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Biotech / Medical : Biotime-Nasdaq's best kept secret? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Stephen How who wrote (655)	2/7/1998 4:51:00 PM
From: BulbaMan	Respond to of 1432

The answer to your questions is quite simple. BTIM's insiders are extremely bullish on their company, even to the point of borrowing money to buy more BioTime stock. They did the rights offering to raise a bit of capital precisely because they didn't want to dilute their (and other shareholders') ownership in the company. BTIM shorts presumably believe that the Segalls and other BTIM insiders are fools, that Abbott's management are fools for doing a deal with BTIM (with $1 million upfront) and that NationsBank Montgomery Securities biotech analyst, David Crossen, is a fool for believing in the BioTime story. Or, maybe the shorts just figure they can scare people out of BTIM stock no matter what the true story about Hextend may be. Perhaps the shorts are smarter than me, but my bet is with the BioTime people.

To: Stephen How who wrote (655)	2/8/1998 11:45:00 PM
From: STK1	Respond to of 1432

If you think the stock is going up in the short term that would be a viable thing.Unless you planed to sell.I don't thing these people want to sell though but can use the options to finance at a later date when the stock is up.Although i'm not certain but their may be some compensation here.

To: Stephen How who wrote (655)	2/9/1998 9:58:00 PM
From: Saul H Rosenthal	Respond to of 1432

Steve here is a reposting of the info on the Feb 97 rights offering from an old post of mine. I know for sure that the insiders bought in February because the company announced that ALL officers exercisedÿALL their rights. At that time we were given one right for each share we held. With every 10 rights you could buy one share at $20. The price was then about $30 per share. They exercised all their rights. (bought more shares). You may think it was a no brainer to buy shares at $20 when they were selling at $30 but you actually had three choices. Say you had 30 rights. You could: 1. Sell them at $1 apiece and put $30 in your pocket. 2. Sell them at $1 apiece and buy one share of BTIM, thus using none of your own money. 3. Exercize all your rights and buy 3 shares at $20 apiece and pay for them with $60 out of your pocket. The officers all chose option 3, (ie. they bought all they could.) Assuming the average officer held, say, 60,000 shares, he got 60,000 rights. Since he exercized all his rights, he bought 6000 shares at $20, which means he put up $120,000 of his own or borrowed money at that time. It must be tremendously tempting now to these guys to sell 50,000 shares apiece and become "millionaires" overnight. The fact that they haven't shows alot of confidence. It may be misplaced and they may be wrong but they probably know more about the prospects than any of us. Saul

To: Stephen How who wrote (655)	2/10/1998 8:49:00 AM
From: Jim Roof	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1432

A rights offering does not require the shareholder to 'fork' over money to keep his shares. BTIM was at 30 when the rights were issued at a face value of 1 dollar each - immediately BTIM's stock reflected this distribution by lowering to 29 - the net value to the shareholder was unchanged EXCEPT that the additional shares could be purchased at a 10% discount to the open market! Your characterization could not have been more wrong. You say that you understand that a rights offering is not a preferred way to keep a company funded. Where did you hear that? And what is the reasoning behind it? If Segall wants to mortgage his house to buy more shares it may not be wise but rights offerings in themselves make no such requirement. You are obviously stretching hard to make a bearish scenario from what is clearly bullish. If you could just do the opposite then the Whitehouse may be needing you shortly. Jim