NorthWest Biotherapeutics Inc (NWBO)

[kabunushi]

Good catch finding that 'write off' statement, Jerry. The whole AP due from NW Bio UK Ltd to Advent makes no sense to me. NW UK should be a wholly owned subsidiary of NW US, hence NW UK's books should be fully reflected in NW US's books - at least that is what I would have assumed!
There is a UK Companies House filing in 2014 listing NWBO US as the holder of at least 75% of NW UK's shares, so it's not some kind of LP-owned intermediary company.

The NWBO US balance sheet lists US $3.4M and $4.4M accounts payable to related parties, growing to US $9.84M in 3Q 25. So how the hell was Advent UK carrying a much bigger AP to Advent? Also, if any NW UK AP to Advent was written off to the tune of 16M GBP in 2024, that surely should have been material to NWBO, yet nothing of the sort was reported. These points are very hard for me to understand. All along, Advent has been reporting large income as increases in incoming AR (debtors in the UK accounts parlance) rather than cash. This whole thing is weird.

I assume, unless it was stated otherwise in the Advent-NWBO merger agreement, that any earnings retained by Advent up to the merger would move off Advent's books into the pockets of Advent's shareholders. Advent could distribute those retained earnings any time, even in 2024. But something like writing off the AR as uncollectible would be nuts, plus NWBO never saw any gain from any such writeoff; no writeoff of any amount due from NWBO has ever been reported. And the buyout agreement says that NWBO still has to pay any current AP due to Advent (to be paid into the pocket of Advent's prior owner, of course).

I naturally assume that any AR written off by a counterparty should be a tax consequential loss, but Advent's 2024 taxes paid reflected a slightly smaller net profit on sales than in 2023, i.e. 900k GBP vs 1.9M GBP.