In AMGN's mind (more likely than not), they can just as well wait until the company demonstrates that it is worth a $1 billion MC then buy them out for $5 or whatever.
Imagine how many "tentative" investments they have. For every 10 agreements where they front $50 million and have milestone options, something like 9 are doomed to fail. They could buy each of them at similar stages to ADXS "on the cheap" ($1 billion in your hypothetical 30/sh here) and spend $10 billion.
Then lose $9 billion when 9/10 of those companies fail.
Or they can put out the feelers for something like $500 million to get their jaws in 10 companies, wait for the one that succeeds to show that they're worth the investment, and pay $5 billion for them outright. They'd have the company with the approved drug (or soon-to-be-approved), and they would in effect save $4 billion or so.
The people who think ADXS is worth a $1 billion TODAY are not really thinking in terms of all the other companies in similar partnership/scientific positions.
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