I am of two opinions on ADXS…
First, yes it is obvious (to me anyway) that since 9/11, really starting in June actually after the Investor Day, that the hedge funds short ADXS have been working with their MM’s in a brutal takedown. They have generated 10’s of Millions of share volume via HFT to crater the stock. For what purpose? It appears from the short interest report on 10/10 that they want to cover…quickly. But we will get more information on this Tuesday after the close (10/24) and will have to wait to see if that confirms the suspicions.
But I have read some comments that this takedown was done even though no bad news has been released from the company. I can agree with that partially. I have seen no material news, nothing negative, in relation to the science that would seem to warrant anything less than a PPS of $15 today, right now.
However, have we really seen no bad news at all?
I do think we have seen some serious stumbling in relation to the management and BOD of this company. Nothing that warrants a PPS of under $4, but enough problems for the shorts to use as easy excuses for their takedown.
My problems with DOC aren’t really compensation related, but my first questions about him go back to why did DOC always seem to have a problem finding and keeping a CMO? Something that ADXS is STILL looking for again? I will even say the firing of David Mauro never really sat right with me, but I didn’t make a big deal of it at the time. But moving on from the fact that DOC seemed to not be able to either pick the right candidate, or that DOC was possibly impossible to work with for a CMO, let’s get to the money and PPS management.
DOC had $160M in cash last October 2016. $160M. Many of us stated over those successive months that it seemed like the ideal time to strike a big partnership deal…from a position of relative financial strength. Yet DOC did nothing. Oddly for some reason DOC seemed either disconnected or paralyzed by the fact that the short entities were month after month driving down the PPS and destroying his #1 currency to implement his grand vision for ADXS. Yet, he never addressed it, never seemed to respond, or never seemed to alter his strategy.
In fact, I think DOC was almost too open and transparent with his reviews of the company’s progress and basically telegraphed to the shorts the long delays between clinical milestones. Basically DOC was very good in all of his updates about giving the short entities an all’s clear for the next 6 months signal, so short away with no fear of getting caught. We saw the PPS collapse after every Investor Day since DOC started them.
Then DOC gets fired, for a reason none of us are actually privy to. The BOD never addressed it. Tony Lombardo was made interim CEO, and we heard nothing from Lombardo for over 2 months. Then the BOD announces that while Lombardo is the “interim” CEO, they basically don’t have any plans to replace him anytime soon.
Then months after being in the CEO / Interim CEO position, Lombardo presented at Cantor. And he sounded like a guy who got that slide deck 60 minutes before the conference and was asked to fill on for the original presenter. It was a pretty bland and lifeless presentation in my view by a guy who did not seem very familiar with the immunotherapy sector nor with his own company. He just read bullet points from each page. No, Lombardo does not strike me as the guy who would lead ADXS into the next decade as a cutting edge immunotherapy company.
So, yeah, I have pretty much lost a lot of confidence in this BOD and management group. But what bothers me most is that after 10+ years of 3-4 different CEO’s, and years and years of experience with toxic financing and sleazy hedge fund tactics, why do they seem so oblivious to what is happening and what is being done with their PPS? Are they really this naïve after so many years at this? Or are they possibly complicit, even in a benign sense, in that they know exactly what is happening and they are giving enough time to a certain entity they view as a past and future benefactor to get covered?
I don’t know the real answers to my questions. I just hope Lombardo knows how to negotiate good deals and get a good price. Because he sure looks and sounds like a guy who is only there to sell the company.
It’s ashame really, because under a quality BOD or CEO, I think the science at ADXS is so real and so strong it could be a huge winner for both investors and patients. But unfortunately, probably not under this gang.
JMO.
AI
