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What’s Basenese’s “PGB” Stock? Thinkolator Answers Coming Your Way…

New ad for Micro-Cap Advantage hints at huge gains ahead if you buy before November 14 -- what's the story?

By Travis Johnson, Stock Gumshoe, October 14, 2021

The intro to the latest ad from Lou Basenese has it all — tiny company, huge opportunity, mysterious name, and deadline, just about all you need to get readers fired up to pull out their credit card. Here’s his wording:

“Buy ‘PGB’ Now!

“One tiny cokmpany is on track to dominate a $228 billion market…

“Handing early investors a potential ’10-bagger’ opportunity…

“But ONLY if you make one simple move before November 14, 2021”

So what is that mysterious “PGB,” and is there a reason to buy it in the next month? Let’s put the Thinkolator to work and see what we can find. The ad is for Trend Trader Daily’s Micro Cap Advantage, one of Basenese’s more expensive services — it’s being sold at $995, and, to his credit, he does offer a refund if you change your mind in the first 30 days, a reassurance that is becoming rarer among the high-cost services.

And he gets more detailed early on in the ad:

“I currently have $306,380 invested in a single stock.

“This stock currently trades for just $13 or so, about the same price as lunch from a fast-food spot.

“In other words, this stock is dirt cheap — for now.

“Why have I gone in so big on such a tiny little company? Well…

“In the months following November 14th 2021, I predict two things will happen…

“First, this company could receive full approval on the first ever ‘Plug and Play’ cure for ALL diseases…

“And second, this stock could personally hand me over a million dollars in pure profit.”

So that “PGB” reference is an acronym he made up, for Precision-Guided Biologics, and it’s some kind of immunotherapy — which is not brand new, the first experiments in cancer immunotherapy were in the 19th century, but drugs that leverage the body’s immune system are still a fairly new tool in fighting most cancers, and immunotherapy has gotten a lot of attention in the past 5-10 years thanks to the blockbuster success of drugs like Opdivo (from Bristol Myers Squibb) and Keytruda (from Merck)(those are just some prominent examples, there are many others).

Basenese references a couple big winning stocks that work in this “PGB” area as well, to give us a taste of the gains that might be possible…

“Trillium saw its stock spike 188% over the weekend after a massive $2.3 billion buyout offer from Pfizer…

“Or take a look at Arcus Biosciences (RCUS)…

“After entering a deal with Gilead which valued the company at more than $2 billion…

“Its share price soared, handing investors who got ahead of the deal a 528% gain!

….

“A tiny company called Forty Seven, Inc. (FTSV) was acquired by Gilead for $4.9 billion…

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“Handing early investors a peak gain of 1,605% in less than six months!”

So I guess that’s the dream for our little $13 stock… but what is it? Let’s get to some more clues…

“Its market cap is only around $400 million….

“It’s an early-stage biotech company, with its treatment currently only in the first phase of clinical trials.

“But once it reveals new data at an industry conference on November 14th…

“It could quickly get scooped up for billions of dollars by a Big Pharma company like Pfizer, Gilead, or Merck…”

We get a general story about how this company’s drug works:

“… it’s created a drug framework that “mimics” the cells that activate and guide cancer-killing T Cells…

“Essentially, it’s found a way to give T Cells a “hit list”!

“This way, it ensures they’re ONLY activating cancer-killing T Cells, and ONLY attacking cancer cells, like a precision-guided missile!”

And a couple more specific tidbits:

“Currently, this tiny company is testing its drugs on Human Papilloma Virus, or HPV-based cancers….

“… more than $50 million in government funding has already gone into developing its technology at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine….

“… it’s already landed not one, but two strategic deals with Merck and LG Chem. Meaning there’s an even greater chance we’ll see a buyout any day now.”

And Basenese says that this company has a “modular framework” which means it may be able to “plug and play” ways to cure any other disease. He throws in some big numbers as well, including that if this company captures 10% of the cancer treatment market it would enjoy a revenue growth surge of over 11,625%. Those are the kind of wild hypotheticals often thrown around, though that would be a truly gargantuan win — that would be revenue of $46.9 billion, and no drug has ever reached half that level (Humira has been the leader for years, topping out around $20 billion a year, though Keytruda and Opdivo in the immunotherapy space have had ~$10 billion years recently.

He provides several examples of the big markets where this company could find riches, including HIV treatment and Rheumatoid Arhtritis, but the only other disease he specifically connects to this company is Type 1 Diabetes, he says the company is “testing its plug and play approach” on that disease.

And the urgency, of course, is that “November 14” date that Basenese drops — here’s the detail:

“… between November 10th and November 14th…

“The Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer is hosting its annual conference in Washington, D.C.

“All the biggest names in cancer therapy will be there.

“Including the tiny company I’m telling you about today.

“And when it presents its most recent data from its cancer trials at this conference…

“I expect its share price to go through the roof.”

To be fair, he does clarify that he doesn’t have any “inside information,” of course (since that would be illegal, and is the thing most likely to get a newsletter into legal trouble), and might be wrong about what gets announced next month…

“I’ve ‘dotted all the i’s’ and ‘crossed all the t’s.’ But I could still be wrong.”

The same is always true for your friendly neighborhood Gumshoe, of course, but the Thinkolator sez the stock he’s teasing is… Cue Biopharma (CUE).

A company which, I must confess, I’ve never heard of before. I don’t go seeking out little biotechs in general, so I guess that’s not a huge surprise, but it’s always nice to learn about something new. Here’s how Cue describes itself:

“Cue Biopharma, a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company, is engineering a novel class of injectable biologics to selectively engage and modulate targeted T cells directly within the body to transform the treatment of cancer, infectious diseases and autoimmune diseases. The company’s proprietary platform, Immuno-STAT™ (Selective Targeting and Alteration of T cells) is designed to harness the body’s intrinsic immune system without the need for ex vivo manipulation.

“Cue Biopharma’s off-the-shelf biologics are designed to modulate the activity of a patient’s immune system utilizing a modular, rationally engineered therapeutic framework that mimics nature’s own signals, or ‘cues,’ in selectively stimulating or inhibiting disease-relevant T cells for cancers and infections or autoimmune diseases, respectively. In this way, Cue Biopharma’s biologics avoid the systemic and indiscriminate immune activation (in cancer or infectious disease) or broad immunosuppression (in autoimmune diseases) of available immune-modulating drugs that can lead to deleterious effect, adverse events, dose-limiting toxicities, treatment discontinuation, and inadequate efficacy.”

The promising part of that to an investor’s ears may be “off-the-shelf”, since that means these treatments don’t require personalization — which makes for a much better business than some immunotherapies, mass-producing a drug instead of customizing a treatment for each individual patient. And yes, it’s a perfect match for Basenese’s clues — they do have one drug in the clinic right now, CUE-101 in Phase 1 trials both as a monotherapy and in combination with Keytruda, for HPV, partnered with LG Chem, and one of their other preclinical programs is partnered with Merck (for autoimmune disease). And yes, they are priced around $13 and have a market cap of about $400 million.

And they will be participating in the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer’s meeting next month, though expecting something earth-shaking there would probably be too ambitious — they announced that they have three poster presentations planned, and one of them will have some new data about their CUE-101 clinical trial, but they have also already released some of that top-line information (with, to my inexpert eye, reasonably good news — the drug was well-tolerated, with partial response from some patients). I am definitely not a guru when it comes to the value of early-stage biotech development programs, but it would have to be pretty shocking to inspire a big takeover offer based just on initial results from one clinical trial. My presumption would be that this story will take a long time to play out, as they continue with CUE-101 and also move forward with bringing a couple other drugs into clinical trials over the next 18 months or so. You can get a little overview of where the company stands from its investor presentation from last month, should you want to take another step.

They are reasonably well financed to keep going, with their partners on hand and with about $74 million in the bank — these early stage clinical trials with just a few dozen patients are not usually overwhelmingly expensive, so the $10 million/quarter that they’ve been burning through to this date will probably increase as the work expands, but my guess is that they should be in decent shape for at least a year at this rate. Earlier this month they registered to sell more shares in a “from time to time” offering, so they can sell $80 million worth of shares at any time they wish — if the trial data is strongly positive, they won’t have any trouble raising more cash… if results of a couple trials are disappointing or they have to cut off a clinical trial for bad results, their finances might get ugly at just the worst time. That’s essentially the tradeoff you live with whenever you invest in a small cap with just one or two drugs in clinical trials.

The insiders are behaving fairly typically for an early-stage biotech — they get restricted stock awards that vest over time, and it looks like most of the C-suite folks are selling something like half of their new shares as soon as they’re allowed, so there’s probably no hidden message from the insiders, who also can’t really predict the future clinical trial results. The company went public about four years ago, they’ve increased their share count by about 50% since then, and the shares have hit extremes at $4 and $30 along the way, but at $13 they’re pretty much in the middle of the $10-15 range they’ve mostly traded in over the past year. Little blips of revenue pop in from time to time as a result of their partnerships, but they’re effectively pre-revenue and the income statement doesn’t really mean anything yet.

Will Cue Biopharma’s Immuno-STAT™ T-cell platform be a huge winner in the fight against cancer or, later on, against other diseases? I dunno, but that’s Basenese’s bet here… and I’m sure there are a great many readers out there in Gumshoedom that can predict Cue’s future results in the lab or the clinic more effectively than I can. All I can tell you is that they are pleased with their very early results, they should generate some other early-stage news over the next year and a half, and they should have enough cash to get them to those updates. It’s early still, with only one drug having been tested in just a few patients, so the future is wide open to a variety of outcomes for Cue — if you have any insight or opinion on this one, I do hope that you’ll share your thoughts with a comment below… thanks for reading!

P.S. We haven’t heard much reader feedback about Micro-Cap Advantage recently, so if you’ve ever subscribed to that newsletter please do pop into our Reviews section and let your fellow readers know what you think — thanks!

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gayelaree
October 14, 2021 12:24 pm

Thank you for all this information. I tried to find the stock he was talking about for most of my day. I was happy to see your thinkolater skills at work. 🙂

👍 2
Valer
Member
Valer
October 14, 2021 1:18 pm

Travis,
first off – thanks so much for your in depth research and sharing it here.

I’m on the same page with you when you mention that as an early stage biotech, the outcomes could be very different along the way. They’ve got quite a few patents and applications. Worth adding to the watch list.

So many biotechs these days working on cancer treatments and immuno-modulation. Which is a good thing and the competition is huge.

Best of success.

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Zaphod Beeblebrox
October 14, 2021 2:17 pm

I wonder if it makes any sense to buy a cheap, speculative call. January 2022 out of the money calls are pretty cheap.

Maybe for good cause.

TheMerlin
Member
TheMerlin
October 14, 2021 3:27 pm

The Street says CUE is a SELL but that’s all based on financials and fundamentals. They don’t get involved with acquisition possibilities. TD Ameritrade rates CUE an 8 out of 10.

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Jim
Member
Jim
October 14, 2021 6:48 pm

Checking insider selling on CUE, and there were 3 executives in the past month making transactions. 2 of the 3 were selling, including the President and the CFO. So if the stock was going to jump next month as this newsletter guy Baseness says it will, then why would the CFO and President be selling? I think they know alot more then he does!

Last edited 2 years ago by jlynch3d
Zbabe
Zbabe
October 14, 2021 10:02 pm
Reply to  Jim

It might be a pre-planned sell which they’re obligated to do.

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boomermary
boomermary
October 16, 2021 5:16 pm

Thi s seems like a decent stock and if I realled followed the bio-pharma space I might be temted but I don’t and I’m not

What I am interested in is a brnd new space, the psychodelics, where there at lat seems to be some hope for breakthroughs in hte mental illness, depression, bi-polar , schizophrenia issues,

Anyone know anything about those areas?

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barton
October 16, 2021 7:24 pm
Reply to  boomermary

from Palm Beach stocks CYBN, LKYSF, MNMD, MYCOF, PRXTF plus a pre ipo EI.Ventures that is just under $5.00…

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twycked
October 17, 2021 7:49 pm
Reply to  boomermary

Psychedelics is a very exciting area for those with these illnesses. I have a friend that’s had PTSD for 52 years.
He has taken it upon himself to grow the mushrooms. He is now trying to figure out the dosage where he will be able to function. This is not to get high but relieve and eradicate the mental diseases that pharma medicines have not been able to do. He has had some success relieving the anxiety and depression but finding the dosage is critical.

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Bruce "Buzzy" Book
Guest
Bruce "Buzzy" Book
October 18, 2021 6:09 pm
Reply to  twycked

I recommend your depressed friend take a look at, and perhaps a position in, Neuronetics (Symbol STIM), and I’m quoting them here – “An FDA-cleared, non-drug, noninvasive treatment for people with depression, Neuronetics’ NeuroStar® Advanced Therapy system is today’s leading transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) treatment for major depressive disorder with over four million treatments delivered. ” Their claim to fame seems to be a much more closely/cleanly targeted approach. This information is excerpted from a longer Oct. 4th news release, again, under (STIM), like, yes – “STIMULATION” Get it? Anyway, I got in on 10/4 @ $6.27, and on ~10/13-14 STIM reduced sales guidance, and the stock closed today, 10/18 at a…(wait for it) depressed price of $5.04 – and that’s not funny…so, maybe buy the stock here, have the treatment, earnings and the stock price will go up, and a general reduction in unhappiness may ensue.

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Vincent Noiseux
Member
Vincent Noiseux
October 18, 2021 4:38 pm
Reply to  boomermary

PSYK – An ETF by Horizon. Has had pullback.

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rob barnwell
Guest
rob barnwell
October 17, 2021 7:39 pm

long way from 1 to3 in the testing

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