Hovacre, while Ocata was not a cancer biotech, I think that company, its investors base and expectations, how it was managed and ultimately what it was sold for is comparable to ADXS. The company's investor base was a majority retail, with huge expectations on what it was worth. The company was terribly managed over the years with dilutions on poor terms eroding shareholder value away. Then finally a sale for $350 million, which left most long-term investors in the company underwater not recouping their losses.
IMO it's a naive unsophisticated retail investment view when folks make comments like,
"look at what BPs are paying for biotechs these days, KITE was sold for $11 billion, I'll wait for that." (taking one of the highest priced acquisitions in recent years and assuming ADXS will get the same, even though when that company was at our stage it was already valued at several billion reflecting great investor and market demand and expectations for the platform versus our $100 million valuation. It's like comparing a struggling technology company to Apple.)
"At a very minimum, we will get $1 billion and that would be theft." (Really, a sale of $20 with a 1,000% premium would be unfair to ADXS shareholders?)
"ADXS' stock price doesn't matter. BP will pay what the science is worth." (Uhh, the company's valuation is currently $100 million. Any BP with fiduciary duties to its investors is going to try to make acquisitions as cheap as they can get based on a multiple of the company's valuation.)
"$1 billion is chump change for a BP." (Again, they have a fiduciary duty to their investors to generate an ROI, so this statement is meaningless. It doesn't matter how much money they have, they are charged with spending it wisely and prudently, unlike O'Connor at ADXS. Think about how much money Warren Buffett has and he is known to be a cheapskate. You think Berkshire Hathway would have grown to where it is today if he had the philosophy to his management team, "We've got tons of money sitting around, go out and spend it and overpay if you want.)
It does feel like a sale may be in the works, and I would love to see the highest price possible, but realistically, I think shareholders should be happy if Lombardo is able to get around $500 million/$10 a share. Given the poor management of O'Connor blowing through over $200 million in four years with shareholder value shrinking, ADXS has lost investor confidence (the proof is the $2 offering). Hopefully, that offering was with the backdrop that a sale is being finalized negotiating from a base of $7 when O'Connor was fired and Tony was brought in. Frankly, folks who complain about the potential of a $500m/$10 sale think about the alternative of ADXS being forced to sell another 20% of the company for $2 or less for another 4 months of operations like we recently did. That is death spiral financing and would dilute us even more to oblivion than we already have and is a sure way to increase the probably that we will lose even more money.
