Also since you asked, and just for completeness, you might want to consider a broader context of what appears to have occurred in 2018.
Sept 28, 2018: Biotron finally announced results of its very very late HIV trial. SP went from about 2c to close at 4c on the day. The SP moved up slowly over coming weeks but was struggling. There were a massive amount of options due to expire on Nov 30. Most had an exercise price of 6c which was looking okay if the price held up but MM also held 5,000,000 options with exercised prices at 15c and 18c also due to expire on the same date. They were still massively out of the money.
On Oct 9 at 8:56am a letter to shareholders is released which makes statements about expecting commercial negotiations resulting from the HIV trial results. The stock opens at 11c that morning after the announcement and gets to 14c. Within 7 days of that statement the SP quadruples from 11c to peak at 44.5c on Oct 16. Gee that was lucky. Now all the 15c and 18c options are in the money only 7 weeks before they expire and after 2 years and 10 months of being underwater. All the 6c options will cream it in also and thats where the money for Biotron's operations will come from. Talk about good timing.
We later found out that about this time BIT were in negotiations for an underwriting agreement for the 6c options which oddly was announced Oct 17th, the day after the price hit 44.5c. Gee, very lucky for the underwriter too. Why did Biotron need an underwriting agreement for 6c options expiring in 6 weeks when the day before the agreement was announced the SP was 44.5c? Were they expecting the SP to fall massively in the following 6 weeks?
Anyhow the underwriting agreement was price sensitive as such directors couldn't trade until it was announced. So I guess it shouldn't have come as any surprise that the following morning after that announcement, and 24 minutes after dropping the annual report into the news feeds there was a tiny little Appendix 3B released advising that a director had exercised 2,000,000 options. Maybe a few heads looked up from the annual report. Great, a director exercising their options means they have confidence in the company right? More good news!?
Turns out that the notice that a director exercised options went out nice and quick but the notice of director
s "selling" shares wasn't quite as urgent to be notified to shareholders since technically changes in directors interests, AKA "selling" doesn't have to be reported for 5 business days. Seems they reported the exercising of the options the morning after it happened but the reporting of selling of the shares looks to have taken much longer and popped out of the sausage machine on Oct 25 when we suddenly find out that between Oct 18 and Oct 25 directors "Michael J. Hoy, Michelle Miller and Robert B. Thomas" had sold approx 7.75m Biotron shares. WTF? Didn't they just tell us they expect to be negotiating with BP shortly for a commercial deal? Yet here they are selling. Hmmmm.
By now there are questions being asked but shareholders don't know the half of it. The SP is dropping back to close at 20c on the 25th. What did management have to say? Well not much since on that very day and by complete coincidence the ASX had a list of its own questions for Biotron management drawn up in the form of an "Biotron Limited (‘BIT’): Aware Query" letter which was probably consuming their time. It had no less that 6 pages with detailed questions regarding Biotron's recent announcements. Oh fook.
So alarm bells ringing on Oct 25? Wellllll ...... not so much, since the market knew nothing about this letter or the ASX concerns. It was not until 10:49am on Oct 30 that the market got to know about all of this via a market announcement. Shareholders happily trading on all the good news
. As expected when it did eventually become public some brushed it off and cheered at Biotron's response then went back to planning the $1 party, but many saw through it and quietly shuffled to the back of the jeering crowd and out the door. By close of trade the next day the SP was way down to 14c. Sad face.
Also interesting was that some directors immediately went back to dumping millions more shares and what interested me the most was that buried deep in one company announcement is a statement which indicates that on Oct 29 a director both sought and received clearance to trade during the closed period. That was the day before the market was even told about the ASX concerns in a price sensitive announcement and 2 days before the SP tanked another 33%. Why was this request made? Who granted it and why? What was the urgency necessitating granting this to a director at a time that the market was not yet informed of price sensitive information and the ASX concerns regarding Biotron's own statements?
Between Oct 18 and the Nov 30 option expiry date, directors collectively appear to have sold over $2.75m in Biotron shares if my calculations are correct. That appears to be a pretty hefty amount of selling in the weeks after telling the market "In coming weeks, Biotron will brief potentialpharmaceutical partners on the trial outcomes. Webelieve that the successful results from this study willfacilitate commercialisation negotiations with theseparties". Wasn't these "commercialisation negotiations" the culmination of 18 years of work? Why sell millions in stock just before the finish line when them to be involved in the negotiations isn't it? That doesn't feel right does it?
One week later on Dec 5 2018 the SP closed at 14c. Its quite an amazing sequence of events when you look back at it. A wild ride and for some at least some good luck. For those that hung on the story probably ended very differently later down the track and here we are 6.5 years later and many many millions of dollars in CRs later the SP is 0.003 on a good day with no deal in sight, unless its secret.
Over recent years many have accused me of being very negative about Biotron management. Please read what I have written above at least a couple of times and you may see how I formed my opinion. These are my recollections based on ASX announcements by the company. All announcement are still available online using the dates that I have provided. I'm not suggesting that anybody did anything illegal and all its all just my opinion so see ASX announcements to form your own.
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