Moderna
This Moderna circus shows no sign of ending. On the heels of their stock price rocketing on the news of their "interim phase 1" data from a whole EIGHT patients, four Moderna executives sold $35M worth of company stock. Shameless, just shameless. If these guys (and gal) think their drug is so promising, why wouldn't they be holding onto that stock? Did the CFO really need $21 million in liquidity during a pandemic?
The canned response to this is that these stock sales were planned, which is technically true. But know what wasn't planned? A premature announcement of positive clinical trial results for EIGHT people, which is more or less unprecedented.
-CMO liquidated 100% of his holdings for $9.75M
-General Counsel liquidated 100% of her holdings for $4.5M
-CFO sold 20% of his holdings for $21M (!)
-CEO only sold $1M worth of stock. (How's he gonna eat?)
Amplyx
Amplyx just released news of their latest funding round - it's a $53M extension of their C round, bringing their C round total to "
over $90M
". Nice, but in 2017 they announced their first C round was
$67M
. Hmmm, 67 + 53 = 120 last we checked. That's either some weird math, or a very strange use of the term "over $90M". We reached out for clarification, but they couldn't be bothered with addressing a $30M error. Must be nice.
Phlow Pharmaceuticals
If you had $812M to grant to a drug manufacturer during a pandemic, would you pick one of the existing 250 US-based drug companies with an approved drug product? Maybe one of the 152 contract manufacturers in the United States who have facilities and expertise in place? Or would you offer it to a terribly-named, brand new startup run by a person who was previously involved with a company that raised the price of an anti-heroin overdose drug by 550%?
Kintor Pharmaceuticals
This company had an IPO on the Hong Kong exchange last week. They raked in $240M, which is fairly pedestrian these days. The interesting nugget is the portion of the IPO that was earmarked to domestic retail investors (ie average Joes, or better yet
Zhang san Li si) was over 500 times oversubscribed. So there was $10.8B worth of regular peoples' money out there. Wild times for a company without a website.
Exo (pronounced Echo)
You know you blew it when you realize you have to include the pronunciation of your company's name in every
press release
. Guess you can't change the English language at will.
Sonnet Bio
This is an old tidbit, but back in October, Sonnet Bio wanted access to public markets, and the owner of Hooters, Chanticleer Holdings, wanted some financial modesty, so a
reverse merger was consummated
and they pulled a switcheroo.
"But you shall shine more bright in these contents than unswept stone, besmeared with sluttish time" -Shakespeare, 55
...sorry, Bill, we're not done. Analyze that name a bit more. Chanticleer is a synonym for rooster which also has another synonym that pairs nicely with 'holdings'. Painfully childish, still unrefined.
