Avid Bioservices Inc (CDMO)

[westjtter]

.....Was the huge short position in apprehension of the financing or apprehension of missing the Russell or just a fluke......

First of all Terry, all anyone can give with regards to your question, is an opinion......now I am not sure who all was involved, but it seems that Barclays was one of the players that were selling off PPHM in anticipation of them not making the Russell, and I assume there were other public institutions as well as some large private holdings shorting and selling shares. From the companies perspective, they were attempting a classic "short" squeeze by their two PR's in one afternoon, trying to create some momentum into the closing. Presumbably there were buyers lined up to fuel the fire so to speak(Barclays being one of them, as it now appeared that PPHM would make the Russell and had to buy back the shares they had been selling), and it nearly worked....actually it did work. The trade before, and the trade after were both higher than the small trade that Nasdaq "chose" as the official closing trade. Initially everyone thought that PPHM had made it, until Nasdaq announced the actual "closing" trade. Immediate protests to the Nasdaq were dismissed, and then what happened was a lot of shorting and selling, and the BOD now had to scramble to line up a large financing deal ASAP...which is what happened.

So call it "bad luck"....."fluke"....."complicity".....it all doesn't matter, because now it is what it is.