareholder we know of is Gary Aronson, if Gary is suing, good for him, probably going to come to nothing. Can someone do a public filing search and see if there is any evidence that so many shareholders actually have attorneys and are actually suing in Delaware courts for appraisals? There needs to be empirical evidence, because anyone can easily find out that it is an expensive thing to do indeed with a high probability of failure.
I tendered all my shares in mid-December and am still getting tons of snail mail and email requests to tender. There is absolutely no validity to the claim that they are desperate because they are sending out totally routine reminders, to everyone who was on record owning shares before the start of the deal regardless of whether they have already tendered or not.
Standing ovation! There has been so much BS to LOL about here for so long.
Even since I started posting here my ideas about the various types of BS that get recycled around the magic stem thingy, I've seen all those threads of BS resurface proportional to the level of desperation felt given that said BS is OBVIOUSLY now TOTAL BS without any deniability!!
SO much for "Lanza" "the Science" "big pharma" "100$ per share" "big shareholders holding out" "mario gabelli is going to save the retail shareholder" and all that BS yada yada. Especially hilarious have been the letters full of spelling mistakes and grammatical errors to President Obama and Pfizer and the SEC and all elected representatives.
It'd be a fascinating study for a sociologist or psychologist to study the ACTC OCATA shareholders on these forums over the last 6 years as a study in delusion against all facts because of desire to gain financially. I don't for a second believe the people here that claim they were all invested in ACTC OCATA for mere do gooding. You invest in the stock market to make money; you speculate in stocks like this with the desire to make LOTS OF MONEY on a PURE RISK play!!! BIG RISK, BIG REWARD or (most of the time) BIG RISK, BIG LOSSES!!! OCATA was like throwing down big chips on a hand of poker. Now the BIG RISK, instead of being a total bust, get's bailed out: a lot of us get most of our chips back!! Imagine that!!! I say to everyone who is upset about this: GO INVEST IN ASTELLAS NOW, if you care about making money and "the SCIENCE"!!! If you lost money, that's life, loses get eaten and we move on. We are not PW or Lanza or any of the very very few people who get to make lots of money on this deal. We can waaaah like babies or realize that we signed up for whatever would happen because that's just the truth.
Too bad no one will care. Sitting outside an office park in the cold, to try to stop Citibank, Jeffries, and a giant Japanese corporation from buying formerly Advanced Cell Technology of Marlborough, Mass. Sounds like an excellent plan and great use of time IMHO. The CNN trucks are gonna be all over that while the rest of the east coast gets clobbered with a blizzard and flooding on the Jersey shore... Right on!!!
I agree, it's just a matter of time now. I have time to wait for energy sector to bottom out too, how low will it go?
Great research, thanks!
Tick tock... I'm lurking here, but the rumor mill is just frankly exhausting. Elysse1 and Captain, what do you think I should do, untender and just sell them all? This is my thinking now, or wait it out? Selling at 8.43 doesn't bother me. The major reason I haven't by now is really just that it requires me being on hold with a brokerage for an uncertain amount of time while I'm trying to work during the day. Sigh. Maybe I'll just do it. $2 a share is awful. It's paranoid, but bad things have happened repeatedly with OCATA/ACTC, so maybe it is really prudent to get out right now. I could sell in 48 hours. Really thinking about it now. I don't want to lose all my money on a failed tender.
Right, Gabelli is the real white knight. LOL!!!! Great post Captain!
Elysse1, about selling/tendering: for a while I was about to untender and sell out on the market the rest of my position, but I see enough compelling evidence that the tender is likely to be successful that I'm going to keep my shares tendered for now. If there is any "bonus" at the end, like a slightly high offer price, I believe that share tendered now would receive the same price everyone else gets. For a while I was pretty antsy about selling the shares because of, I think pretty rational, paranoia about something going terribly wrong with the tender. But the trading volume and signals from various bits of evidence, Lanza statement, Gabelli arbitrage, Matt's interview, high trading volume, the hiring of this merger investor relations firm, my feeling is that Astellas really wants this deal to go through to the extent that they are likely to raise the offer price slightly rather than walk away--this is based on the hiring of the PR firm. IN any case, the simple truth is that at 8.50 per share, I'm losing like 20% of my investment in this company. That's fine because, as I've said in the past, I really look at the end of this OCAT/ACTC saga in my life as the beginning of a completely new way of looking at investing. I have a 30 year plan for building wealth now (lots of DIV compounding over time) and I'm not going to speculate anymore, other than long term sector specific "speculations" by buying and holding ETFs in some developing economies (Vietnam) or something like that. I've read about 3-4 books on investing in the last 6 months, and for someone of my age and goals going "all in" on something like OCATA in the future is no longer a viable or reasonable thing to do. If i lose, I lose everything. I did sell for about 19% loss all my shares in another brokerage account on new year's eve. I feel like i have some money safe now. If something goes terribly wrong with this tender it will be my fault for not just bailing and selling now. I don't know what your position is but if losing to you is a MAJOR loss selling now is always the safest bet. IMHO maybe I AM playing with fire by waiting it out. There is a very human thing: we like to be involved in the narrative, the story, the drama and stick things out to the end. In this way, I am totally a long term shareholder. Letting go for me is just as hard as everyone else even if I tend to read this situation very differently. We've all been through years of drama and BS, I think it has an impact on everyone and makes it hard to just press sell without thinking thrice or four times over.
I do admire the tenacity of the 'hopers', for what it's worth, even if I see things much more cynically.
Chuckanutman, do you understand the meaning of the word "arbitrage"? What are you even talking about?!? LOL Do you understand that Mario Gabelli's companies engage in professional arbitrage, that is they look for companies in the process of mergers or acquisitions and buy shares to make different kinds of derivate profits off of the difference of the price between tenders and market value as well as the whole slew of option calls etc.? Your calling the secretary at Mario Gabelli Corp to thank him for being a long... I have no idea what is going through your mind?
Thanks, GREAT post with GREAT information!
Yes, I believe so, the Captain just posted a very clear explanation of what Gabelli is up to. His companies--likely computer algorithms-- are doing arbitrage on a deal that in his/their professional opinion is going to close and net some profits according to a formula they have determined is successful with tender offers in merger/acquisitions. This is the definition of arbitrage: "the simultaneous buying and selling of securities, currency, or commodities in different markets or in derivative forms in order to take advantage of differing prices for the same asset."
Exactly, if something miraculous happens and Gabelli is not just doing an arbitrage operation, which is what it looks like, of course I would take a higher buy out! I've never been against higher buy outs, but I've also never lost my mind because of wanting it!
That's right. In fact, a few years ago I worked briefly with a guy at my institution of higher education who was writing a doctoral thesis about how the "enforcement" mechanisms of the SEC have been designed by congress through decades of lobbyist coaching, to result in little to no enforcement whatsoever. "Investigations" are often as far as they go, and SURPRISE, "investigators" often let the in-house attorneys of suspected companies conduct the investigations themselves. HAHAHAH LOL!!!! This is not a joke. This is how the SEC works, investigations, rarely some actions! The ATTNY GENERAL Eric Holder didn't criminally prosecute a single bankster responsible for illegal derivatives trading during the 2008 financial crisis--because they were all his old friends! LOL
Another great post from Captain Kirk.
It really blows my mind the high levels of delusion that people sink into regarding this company. All the accusations that someone like me, a long time shareholder (or other long term holders), is "against" everyone that wanted a better deal and "against" OCAT or something like that is part of the entire complex, which is, to be precise, an anti-scientific and emotional response to the fact that people who speculated on this company are not going to have the fantasy of getting rich off a penny stock come true. I've never been "against" OCATA/ACTC, but it's an empirical fact, no matter what people say about Lanza, "the science," the corruption, whatever...it's just not going to come true. I am not getting rich off this speculation. There is no white knight with a better offer, not except Astellas, who just rescued shareholders from a nearly $3 per share pit of oblivion. People are free to have lots of fantasies about things happening every which way, but I simply do not understand maintaining false consciousness against the preponderance of evidence.
Thanks, Captain, again for being a rational voice here. The credulousness and emotion of the "stem blog thingy people," making statements without any facts behind them is just incredible. Regarding the email from the "stem thingy" founder about the possibility that the industry is full of "lies," the truly sad thing was that email was so clearly emotional, and full of grammatical errors and misspellings (not to mention devoid of much evidence), anyone with a college level of education couldn't possibly have taken it seriously.
Noticed that... Tender is near I think. I was going to untender more today to sell but at this clip looks good for a successful transaction.
Does the Astellas ADR pay dividends? Wouldn't it be better to find a way to invest in Astellas (if moving from OCAT) in Japanese markets?
I am going to do this as well. I already sold about half of my shares. I'm getting impatient and I want the cash. There are a lot of good entry points coming up in the energy sector. Will call on Monday to untender the rest and then sell them off. the pennies difference between the market price and the tender offer is negligible.
Sure, I mean the potential for treatments down the line is great, but we are still a ways away from getting it out there. OCAT/ACTC has a trail of red ink from here to Timbuktu. IMHO, anyone who cares about seeing anything come of this treatment, and wants to continue to invest in it, should (after the deal closes) either buy the Astellas ADR or (a bit more difficult for little guys like us) buy shares straight up on the Japanese markets. Any future treatments for dry AMD and Stargardt's (any of these stem experiments) are very capital intensive. All of those "prestigious" eye institutes, almost all of them affiliated with higher education institutions and hospital systems, I hate to say it (but I work in higher ed and It's true) are FOR PROFIT outfits, it doesn't matter that they are linked to 'non for profit' institutions. Anyone who understands how university hospital systems and research works understands what I am talking about. Again, it comes down to the realities of how institutions and enterprise work in a capitalist system. People like doing good, but no one here is do gooding for free. As Mandeville said, "private vices, public benefits".
Do I support federal science funding and think there should be a lot more of it to develop life saving research and medical applications for the public? Sure. Is that going to happen more? Probably not without significant political consensus that simply does not exist in the United States at this time. Ergo, anyone that cares about getting these treatments out there should be happy that maybe (if it doesn't actually fail, because we don't know!) maybe Lanza will get a better team, lots and lots millions of yen for a real phase 2, and a marketable product in a few years. Or it's entirely possible that it doesn't work out. We just don't know because OCATA/ACTC has been financed on a shoestring for years with dilutions and bad financing deals and bad management etc. As I've said before anyone who invested for "the science" was a speculator. Being a speculator is great if you understand the risk. Believing in science is great, if that's your thing. But we have to be realistic and rational about everything else, all the inconvenient real world problems here.
By the way i unloaded half of my shares today. Untendering was sucessful. I have a lot of my money freed from this comedy. i'll untender the second half too and sell them shortly as well. Next week probably.
People think santa is real, and he's going to bring a higher bid or JV ot any number of things in his sleigh and they are going to wake up millionaires with millions under the tree!!! Sleigh bells ringin'...!!!!!! LOL all this shareholder angst about an invisible higher bid right around the corner and belief that we are entitled to something and are going to be saved by somebody ... All of this, despite NO EVIDENCE whatsoever, except aspirational emails sent straight to Paul Wotton's spam box--really is akin to a religious or a metaphysical belief in invisibile forces that are going to save the day. Fairies, phantoms, bug bears, santa clause, "Lanza," "the science"... All raised to the level of metaphysical entities of worship and salvation!!!!! LOL x 1000!!' Merry christmas indeed!
LOL??? A total nonsense, non sequitur!
WIth the shareholders of this company there has for a long time been this cult of Robert Lanza. People have bene very willing, all the way back to all that BS that Gary Rabin was doing, to talk as if "Lanza" and "the science" were "pure" and say if "Lanza had his way" then none of the bad things that were going on with the management wouldn't really be going on. None of this has been based in reality whatsoever, as the captain has pointed out. This also seems to be a way that people can convince themselves that the massive losses in their ACTC positions were furthering the cause of humanity, and therefore more palatable to them to have 30-40% losses turning up in their brokerage statements. It seems that "Lanza" has been a-OK with everything the management has been doing for a long time. He is highly compensated, still owns claims to a boat load of that IP he created, and will have more revenue than ever under Astellas to work with than before. WIN WIN WIN for Lanza. He will even have more time to write more of that metaphysical stuff about the immortality of the consciousness in biological matter. WIN WIN for Lanza. Maybe he can buy a second private island off Japan with more dinosaur bones from the proceeds from his giant share sales. It surely seems he was sitting around thinking about "the science" and "curing people" all the time!!!!!
There is also the mentioned fetish of "the science." I admit, I did invest in this company because "the science" has always had an amazing potential (also for failure), and it's really clear now that Astellas, a big bluechip company in a totally different regulatory environment agrees: "the science" is worth something. Namely, 8.50 per share. Anyway, I think now it's clear that "the science" or "curing blindness" or other humanitarian or noble aspirations--like Jeffry Sachs talking about do gooding investing in clean energy--is completely contrary to the way that markets actually work. Lots of shareholders will feel bad that this whole talk of supporting the science was in the end a personal aspiration that didn't really matter too much. This is capitalism. This is a survival of the fittest and richest playground where do gooding does not so much mix with making money and trading. Sometimes the two things will coincide by accident or through a great deal of vision and sacrifice by particular leaders and organizations.
I've always found it hilarious when people used to talk about "Steve" as in "Steve Jobs" as if he were some personal good guy doing great things for humanity. Right on!!! I'd advice you "think different" about that!!!!! Same with "Lanza" and "the science". IMHO!
I am still waiting for Cap1 investing to get back to me. They say their people in the "back office" are doing it. I also tendered prior to 12/17 and if I get the shares untendered, I plan to simply sell them and close the position down. Sick of this all, as I've said before.
I called CapitalOne Investing (formerly sharebuilder) to untender my shares and they said they were doing it but it was not "guaranteed." I said that they need to do it and let me know. I'll post outcome when I have the outcome.
Elysse1, regarding the awful history of the company...One really ironic thing going on right now--given it seems that Gary Aronson is actually involved in trying to hold up the tender--is that a very active group of shareholders, especially on the stem blog "thingy", are thrilled at this development. I say "ironic" because it was really just less than 2 years ago that G.A. was the #1 public enemy of shareholders on the blog thingy, as his seemingly endless litigation over warrants (Aroson and Gorton)--coinciding with the Gary Rabin messes-- darn near totally brought down the entire ship then. That could have wiped us all out entirely. A very close call. Almost hilarious, therefore, that G.A. is now being hailed as a white knight riding in on the horse to save all the shareholders. As the Captain says "WHATTT?????? TOTAL BS LOL!!!!!!!"
Well, who really wants to sell for a loss? Eventually you realize that you will never get back the loss and you say I'm ready to unload.
I appreciate it, I will try as well and report back. I respect everyone's decisions, but I am so jaded and tired from the emotional rollercoaster with this company and, as I stated previously, I am just ready and have been ready to move on to other pastures for a while now. Someone here posted saying he was prepared to "go down with the ship." I already took like a 25% loss on one position of ACTC/OCATA shares, and I am NOT willing to go down with the ship. I'm ready to take my loss and get rid of my position, I have no appetite for waiting and seeing what's going to go on with this tender drama. It is pretty exhausting isn't it? I bought this company around 2010 and the good ole' Gary Rabin days. My experience has been that being a shareholder of OCATA ACTC is a big drain in about every way. I might regret it if some miracle happens and shareholders get more money, but at this point I resent being jerked around and don't want to lose all my money or have it tied up endlessly.
Thanks for this information.
So, to untender and sell one merely needs to call the broker and ask to untender?
Captain, I really want to buy some other investments. Do you know if they would let me untender and just sell at 8.48 or whatever on the market? I don't want to wait to redeploy my capital for several more weeks, but is there any procedural obstacle to this?
Thanks again Captain Kirk, this is totally BS. It is laughable and totally stupid.
Captain Kirk, thanks for keeping it real! Also everyone else that is rational here...
This is just a little something to put out there for anyone who thinks they should not tender: not tendering is pure gambling. Investing in this stock was always a gamble. The BOD and management have shown, time and time again, that they have nothing but disdain for shareholders. They do not give a hoot about what happens to shareholders. Gary Aronson is not going to come in and save anyone from losing money or to get people more money for that matter.
I invested in this stock several years ago because I wanted to *speculate* on a biotech. It was extremely risky. Look at the financials. Look at them going back some years. This was always risky. Did I lose some money at $8.50, yes... Am I tendering all my 3000 shares? Yes, absolutely. It's time to move on. I am in my early 30s, and by tendering I cut my losses, and still have a significant amount of money to move on with. I am a much smarter investor now than I was before I got involved with ACTC (OCATA).
If you find yourself unable to tender, move on to new investment speculations, then you need to ask yourself why you are doing that. You are likely to either ***lose ALL YOUR money*** or just have to tender anyway, but have your money caught up in a futile legal process for months. Investors should walk away from this...sayonara. As hard as it is to admit, we will never make any money on this ever, and at 8.50 a share we are lucky not to go down entirely!!! Get real.
There are plenty of solid things to invest in--even at a speculative level--that are not a total blind risk like this was. Don't toast yourself by believing they owe us little retail shareholders anything... they don't.
I tendered all my shares yesterday and just wanted to post this final thought as I have been lurking and reading all these discussions for years.
Francis