You have it backwards. Companies would not drive the market price down to "avoid payout" - that doesn't make sense. Companies WANT warrant holders to exercise as that brings in cash.
More likely a party holding both common and warrants from the point when they were issued as units would sell the common to fund exercise of in-the-money warrants.
From there it is a not a big reach to SHORTING the common and use the proceeds to buy warrants covering the same number of shares. Meanwhile, other deep pocket players see this happening or the potential for it to happen and they pile in -since those actions are going to drive the [rice down, we can just sell and buy back later and/or short and cover lower.
Even if warrants are out of the money there are ways to arbitrage the common against the warrants, especially if someone has deep enough pockets to move the price around.
What we can observe is that the warrants got exercised, seemingly at an in the money price but not way deep in the money, which is the best time to exercise a warrant. Probably funded by selling or shorting the common. KTOV got some much needed cash. Imho they acquiesced to this because while all bio companies ALWAYS need cash, KTOV now has something specific to fund with that cash.
All rear-view mirror stuff now, but imho a net positive.
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