The shares to marker have a lockup period. I don't believe the shares to NEA and others have a lock up. Depending on how much each new entity owns they will be limited in how they can sell shares, similar to the limitations on Eastern Capital. We know the offering is at $4 because the deal was put in place when we were trading under $3. This isn't a normal offering that you usually see. Typically the deal is struck and the shares are issued more or less right away. This deal was struck knowing that the shares would not be issued until the merger closes. So there is a long period of time between offering details being hashed out and shares being issued. Essentially months rather than a few days. Remember that the first big day of trading from around $4/shr up to $8/shr on huge volume (I'm not 100% sure of the exact price jump) was the day this financing deal was announced. That's not normal so clearly the market's reaction was extremely positive to the news. Typically price will settle around offering price, not double. He is correct in that the dilution is quite large to $TPIV shareholders. We will own roughly 30% at the close of the merger. When I spoke with Peter back in May after this news was announced he put it to me this way, "Would you rather own 100% of Tapimmune currently valued at $30 million or 30% of a company potentially worth billions?" I know my answer. Ultimately we would have had to wait for a ton of data before the VC firms and BP would validate us. With this acquisition of Marker's technology we were essentially validated overnight. Their technology (our technology now I guess) is worth a lot more than Tapimmune's peptide vaccines. We should get more info soon on what each company was valued at by the investment bankers before the merger which I'm assuming will sshow about $600M - $800M for Marker. If that's the case I would much rather have 30% of that right now with potential for way way more later on than the $30M $TPIV was trading at before the merger announcement. Regardless of the dilution I believe we made out ridiculously well. It's also worth noting that the Marker shareholders will share in the dilution from this new offering as well. Not just us. In the end, we needed the cash for the merger to close. That was a stipulation of the deal. Now, we will be fully funded through at least the end of 2020 but probably longer since the offering was for a bit more than originally planned. Your friend's assessment is mostly correct but that 10Q doesn't give the whole story. Plus, this is biotech land. Things don't always go the way one would expect.
Friends don't let friends place market orders
