badgerkid
5 hours ago
DB, no real concerns and no way to use technical trading for an early commercial stage bio. With each quarter of earnings over the next 3 quarters, the picture will gain additional clarity and investors will be able to more fully appreciate and value the stock. With Q4 and 2025 guidance, I suspect we'll all be very happy with the share price (unless you're expecting over $100 by then - that's going to take a bit more time). I still believe we'll see higher highs yet this year. Hopefully we'll keep seeing higher lows as well.
A buddy likes to remind me that we still want to get to long term capital gains on all of our recent share purchases. I'm good with that. And all signs from the company are positive: their growing and adding new employees, their patient que continues to expand, their generating real revenue, their expanding into additional world markets, and their product lines for additional cancer types will be expanding as well.
You kind of need this daily mantra if you intend to stay long in IOVA.
Have a great weekend and good luck to the longs.
badgerkid
9 hours ago
OT, "SEC sues Andrew Left, his firm Citron Capital over short selling" Jul. 26, 2024, By Joshua Fineman, SA News Editor: https://seekingalpha.com/news/4128923-sec-sues-andrew-left-his-firm-citron-capital-over-short-selling :
"The Securities and Exchange Commission sued short seller Andrew Left and his firm Citron Capital, alleging that he engaged in a $20 million multi-year scheme to defraud followers by publishing false and misleading statements regarding his stock trading recommendations.
The SEC alleged that while Left recommended his followers buy or sell certain stocks, he would quickly reverse his position once his report was published.
โAndrew Left took advantage of his readers," Kate Zoladz, Director of the SECโs Los Angeles Regional Office, said in a statement on Friday. "He built their trust and induced them to trade on false pretenses so that he could quickly reverse direction and profit from the price moves following his reports. We uncovered these alleged bait-and-switch tactics, which netted Left and his firm $20 million in ill-gotten profits, and we intend to hold Left and his firm accountable for their actions.โ
The SECโs complaint, filed in the United States District Court for the Central District of California, charges Left and Citron Capital with violating antifraud provisions of the federal securities laws.
Left declined to comment to Seeking Alpha.
Some of the companies included in the SEC's complaint again Left where he published long and short recommendations about include American Airlines (AAL), Roku Inc. (ROKU), Cronos Group (CRON), Beyond Meat (BYND) and Vuzix Corp. (VUZI)."
*************************
Sadly, these are the games in the stock market. Whether true or not, whether or not this will accomplish anything meaningful has yet to be seen, but we're aware that such games do get played often and on both sides of the trade - pump and dump, or short sell ahead of or timed with bad news, real or fabricated.
To the point of GMH, fundamentals often win out in time, but the ability to weather the storm is the challenge.
Investing is challenging enough and it's understandable why so many day traders and short term investors fail.
I'll be here for a while. Good luck to the longs.
GMH*
1 day ago
In every stock transaction, you always have a buyer and a seller, but you never know if either/both are retail or institutional buyers/sellers. For institutions, you know their positioning each quarter from the 13F filings. Most of the big institutions (i.e. Black Rock, State Street, Vanguard, etc) are long only (or primarily long). They may have some ETFs that are short/bear trades but these are generally structured using options/derivatives since the owner of the ETF can never lose more than the initial investment so a pure short play would put the fund on the hook for any excess losses. This leaves most of the true shorts to come from retail trading (probably a small percentage), Market Makers (on hedges for net short calls/long put options positions) and mostly (in my estimation) from Hedge Funds. I am also guessing, in the case of IOVA, that most of these are long/short funds (e.g. Icahn, 72Point, etc. type funds) where they short the biotech/small caps (because they pay no dividends that they would need to cover) and then go long the S&P or some other sector, basically creating a leveraged bet. A short only fund (e.g. Citron) generally creates a white paper purporting some fraud or significant business issue and then publishes right after they have taken a huge short position and then cover on the sell-off (so short term trade). I got into NVDA on such a CITRON paper (crypto-currency selloff thesis) back in 2017 for a now split adjusted $2.50. So, Shorts can be right in in the short term, but very very wrong in the long-term.
badgerkid
2 days ago
I'd love to hear theories, explanations, or reasons why we've seen a steady increase in short interest for the past year. Are there other strategies at play that aren't simply understood by the short interest numbers alone? Here's the short interest numbers over the past year:
07/15/2024 58,941,197
06/28/2024 56,421,027
06/14/2024 54,631,791
05/31/2024 49,964,621
05/15/2024 51,214,599
04/30/2024 50,055,411
04/15/2024 48,976,035
03/28/2024 46,378,639
03/15/2024 47,430,020
02/29/2024 46,706,133
02/15/2024 42,975,867
01/31/2024 41,966,529
01/12/2024 43,272,179
12/29/2023 36,407,693
12/15/2023 35,276,126
11/30/2023 34,588,695
11/15/2023 35,593,714
10/31/2023 38,861,574
10/13/2023 38,740,238
09/29/2023 36,767,836
09/15/2023 30,511,616
08/31/2023 30,071,242
08/15/2023 27,534,368
07/31/2023 27,549,902
surfkast
2 days ago
Institutional and Fund Ownership - Buyers Jul 24, 2024, 11:15:24 AM EDT
Major holders that have opened new positions in Iovance Biotherapeutics, Inc. include Summit Partners Public Asset Management, Llc, T. Rowe Price Investment Management, Inc., PRSVX - T. Rowe Price Small-Cap Value Fund, Inc., Braidwell Lp, Driehaus Capital Management Llc, DVSMX - Driehaus Small Cap Growth Fund Investor Share Class, Cubist Systematic Strategies, LLC, Hussman Strategic Advisors, Inc., HSGFX - Hussman Strategic Growth Fund, TASVX - PGIM QMA SMALL-CAP VALUE FUND Class Z, PBQAX - PGIM Jennison Blend Fund Class A, AASOX - Alger Small Cap Growth Portfolio Class I-2, Kestra Advisory Services, LLC, CFSSX - Column Small Cap Select Fund, Cambridge Investment Research Advisors, Inc., ADSIX - Disciplined Growth Fund Investor Class, Nebula Research & Development LLC, Seacrest Wealth Management, Llc, FRTY - Alger Mid Cap 40 ETF, and Worth Venture Partners, LLC .
https://fintel.io/sob/us/iova
badgerkid
4 days ago
GMH, regarding the bear case analysis, most of the investors who I've chatted with who are long IOVA or active in the sector have a similar conclusion - IOVA isn't necessarily a good choice individually as a short, but is part of the shot gun approach to shorting similar companies in this sector where the win/loss ratio for the shorts supports this approach. If you win often enough, one or two losers for the shorts will be easily offset by their other gains.
XBI is still one of the most heavily shorted ETFs which supports this theory of sector shorting. I assume this all means it's easy to pick losers if you pick the entire sector. Picking winners is the challenge. It's like betting on all the MLB teams to not make the playoffs, or to not make the World Series, but try and pick the one or two that will make it.
Good luck.
GMH*
4 days ago
The company themselves said that the dropout rate will decline over time, so I am going from that, but they also said it was in-line with trials. Also, note that the 5% drop was, I assume, from patient health decline. There was also a statement in the same article that the manufacturing success rate was 95.7% so those should to be taken in combination.
I also have tried to figure out the bear case and have posed similar questions. My only thought is that this is barking up the wrong tree. If a HF simply shorts 10 biotechs after they report good news and have a significant price increase, they will win on 90% of those with a 25% to 50% take rate (as we have seen here). That would easily offset the 1 that gets a buyout offer at 100% premium. The only conclusion I can come to is that the short position is simply a portfolio play and really is not stock specific, other than the couple of items that I noted (slow ramp plays into the over-bought scenario) and capital raise gives cover for the short position.
badgerkid
4 days ago
Dennboy, here's a nice summary of the non-executive hires that have been made over the past 6 months (I pulled this from a post by xtcgg on SW - the numbers check out):
Feb 16, 2024: 16 new employees
Mar 22, 2024: 20 new employees
Apr 19, 2024: 37 new employees
May 17, 2024: 30 new employees
Jun 21, 2024: 43 new employees
Jul 19, 2024: 19 new employees
A total of 165 new, non-executive employees in 6 months โฆ (certainly looks like growth and demand).
To your concern, I do think the launch is likely going very well, but I'm uncertain as to how much of an increase we're going to see in overall expenses. Even if the Q2 revenue is good, there may be an unrealistic expectation (a whisper number) of what earnings should look like that is completely out of line with what we're going to see in the report. That's also why I say we need 3-4 Q's of actual earnings so that a lot of this current fear will disappear because we'll have actual verifiable facts. We don't have that yet and so FUD can take hold of many of us who are long. The short interest report for July 15 will be out this Wednesday, July 24th. I'll be curious to see if the shorts are finally starting to cover some of the position. Even if they haven't, I'm confident that we're still going to see higher highs yet this year. I don't think shorts are in the know while we who are long are missing something, I just think it's the typical cycle of a biotech entering the commercial stage of their business - it can be a bit choppy at first, but personally I think it's actually going a bit smoother than many may believe.
Good luck to the longs.
badgerkid
7 days ago
FWIW, Iovance has 19 new, non-executive employees getting awarded their inducement grants: https://ir.iovance.com/news-releases/news-release-details/iovance-biotherapeutics-reports-inducement-grants-under-20 . The point here is the company continues to expand its operation, they continue to hire more employees for what is likely a very good ramp-up of demand, but they continue their quiet approach to sharing numbers (it's still just too early to worry). Q2 will provide some insights, we'll likely get a glimpse into Q3 with some forward guidance, but we're still several Q's of revenue reporting away from the general market knowing how to value IOVA and to evaluate this company's growth potential. Everything still looks great to me except the stock price. Good luck to the longs.
I just got home from one business trip and I'm heading out again for another.
I'll catch up with all of you later.
Badgerkid
badgerkid
1 week ago
GMH, and that's why we're here, Iovance's future looks incredibly bright for both patients and investors alike. Though I disagree on the buyout scenario, I understand your view (and desire) that iovance continues on its own as a stand alone. If this management team and group of investors wish to continue on that path, the rewards could and should be enormous, but I also don't think big pharma wants that risk. I expect that some company will eventually make an offer that just can't be refused when it's put to a vote of the majority owners. That said, if the major shareholders are all on the same page, your scenario is certainly possible, but my gut says that there could be dissension in the ranks should a significant offer be made. I'm good with both scenarios. We're nowhere near my target price, so all of this conjecture is just a way to pass the time while Iovance continues to execute on its plan of multiple approvals and additional markets.