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A nice slap in the face of shorts who thought they would release AH today.
I'm also seeing Michael Bigger lure shorts into a trap on Twitter.
You guys are reading too much into daily movements.
The only thing that really matters is the data that will be released within 39 hours.
If I'm not mistaken, the Senate is about to confirm Scott Gottlieb as the next FDA commissioner within a week or two.
Considering how much he has talked about wanting to speed up the approval process, it wouldn't surprise me if he ordered the FDA to bring Bryostatin into the market as soon as possible once the results show a clear improvement in patients.
He'd probably love to be the guy responsible for bringing an AD cure into the market faster to save more lives.
3 days left.
I'm noticing how more and more people are turning their eyes towards NTRP and joining the discussion.
Very exciting stuff.
Daily volume is now more than 3x larger than the average.
Feels like this rocket is slowly but steadily firing up its engines in anticipation of results.
Makes me want to hold my shares even tighter as more and more people shake the tree harder and harder.
There's absolutely no reason to worry about the price if you are determined to hold through data release.
Even a 99% drop doesn't mean anything until results are released, because in the end it's just buyers and sellers shouting different prices at each other, each with their own weird prediction about how things will turn out.
As a metaphor, the situation today can be described as a crowd standing in front of a scientist and a cage that is covered with a blanket. The scientist says there's a bunny inside, but he won't remove the blanket until the end of the month.
Meanwhile, the crowd is growing bigger and bigger and trying to guess what could possibly be hiding underneath that blanket. I mean we all know it's a cage, but what if it's empty and there's nothing to see?
Oh no! Some people in the crowd suddenly start to panic and make predictions about how the scientist is fooling everybody.
Some people walk away because they've convinced themselves there's no way a rabbit could be hiding inside that cage, while some people wait for the result.
Every other scientist has unveiled an empty cage, so why would this one have a rabbit in it?
In the end, nobody really knows what's gonna happen, and all you can do is either sit and wait, or walk away and laugh at the believers.
Either way, I'm sure this is going to be one seriously exciting week, especially if you are a shareholder.
All this increased volume around 17 is giving me the suspicion that someone big is driving the price down in order to pick up more shares from panicking retail investors.
Or to be more specific, someone big wants to get in and realized that it's cheaper to sell some shares and shake the tree and pick up anything falling out rather than just make a more expensive bid.
Today is a great lesson on why you should never set stop losses on something that swings +/- 10% on a daily basis.
It is also a good lesson on why you should never get into microcap biotechs in hopes of a bull run before results release.
Can't wait to see what the team has discovered. As for the price, it shouldn't matter to you if you're holding through results.
Look at that magnificent drop and all those panicking 100-share sellers.
Prime opportunity to get in cheap before results are released.
Correct.
If you look at statistics, you'll find that no other single disease kills as many people as Alzheimers: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/leading-causes-of-death.htm
Heart diseases and cancers kill more people each year, but come in so many shapes and sizes that no single drug will be able to fix them anytime soon.
Even diabetes is lower on the chart, and we all know what a revolution in medicine the first synthesis of insulin was.
Something else worth to note is the position of stroke on that chart, something that could also be treated with Bryostatin if phase 2b results confirm that Bryostatin does in fact regrow synapses.
Like I've said before: I don't think most people have any idea how much of a breakthrough a confirmed MOA would be, not only for Neurotrope, but for medicine as a whole.
Even a possible 100% loss of invested capital seems worth it when the upside is so ridiculously big, you'll probably read about it in papers everywhere once the right people find out.
Sure looks like a terrible attempt at pumping the stock then, considering its down more than 2% since their first report, not to mention that their report clearly states they don't own shares of the company.
I'm honestly kind of impressed of how low the volume has been so far, not to mention how stable the price has been ($18-20) for the last 2 months.
First I thought I was crazy for not seeing something that everyone else could apparently see, but the more I do my research, the more I'm convinced that people simply don't have a clue what NTRP is about.
Either that, or the big boys are simply waiting with their fingers over the button until results are released.
Looks like management just rewarded themselves with 415,445 options.
What I like about NTRP is how there seems to be just one guy handling PR, and his email address isn't even registered to the company domain. Their website looks like it was quickly thrown together in less than an hour, and the latest newsletter I got was just a forwarded message from a financial services company.
Feels amateur, sure, but it also shows that they're spending their money on actual science instead of stock promotion and fancy marketing.
According to the (conservatively priced) Aegis product model, NTRP is expected to have an EPS of $9.86 based on 163,625 patients/year in 2022.
According to Bloomberg, there will be over 50 million people worldwide suffering from AD:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-03-01/elusive-alzheimer-s-therapy-leads-drugmakers-to-abandon-caution
If NTRP manages to treat even 10% of the market, they would have 5 million patients a year, which is 30.5576776165 times more than 163,625.
$9.86 * 30.5576776165 = $301.3
With a P/E ratio of 15, each share would then be worth $4519.5.
Why would they? They have enough money to keep going into 2018 and have several times mentioned in their presentations that they would negotiate with partners after results have been released.
That same page also has two paragraphs that say:
"I, Robert LeBoyer, hereby certify that the views expressed in this research report accurately reflect my personal views about the subject
companies and their securities. I also certify that I have not been, do not, and will not be receiving direct or indirect compensation in
exchange for expressing the specific recommendations in this report.
Research analyst compensation is not dependent upon investment banking revenues received by Aegis Capital Corp."
and
"As of the report date neither Aegis Capital Corp. or its affiliates beneficially own 1% or more of any class of common equity securities
of the subject company of this report.
Neither the research analyst who prepared this report or a member of the research analyst’s household has a financial position in the debt
or equity securities of the subject company."
Definitely sarcasm.
What I like about AF is that his consistent skepticism gives a fresh view on NTRP in contrast to the majority of bulls here.
Another thing to note is that every time he has written about NTRP, he hasn't had anything to complain about except for how the science is "fringe" and "untested".
That to me shows that even he sees that there is a real possibility of showing reversal in a few weeks.
He obviously expects it to fail since he is a skeptic, but he doesn't have any real arguments to support his views, considering how solid the science is.
To me that shows that NTRP might be onto something big here, since even the people that are supposed to find cracks in the wall can't find any.
Short selling this one is even more dangerous, since a loan of lets say 100 shares would set you back more than $100,000 in case of positive results.
No wonder nobody is loaning their shares when there's a very real possibility that the short seller could go bankrupt from their trade.
Any company that can reverse AD is easily worth several billions.
If PKCe levels allow Alkon to predict if someone will get Alzheimers with a 95%(!) accuracy rate, I'd say that's pretty much proof that he has found one of the earliest causes of the disease, which if normalized leads to a cognitive improvement that is consistent with what the compassionate use patients showed, i.e. reversal of the disease.
Combine that with the fact that phase 2 patients have asked to be included in further trials in order to keep receiving the drug, and suddenly you start to see a pattern.
As for arguments that Bryostatin causes seizures, I suggest you read about the more than a thousand cancer patients that experienced no side effects whatsoever except some muscle pain, which is easily treated with painkillers. Those trials were also performed with a much higher dose than what is used here.
Then there are arguments about the length of the trial, where I assume people have a suspicion that a longer trial would show side effects eventually. These people however seem to have looked over the fact that Alkon specifically mentioned treating one patient for 7 months before they were unable to continue (most likely due to death from age-related disease).
It wouldn't surprise me if the phase 2 trials show some adverse events, as some of the patients are so old that a mental recovery wouldn't stop their other organs from failing due to old age. What I do expect however is a reversal of cognitive decline in the patients that do manage to stay alive for the entire duration of the trials.
Here's the relevant article in a format that's easier to share and access: http://imgur.com/a/NeESP
If PKC deficits in the brain really are the cause of Alzheimers Disease, then a PKC activator (such as Bryostatin) would without a doubt be the most optimal way to cure it.
Based on how skeptical people are, I'd say no one is looking at NTRP because of how ridiculous it all sounds.
I mean how would you react if you found out that some rinky dink biotech startup claimed it could do what big pharma has tried and failed to do even after spending millions on R&D?
The only people that are optimistic about NTRP are the ones that have actually taken the time to read through the research and watch the presentations.
As for the stock price, I wouldn't expect any major moves until results are announced in a few weeks, especially considering how many stockholders there are that got in early and haven't been allowed to sell their stock until very recently.
Something I've been thinking about is that if activating APOE3 stimulates the growth of synapses, and more synapses mean improved cognitive function then, theoretically speaking, Bryostatin could be used as a nootropic to enhance cognitive performance even in normal humans, similarly to how normal mice treated with Bryostatin turned out to perform better in tests than normal mice without Bryostatin.
A drug that not only cures Alzheimers, but also improves cognitive function in normal humans.
Probably because they're not focusing on spinal cord injuries right now, not to mention there's a lack of scientific studies in that area.
I did however find a study from 2004 that shows how PKC could have a role in axon regeneration in the spinal cord.
http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/v7/n3/full/nn1193.html
A reversal of the disease would make this one of the biggest drugs to ever hit the market.
Remember, a reversal of Alzheimers wouldn't just mean that Bryostatin cures Alzheimers. It would mean that Bryostatin regrows and protects synapses in the brain, making this something that could one day treat Fragile X patients, stroke victims, or basically any other disease or trauma that involves brain damage in the form of a loss of synapses.
Something to consider is that if they announce positive results and the market cap increases to $10 billion (which is about the amount of MC that LLY lost after announcing their Alzheimers drug failure), a $100 million deal with big pharma would only dilute the share price by 1% (if they pay for it entirely by issuing securities).
If you had read through the SEC filings instead of making assumptions based off a headline, you'd know that this "$100 million offering" is really just a registration of shares, warrants, and options owned by the people mentioned in the S-3, which were not able to sell their shares before.
There are still going to be 13,756,242 shares after dilution, not to mention that this number will only be true if the share price goes above $64 so that those last warrants can be exercised.
---
USE OF PROCEEDS
"We will not receive proceeds from sales of our common stock made under this prospectus."
$250,000 isn't exactly pocket change.
That's 0.1% of the company.
Two big positions (worth over $250,000) trying to get out before uplisting for some reason.
Because the usual trades happen in the hundreds, while the sell-side has an order of several thousands waiting to be filled.
If I had seen an eager buyer, I'd have written about an eager buyer instead.
Looks like someone with a large position really wants to get out before uplisting
Capital injections happen all the time across all industries.
There's even an Investopedia article about it: http://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/capital-injection.asp
Let's say you're a director. You have one option giving you the right to purchase a share for 19 dollars.
If your company is in need of money and the stock price is at, let's say 10 dollars, you could still exercise your option and pay the company 19 dollars to receive 1 share.
Since you haven't sold your share yet, you have technically not lost any money yet, but your company would then have 19 more dollars to use.
Choosing to pay above market price is something directors could do if they believed there was still potential in the company, even if the trial fails, which makes sense considering that they are working on many more drugs than just Bryostatin.
Why would anyone partner with them if the trial fails? Directors exercising their options wouldn't require a higher market price because the purpose of it would be to give the company extra cash so it could stay afloat for longer.
My point is that since the directors of the company issued options to themselves that can be exercised around the time the company is expected to run out of cash, it can be considered a contingency plan.
They've stated before that they have enough cash to keep going until mid-2018, which conveniently happens to be when the options are exerciseable.
If the drug fails, those options could be used as an extra cash injection to keep the company floating a while longer.
Remember: Bryostatin isn't the only drug they're working on.
He's the president of the company. Of course he's planning ahead and being optimistic about results.
It's like saying you're expecting great results from Sears because Edward Lampert told stockholders he was optimistic about future sales.
Take a look behind the curtains though and you'll find that Neurotrope directors just issued 70,000 options to themselves at $19.1 per share, which is barely above today's price.
Now, if the directors were expecting a positive result, why wouldn't they set the option price higher?
Also, NASDAQ still hasn't given its approval, even though the 10-K was released almost 2 weeks ago.
As always, I recommend you look at the data and actual facts instead of anecdotes and predictions.
After all, you can't get sued for misleading stockholders if you hint towards a certain result instead of saying it directly.
Yes, the article was written in 2015, but it clearly states:
"She eventually recovered, but became sick again after a few weeks. Jenni Spencer died in October 2013 at the age of 39. "
A lot of what they said seemed very similar to what was stated at earlier conferences, expecting good results (aren't we all?) but not having any actual data until late April.
Something that caught my attention though was Dr. Alkon saying that compassionate use trials were conducted after phase 2a trials, even though the article about Jenni was written before the trial.
Is Dr. Alkon having trouble remembering events correctly, or is there something they're not telling the world?
"She was fussing, and so I said ‘Tell me what’s wrong, honey. I’ll do anything I can to help you.’ And she said, ‘hot.’ Speech had returned after 12 months of nothing, the day after the first dose.”"
If a single dose isn't effective according to Dr. Alkon, then how come Jenni supposedly improved after a single dose?