Well, i didnt get approval to trade. This is the company i was referring to earlier today along with a brief snyopsis as to why i thought it could be a good, speculative investment. Have at it gentlemen:
The ebola virus is taking the media by storm - perhaps for good reason or the case can be made that such hysteria is overhyped. In any event, investments should be pouring into this epidemic and i recently came across an article(http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3955358/) that linked selective estrogen receptive modulators inhibited the ebola virus. Moreso, select SERMs were granted FDA approval (clomidphene & toremifene). After some due diligence, all manufactures of Clomidphene (commonly in the phx form of clomid) were produced by private companies. To capitalize off this, one would need to do an M&A analysis and have enough dry powder to make a few investments into potential acquirers. With this said, there is another option, to play the toremifene SERM through a penny stock (though trading still on NASDAQ) called GTX, inc or ticker GTXI. This company has exclusive rights to sell toremifene in the US (http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=148196&p=irol-newsArticle_print&ID=658317&highlight=) and also appear to be undertaking a huge correction (more research needs to be conducted on this).
The second reason i think it may be a good speculation relates to their delisting on 10.3. In accordance with NASDAQ rules, a company must maintain a market cap of 5mm (no problem here) along with a min share price of $1.00. GTXI has 180 days to regain the latter or it will be delisted. With respect to delisted companies, it can expedite a sell off because institutional investors cannot hold such companies and often times creditors will call in their loans exacerbating the problem. In this case, they have no debt and institutional investors repre < 25% of ownership.
I don’t understand any of this shit or any biology stuff at all so I’d be out by default, but I love the angle you’ve taken and +10 points for your research. Company makes drug for one propose, happens to cure deadly virus as side effect, said virus hits America. Basically sounds like a gold mine. Good luck.
You might be able to make money trading this on the ebola hype but don’t lie to yourself, this is not investing. Just because a stock goes up does not mean it as a “good investment” or even that you were “right” about a stock. It can simply mean that you were lucky.
There are so many things wrong with this stock it’s hard to know where to start but I will try:
Lost $475 million lifetime
Insiders make millions a year for probably doing basically nothing
Sub-$5, no institution is going to buy this
Dilution like a bad habit
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There is no doubt some scintilating “story” here (there always is). I don’t care what the story is – whatever they are saying is wrong. I’m not going to waste my time to try to understand how it is wrong, but it’s wrong. This is a vehicle to enrich insiders and nothing more, and it will never be more than that.
You might make money gambling but this is not an investment. My advice is that if you want to buy this stock, you should just burn your money instead because that will be faster.
If you don’t agree with my assessment, here is my challenge for you:
Go back to the beginning of this company’s history and track out all the promises they made to investors and see what the outcomes of those promises were. If it’s less than a 100% failure rate, I will mail a case of beer to your house. I am so supremely confident that it will be 100% without even looking that I’m willing to take the wager blind without even opening the 10-K. I’m not going to track it out because I already know the answer.
When these types of companies do offer more shares, who is lining up to give them money? Is it just a matter of investment bankers being the best salesman on the planet?
Damn B, i was just presenting an idea, an idea i am not even permitted to trade. The fact of the matter is, i am not an expert in either biopharm or assessing a biopharm company and bc of my limitations i was openingly seeking more information as to both. For the former, i sent it out to a few of my friends in academia to see how plausible serm(s) & sarm(s) would be in fighting the breakout. You may very well be right but i think you acted too fast in your response without thinking of the big picture. If a firm has exclusive rights to a prescription to deter an epedmic with a kill rate of 70-90 percent, valued at <40mm, dont you think the potential upside warrants the risk? Again, time may prove that you were 100% accurate but at the same time i think we’d need someone with more knowledge on the subject before dimissing, right?
There are lies here or it wouldn’t be public at $40 million market cap with a share count that has tripled over the last decade off of a 25 million share base. You can take that to the bank. This is just the superficial story they tell to the Street. Real life does not leave multi-billion dollar drugs lying around with no institutional investors involved in a sub-$1.00 stock. Just doesn’t happen.
You can say I’m too fast on the draw but that’s a good thing, that’s the way you avoid trouble. I don’t even want to know what the “story” is because I might get confused and start believing it. I’ve looked at hundreds and hundreds of companies and I can tell you this is not a good place to be within 2 minutes.
Seriously, forget the science, and just track out the promises. When you get to the end and see they have a 100% failure rate, try to reconcile that with insiders making $3-4 million a year and tell me how you wrap your mind around that and still want to invest in this stock.
Edit: I am not attacking you personally, I am just offended that this type of stock even exists.
No way I would play in that space, but I’ll address your thesis:
Clomid and Tamoxifen are the 2 biggest drugs in that category. Both of these have been around for a while, and are cheap generic drugs. Both of these drugs are effective and have almost no side effects.
Simply put, we really don’t need any more SERM drugs at this point, nor will we when everyone has Ebola.
There’s your science. That’s why it trades for $40 million as a tiny, unviable public company and has not been bought out. The high insider ownership is actually a negative in this case because it means no one can take the company over and kick the execs out, and so they will be allowed to continue the charade and make millions a year while working 10 hours a week and playing golf most of the time. If you look, there is a near 100% probability this is a crony board.
Before i making the following statement, i should preface I am not married (not even engaged or even a FWB situation hah) with GTXI, instead I am simply playing devils advocate. With respect to the science, can you expound on your last point. If ebola does continue to spread, why would R&D not be expanded into serm?
My non-doctor understanding of these drugs is that they both block estrogen receptors at different points in the body. Some tissues require estrogen to grow, including breast cancer cells.
They’re used in cancer treatments to block cell growth primarily but also used for fertility and hormonal treatments for women. These are also used off label for testosterone replacement therapies in men, which actually might be a better growth story than Ebola.
I’m not sure how the GTXI drug differs from whats already on the market today and I don’t see any reason or evidence that their drug is better at treating Ebola. As I said, there are already a number of cheap inexpensive SERM drugs on the market and as far as I know they’re substitutes. They all do pretty much the same thing and are well-tolerated by patients.
If SERMs were the answer, they’d just market Tamoxifen for a secondary indication, which would be much faster than putting a new drug entity through trial compared to a drug that is already approved for human use.
“Some of the strongest antiviral activity was observed with the ER antagonists, including clomiphene, toremifene, tamoxifen, and raloxifene”
Not a lost opportunity. Ebola is the day trader flavor of the week. The ebola fraud stocks are up or holding in a down market including IBIO, GTXI and NNVC. Non-frauds LAKE and APT have also been huge beneficiaries for essentially no reason (lol at the idea that a company that makes disposable masks and low-end rubber suits could be up 6x or more and trade for several times revenue).
If GTXI were larger and more liquid it would be the best short of the bunch other than maybe IBIO. NNVC is run by a very smart pump and dump team and hard to short (and expensive). LAKE and APT are great shorts but attached to real companies that have some eventual downside protection and there hasn’t been any borrow available for over a week. GTXI is likely entirely worthless but too small to do anything about.
This is why I said just because the stock goes up doesn’t mean you are right, it just means that idiots are flipping pieces of paper around. That is not an “investment strategy”. You can make money if you get lucky or are a good day trader but you can also easily end up holding IBIO on a day like today and get blown out. Industry experts use the term “pwned” to describe anyone long that stock today.
I’ll note that you haven’t done any due diligence at all on this (apparently, you refused to take my challenge, so I’ll declare victory on that one) and seem to be basing your entire view point on fluctuations of a thin sub-$1.00 stock. This is pretty alarming for a Level 3 Candidate. Pro tip: Very few sub-$1.00 stocks are ever a good investment.
Interesting thread, how do these biotech/pharm stocks originate?
Prior co-founder CEO/vice chairman of the board stepped down April 2014, interim CEO is the co-founder and president since 1997.
The guy who stepped down in May 2014 (Mitchell S. Steiner) sounds legit:
“Chairman and Professor of Urology, Director of Urologic Oncology and Research and the Chair of Excellence in Urologic Oncology at the University of Tennessee. Dr. Steiner holds a B.A. in Molecular Biology from Vanderbilt University and an M.D. from the University of Tennessee”
“performed his surgery and urologic training at The Johns Hopkins Hospital”
“responsible for formulating the overall product development and commercial strategies for GTx”
“Mr. Hanover holds a B.S. in Biology from the University of Memphis and an MBA in Finance from the University of Memphis.”
So I guess my question is, how do these companies form and at what point does it become a fraud? Do they go into it knowing they are going to raise a bunch of money, act like they are doing something while everyone has no idea what they are doing, and take the salaries?
Does the research doctor have an idea and thinks it could become valid? Or does the VC approach the doctor in need of a figurehead?
I think you could design a system to identify OTC garbage pre-pump and then try to ride the pump up but at the end of the day you would be investing in frauds. I just can’t bring myself to do it even though in theory you could make money that way on a small capital base.