I have an credible explanation of the article. First it mentions 4 companies in the same space right. What company would pay for an article that mentions their competitors? If I'm paying $3500 for an article - man I want it now and I want it all about ME! So the old rule is "follow the money" and that was done here by AF but one glaring omission with AF. He doesn't mention the DATE of the payment. The date was 6/30/14. What if he said paid PR and the date of the payment was in Jan - Who is seriously going to believe that money lasted 6 months! the point is the date of the payment for PR is key.
So I did some research - this firm provides a service for $3500 and its job is to collect e-mails of investors. Typically marketing contracts are 30 days from payment. Perhaps their efforts to gather the required e-mails was running a little short so they spiced it up by writing an article that was clearly targeted to investors interested in the NASH epidemic. Logic follows if you like the NASH space and invested in GILD - why not hedge and invest in GALT. Results come out on the 29th so surely they want to blast these good results out to NASH investors that day after.
Clearly they didn't directly intend to pay for the article that mentions their competitors. They paid for results and an e-mail list. The marketing company in an attempt to fulfill their contract spiced it up and wrote what I think was a helpful comparison of the market.
Anyone want to test this theory? Subscribe and see if I was right next week.
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