Ned and all,
The meeting is to issue the max. pool to 125 million, if needed, and if people think back, over the last 2 years ATIS had increased this from 50 to 100 million, and they're still not at 50 million yet, so this doesn't necessarily mean there will be 125 million shares anywhere soon. However, with the Prometheus group involved with the preferred convertibles, there is always the chance a lot of shares will be issues. However, @2.47 million of the 25 million has already been used on 1 mill. shares(11/98), and if the price doesn't drop(or get shorted down), at 2.5 only 10 million shares can be created, as well as some extra for the preferred based on what is wanted(interest in cash or shares). Nevertheless, as much as I dislike these kinds of deals, it is extremely unlikely to add more than an extra 9-10 million shares to the pool in a worst case scenario, as long as the fundamentals develop according to plan, and even this many would be unlikely imo, as I'd expect the price to gradually start going up again over the next few months. However, one issue apparently is that not enough shareholders sent in their proxies to allow the 1/27 vote to occur, and this needs to happen, so whether pro or con, please fill out and send those suckers in. Per a poster on Yahoo, the vote was delayed 2 weeks, but it is hard to read much of anything over there given the fact that most of it is garbage by people with no fundamental interest or knowledge, unfortunately, but without the awareness of this fact. Those who have been knowledgeable posters over there, for the most part, seem to keep their distance now.
Of interest, there was a big article that came out in many national newspapers on Saturday, based on the Feb. Nature Biotechnology article, based on the LA Times story on it, and it made front page news in the Palm Beach Post. The article was entitled "Lab-grown dog bladders show promise for humans." This was written about some months back, but the study appears to be showing pretty good progress, a big positive for tissue engineering. One of the articles mentioned the real advancement being based on GERN's stem cell technology, and this really would put the balance on ATIS, if their scaffolding technology truly is ahead of the rest, as it appears(remember when this stem cell article came out a few months back, both GERN and ATIS went up significantly that day, although GERN more, of course, and ATIS wasn't mentioned in the article, but associated by the street as being the leader in this area). This article over the weekend likely will get some extra attention back toward the sector, even if only briefly.
Also, tomorrow is the scheduled Annual Meeting of the Orthopaedic Research Society in Anaheim, CA. The ATIS presentations are supposed to be on cartilage, so it is starting to look like slowly but surely more cartilage study info should be starting to come to the forefront over the course of the year, and since G. Gentzkow alluded to a possible 4Q human clinical trial initiation, this could be the beginning of some good fundamental news to get people interested, and if dermagraft comes through in its trials, people will likely be more willing to risk the investment for the cartilage component, seeing less risk of running out of cash with the immediate lead product coming through(same for getting another strategic alliance for another product, such as cardiovascular or gene therapy). The fact that there are two biotech. investor forums ATIS is participating in over the next 2 months sounds like they believe there is finally something more and interesting to talk about.
Have a nice monday all,
Marshall |
