Ok, this is definitely the “most requested” ad over the last 24 hours — I can’t tell you how many folks have asked your friendly neighborhood Gumshoe to look into “Living Metal,” but the list is getting loooong.
And we are, of course, happy to oblige.
The pitch is from Michael Robinson for his Radical Technology Profits, and it’s not just about a hot new biotech company that has a cure for cancer and Alzheimer’s and all kinds of other diseases… it’s about a hot new biotech company that you can buy before it goes public through their Money Morning Prospectus! How exciting is that!?
Well, of course the answer is “super exciting, but usually stupid” … venture investors in biotech companies lose most of the time, just like most venture tech investors lose on most investments. They make it up with the few companies that do spectacularly well out of a hundred or more, of course, but developing a drug even to the point of approval for Phase 1 clinical trials can be incredibly expensive and time consuming — and Phase 1 is often five years or more before a company actually generates any revenue. The allure is always there because we imagine the vast riches from the folks who “get in early,” but unless you’re an expert and you’re “getting in early” on dozens of quality opportunities the odds are stacked pretty heavily against you.
So that’s the initial warning — and I have no idea yet whether Robinson is actually trying to do a private placement of shares, which would be a big and dangerous leap for a newsletter editor to take, or if he’s just trying to give you the impression that he’s going to get you “private” shares. We’ll see as we dig into the teaser.
Here’s how Robinson gets the juices flowing:
“A thimble full of this…
“Living Metal
“Sells for $141,748
“One tiny company has a monopoly on it
“It’s sales are set to surge 24,474% over the next 15 months
“And it could go public on the NASDAQ as soon as August 31”
And he uses the thimble imagery to help us understand just how valuable this stuff is … he says a thimble of gold would be $1,319, a thimble of platinum $1,437, a thimble of diamonds $11,581. And then…
“But it’s just a drop in the bucket compared to what I’m going to show you today.
“Containing both biological and metallic properties, it’s classified as a Living Metal.
“And it can only be found in one small stretch of underwater territory, 14 miles off the coast of the Channel Islands.
“However, its scarcity is not why a thimble full of this Living Metal is currently selling for $141,748.”
So… the image of the bluish liquid and the Channel Islands reference is enough to tell us which company they’re teasing (and yes, it’s a public company — it’s just not on a major exchange), but we’ll let the suspense build for a few minutes…
More clues…
“An international panel of 15 doctors from the University of Liverpool, London’s Institute of Neurology, and the Alzheimer’s Institute in the U.S. have collectively analyzed this Living Metal.
“They officially concluded that it can ‘prevent and possibly treat Alzheimer’s dementia.'”
Wowsers!
“124 advanced clinical trials are progressing rapidly.
“They’re taking place at Penn, Baylor, Loyola University, UCLA, and the most cutting-edge medical facilities.
Are you getting our free Daily Update
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just click here...“And they’re all coming to the same conclusion.
“This Living Metal can literally reprogram the human immune system to such a degree…
“It can make us totally immune – totally impervious – to some of the most dangerous diseases known to man.”
OHMYGOD are you peeing your pants with excitement yet?
“… it should come as no surprise, that even though sales of this Living Metal are only $2.63 million…
“The story moving forward is completely different.
“Today, every major pharmaceutical company is fighting to acquire as much as they possibly can.
“I’m talking about: Bayer, Pfizer, GlaxoSmithKline and a Half Dozen Others…
“Right Now They’re Paying $141,748 For Just a Thimble Full of This Living Metal….
“That’s because the FDA is set to green-light a series of Living Metal treatments that could solve the greatest medical challenges of our generation.
“And estimates suggest sales of this breakthrough are about to aggressively rise as much as 23,474% in the next 15 months.
“As I’m going to show you today…
“This Living Metal is Looking at Potential Sales of $620 Million Per Year.
“And One Company Has a Monopoly on it.”
Exciting, right? Sales going from $2.63 million to $620 million would be crazy growth that investors would absolutely salivate over. So who’s the company?
“Never in My Career Have I Come Across a Venture Like the One I’m About to Share With You
“Before I begin, let me tell you that there is a catch.
“The company who holds a monopoly on this Living Metal is not listed on the New York Stock Exchange or NASDAQ.
“You won’t find it on the OTC Pink Sheets.
“And you won’t find it on the London, Tokyo, or any of the major foreign exchanges.
“In fact, of the 27.8 million U.S. companies… both public and private…
“There are only 87 with the unique classification this biotech firm holds….
“I’ll reveal how you can become what’s called a ’round lot’ investor BEFORE it ‘goes public’ on the NASDAQ.
Which the CEO himself believes could happen as soon as August 31st.”
OK, so yes, the company is not listed on the NYSE or the Nasdaq or other major foreign exchanges, and it’s not technically on the pink sheets… but it is listed on the Venture exchange in Canada (used to be called the Vancouver exchange, it’s mostly junior mining stocks) and it does trade on the OTCQB, which is a little subset of the over the counter listings that are not quite as big and transparent as the OTCQX but do pass more “listing” requirements than the OTC Pink Sheets.
The stock is, as several readers have guessed already, Stellar Biotechnologies (KLH.V in Canada, SBOTF on the OTCQB)
And yes, if you so desire you can easily go buy “round lots” either in Canada or through most any US broker on the OTCQB — you can probably buy odd lots through most brokers, too, though hopefully anyone considering a $2,000 newsletter is willing to buy at least 100 shares of a $1 stock (“round lots” just means you’re buying in 100-share increments for most stocks, though sometimes it could be 1,000 or more for lower-priced shares). You don’t need a “Money Morning Prospectus” to buy Stellar shares, though I’m sure they provide a lot more research on the stock than I’ve done.
If you’d like to hear the “bull” case on Stellar, it’s probably best to get it right form the horse’s mouth — they are very promotional in getting their story out, CEO Frank Oakes presented at the Stansberry conference for investors in June and you can see the video of that presentation here, or the slightly more updated powerpoint slides here. Those include lots of pages of customers and potential customers for their Stellar KLH, including many drugs in clinical trials that use the stuff.
What does it do? Well, here’s Robinson’s description:
“Your Immune System Can’t Tell Which Cells Are Keeping You Alive and Which Could Be Giving You Alzheimer’s…
“And That’s Where This Living Metal Comes Into Play.
“Its scientific name is Megathura Crenulata hemocynanin.
“We’ll call it MCh for short.
“MCh is a very rare type of protein that has both biological and metallic properties.
“In other words, it’s part membrane – just like your blood cells – and part metal.
“And that combination gives it a unique ability.
“This Living Metal, MCh, Can Actually Reprogram the Immune System of Those Suffering From Alzheimer’s.”
Well, Robinson can call it MCh if he wants to — everyone else calls Megathura Crenulata by its common name, the Keyhole Limpet, and they refer to the pharmaceutical ingredient as Keyhole Limpet Hemocyanin, or KHL. Which is what Stellar’s ticker symbol is in Canada, cleverly enough, so we can see why the teasermeisters made up a new name to obscure it.
This is what’s described as an immunogen — a molecule that can’t be destroyed by your immune system, but which can carry haptens into your system to provoke a strong and sustained immune response, fighting off whatever it is you’re trying to fight (cancer cells, amyloid, etc.). That’s not a technical description and it may not be entirely accurate, but KLH’s anticipated value is in immunotherapy.
And the “unique selling proposition” for Stellar Biotechnologies is that they are the only ones who can scale up mass production of KLH from the Keyhole Limpets — because these limpets are (or are becoming) endangered and are in very limited supply in the wild. Pharmaceutical companies can’t rely on divers finding more limpets to use in extracting the protein from them, so the government and other investors funded Oakes as he developed an aquaculture system to create a domesticated and reproducing population of limpets on land. They also developed a method for extracting the hemocyanin from the limpets’ blood without killing them, so they can continue to reuse the limpets and extract more each year as new generations are born and reach maturity.
With the idea, presumably, that they can keep scaling this up over and over — they’ll just need to add more tanks to their aquaculture facility, add more labs to extract and purify the stuff, and track the manufacturing. They say they are the only source of GMP (good manufacturing practices) KHL, and they have at least a five-year lead over anyone else who might want to build a similar aquaculture facility.
So … how will that make us rich? Well, from what I can tell it’s going to have to be from dramatically higher pricing for KLH if and when it becomes a part of a commercial product — right now it’s sold for research purposes, both in researching KLH-based immunotherapies and as a way to test the immune response of other compounds, and Sigma Aldrich has public pricing (presumably they’re selling Stellar KLH, though it’s not branded) at $287 for 100mg. That doesn’t mean this is the price a pharmaceutical company would pay if they came to KLH and said they needed a commercial-scale quantity for a new drug in a year or two, but it’s the only baseline I have to go from. 100 mg is a tenth of a gram.
A thimble probably holds two or three milliliters, and the KLH product is in a vial of 0.75ml of solution for 20 milligrams, so we’ll be charitable and say that we can fit five of these vials in a thimble… maybe you have big fingers. That would be roughly 100 milligrams of KLH, so that gives us $287 as the retail price for a tenth of a gram which is something close to what would fit in a thimble… unless I’m missing a decimal point somewhere (no, it’s not exact — but it doesn’t have to be). If I am missing something substantial, please tell me, I’m certainly out of my element on this one.
So right now, despite the fact that the company’s presentation says that one gram of KLH has commercial value of $40-50,000 and Michael Robinson says a thimbleful (a tenth of a gram) is going for $141,000, it’s apparently selling for $2,870/gram ($287 for a five pack of 20-milligram vials, times ten equals one gram).
Back in 2011, when the company was expanding their aquaculture facility, they estimated annual demand at 2,000 grams a year and said that their expansion would get them to 20,000 grams a year. That would mean, if they sold the KLH at that $2,870/gram price (not $40,000), their revenue potential would be about $57 million.
Now, in this last quarterly filing, they say that “Given sufficient funding to continue scale-up, Stellar’s projected production capacity is 4-5 kilograms per year within the next four years, and
up to 20 kilograms per year a few years after that, depending on customers’ requirements and our ability to execute supply commitments.” A kilogram is 1,000 grams, so it sounds like they’re still well below 4,000 grams of production and/or demand today.
Current revenue, including everything (contract revenue and distributor sales) at the run rate of the last quarter, is $400,000 a year. If we assume that they’re getting half of the price that their distributor charges, that $400,000 in revenue per year would mean that they’re only selling about 300 grams a year. That seems unlikely, so perhaps they’re selling it for less… or more of their contract revenue is not specifically associated with the sale of KLH. if we assume they can get that $40,000 a gram that their presentation says is the commercial value, and they can produce 5,000 grams within the next four years (and there is commercial demand), then that gives us the possibility that they could generate $160 million in revenue in four years.
That would be tremendous for a company of this size (Stellar’s market cap is about $100 million now), and should generate a huge profit if such a scenario is really feasible (they’re burning through about $15 million a year in cash at the current rate)… but that’s about where I usually lose interest in the Stellar story — assuming everything else works out, I just don’t get how the stuff gets to $40,000 a gram. Doesn’t mean it’s impossible, of course, I just don’t get it — and there’s plenty of stuff to invest in that I understand a lot better.
They do have a partnership deal with Amaran, a Taiwanese biotech firm that invested $5 million in the company last year and is investigating KLH use in immunotherapy for a couple different kinds of cancer and is apparently in phase II/III clinical trials with those. And they do also have their own clostridium difficile vaccine that they’re trying to develop — that’s still preclinical, though they say their goal for the second half of this year is to advance toward an IND filing (that would mean they’re getting ready to file with the FDA for permission to test in humans, getting to the point where they could do a Phase 1 trial).
But really, those are speculative bets on drugs that I know nothing about — and their own C. difficile vaccine is so very early in the process that it’s impossible to assign any value to it. The real pitch for Stellar Biotechnologies is that they are the sole source for a key ingredient, and the mass demand will drive up production and prices in a pretty dramatic fashion as pharmaceutical companies fight to get the quantity they need. So my understanding falls apart at that point because I have absolutely no idea how many molecules of KLH would be required for each dose of a commercial immunotherapy, and what that would mean for how many grams of KLH must be produced from these mollusks, and, in turn, how many mollusks they’d have to have in their aquaculture facility to turn a profit. So without any notion of whether these numbers that they bat around of $40,000 a gram hold any water, I can’t guess at how much money they might eventually be able to make. I’m not willing to bet the farm on their C. difficile preclinical immunotherapy, so until I can understand those future financial metrics somehow Stellar doesn’t appeal to me.
That doesn’t mean it won’t work for you though, of course — you might wish to take a flier, it’s certainly a stock that has been actively promoted and teased many times and they are very promotional themselves with a strong presence at investment conferences, so the fact that I can’t figure out a reasonable future valuation doesn’t mean the stock won’t go up. The story still sounds exciting, the clinical trials creating the demand and driving up the prices just as Stellar is able to ramp up production, but there are so many moving parts and the clarity on actual possible pricing is so lacking that I’ll leave this for others.
Robinson has some pretty strong-sounding “guarantees” for you as well, should you choose to subscribe:
“Guarantee #1: 30-Day Grace Period
“If, for any reason, I feel Radical Technology Profits is not right for me in the next 30 days, I’m entitled to a full refund of my membership. No questions asked.
“Guarantee #2: The NASDAQ Listing Will Take Place By November 30th
“If this company is not listed on the NASDAQ by November 30, 2014, I will receive 12 months of access to Radical Technology Profits service for free.
“Guarantee #3: At Least One Commercialized Drug Will Reach The Market Within 12 Months
“If this biotech firm does not have at least one MCh-based drug reach commercialization before September 2015, I will receive an additional 12 months of access to Radical Technology Profits service for free.”
So… you’ll notice that those second and third quarantees are just that you can get another free year of Radical Technology Profits if he’s wrong — not that you get your $2,000 back. I have seen no preliminary filing for Stellar to get a Nasdaq listing at this point, but it’s certainly possible that they could do so and I have not read all of their filings. Listing on Nasdaq would add another corporate expense, but it would also certainly lift the profile since they’d be hobnobbing with most of the other junior biotech stocks and would get the attention of more US investors — I’d guess that would tend to give the stock a lift, but you can never really tell… it’s still very much a “story” stock without real revenue and a bet on an uncertain future so you can’t make a firm valuation argument about the shares with a straight face whether we’re talking Canadian or US Dollars.
I have no idea from this spiel whether Robinson is really trying to get you to buy into a private placement of shares for Stellar, which is the impression given in the tease about a “prospectus”, but I suppose it’s possible — they’ve had private placements in the past year at close to a dollar a share and they may well do so again. It’s unlikely, really, since the easy way to buy “round lots” is just to place an order for shares on either the venture exchange or, through pretty much any US broker, at the OTCQB exchange that trades just like the pink sheets stocks we so often see.
I know we’ve had many folks here following Stellar Biotechnologies over the past year or so, particularly because it was very, very, very actively teased by the Angel Publishing folks and Jim Skelton started a few discussions about Stellar back when he was “just” an Irregular (before he signed up to be a columnist with us), so hopefully the Stellar-followers out there can chime in and share their thoughts on the company now.
Wasn’t there also mention that a stock must hit $3 before NASDAQ will list? Perhaps Robinson is working with Stellar to pump the price up to that range so they can rush through the NASDAQ paperwork before prices return to equilibrium. Not sure if Robinson is one of the guys who holds off on investing in his own recommendations or at least waits 72 hours, but one way or another the guy stands to gain on this one.
I think it’s more likely they’ll “reverse split” and consolidate shares if they want to uplist.
If it’s such an amazing opportunity, why would the touts be pitching it to us, the great unwashed – if it were legit, seems like they’d be keeping it quiet and grabbing as much for themselves as they could. Of course having said that anyone who bought below $1 just made a killing today.
Hi,
I would suggest that they DID “grab some for themselves”, probably in mid July if you check the week or so with high volumes and volatile prices!
I was told they always load up a while before the “tip” so that they can offload into the strength and liquidity.
Often we’ll see that newsletters recommend a stock to their subscribers, then weeks or months later use the “story” of that stock to solicit new subscribers — the initial recommendation from any good-sized newsletter would hit the stock, especially a small one, pretty hard with high volume and a price spike.
‘My last recco’ jumped an astonishing 80% in just two weeks!!!!
(Then fell 90% the week after). Somehow they never write that second line.
Or….’Im sooo sure this will be a winner for my subscribers that I wont buy into this stock for 7 days…..coz I bought it last month! Hey, I never said I wouldnt sell for seven days!!
Your observation covers the gamut of pitches and pitchers about small companies. However you can easily see that if the rise in the share price is not merited by the change in the target’s prospects, but occurs because of an upsurge in interest in the target’s shares following publicity, then these touts make their money by buying into the target before they pitch it to their readers, then selling out on the rise.
Almost all of them make too much money by selling subscriptions to screw around with illegal or unethical share trading around their recommendations — the shadier ones do probably trade around the stock, I imagine, and perhaps their brothers-in-law are putting on big bets before recommendations are going out in a few cases — but it’s extremely easy to get in trouble with the SEC that way. They can make massive amounts of money through their subscription sales (ten thousand people at $1,900 a year or 300,000 people at $49 a year… it adds up pretty quick), sp most large publishers are very wary of making sure their employees don’t trade around the stock while they’re recommending it and wreck the gravy train that they have going.
The little startup guys, or the real “promoters” out there who actually tout the stock, they are much more likely to be making their money by manipulating the share price — but even they will almost always tell you what they’re doing in their disclaimers to avoid SEC attention. It seems that you can do some pretty awful things if you disclose to people that they’re being taken advantage of, even in small print.
Hi, Travis! Happy Belated Birthday, and thanks for another great analysis.
Please excuse my ignorance, but two questions:
”… the OTCQB…[does]… pass more “listing” requirements than the OTC Pink Sheets….”–Does this mean the requirements for listing on the OTCQB are less stringent than for the OTCQX?
”… Listing on Nasdaq would add another corporate expense….” — Is this a one-time expense or a continuing expense?
And a question for Dr. KSS and the Irregurlars on the BioTech threads –What’s the possibility of the Keyhole Limpet Hemocyanin (KHL) molecule being synthesized?
Yes on the listing “stringency”. And it is at least difficult to synthesize, hasn’t been done and may be impractical or impossible. I suspect uplisting would cost a few million dollars 1x with smaller annual fees… But if they do uplist I imagine they’d reverse split and raise equity at roughly the same time. Both raising funds and doing reverse splits typically hurt the share price, though uplisting would presumably be a good thing.
Basically zero because it is so huge a molecule; a third of a million grams/mole; over 3000 proteins. Throw in the glycosylation factor and you’ll never get anywhere close given current technology (or even the technology just over the horizon).
BTW, KLH comes more from the giant keyhole limpet found off Calif and Baja Calif. Maybe that is why the company has Calif connections.
The basic protein has several potential uses, but Stellar needs to determine their shelf lives. They are also not the only KLH maker on the market: http://alfidicapitalblog.blogspot.com/2014/01/stellar-biotechnologies-makes-klh.html
Several companies, including Biosyn, make and sell it — Stellar says they’re the only ones who breed them and can extract KLH without killing the snail (traditionally companies got the stuff by diving for the snails then extracting all the good stuff and killing the mollusk). I don’t know whether Stellar is correct in saying they have a 5 year/$20 million head start over other potential scale producers… But more importantly, I don’t really understand what scale is needed and what that capacity will be worth if/when there is commercial demand.
Hi Travis;
Here’s a post from the Seeking Alpha website, on the subject of Stellar’s relationship to BioSyn, and several other topics; it paints a completely different picture:
http://seekingalpha.com/article/2514425-stellar-biotechnologies-weve-seen-the-pump-now-here-comes-the-dump
I think the author’s anti-Stellar bias is clearly evident, and I don’t believe a lot of it, but there is a lot of information presented that is worth processing. The supposed uplisting to NASDAQ or NYSE, for instance. I think there was never a realistic hope of Stellar being able to pull that off, even with a reverse split. Anyway, it’s an interesting post, with a lot to say on a variety of Stellar-related subjects.
Having been an immunologist for the past 30 years, must point out that a very large fraction of mouse immunology [much of which did eventually predict how we humans do it] was originally worked out using KLH as a model immunogen. Before anyone says it can’t be synthesized, it could be illuminating to talk with Dr. Lee Hood. He’s been pretty successful at automating protein biosynthesis for several decades.
Thanks, good to hear from an expert!
Hi MadDog,
Do you post to the Irregulars too? Your input sounds valuable.
Penny
OK. So KLH could be synthesized. How much time and money would be required before the synthetic could be brought to a point where it could be used as a replacement for KLH in human trials. I’m guessing a long time and a LOTTA MONEY.
I, too, noticed the 30% rise today. Is there is a trading service/guru that specializes in alerting its readers to teased stocks such as this so they can get in early for the pump? Such a service might actually and regularly make money.
I actually did that for a couple of years in the go-go late 1990’s, starting with, “The Gilder Report” where he would move a stock 50-100% in an hour. I had about a dozen newsletters and a way to jump on picks within 3-10 seconds of the posting/emails with their picks. It was too lucrative to publish a newsletter, I just traded my own account. The bear market of 2000-2002 destroyed the methodology. For awhile it was like printing money. I was first one through the door, buying shares early in the pump, holding for an hour or so, and then selling those shares to the laggards coming up the rear. A few trades like that a day and I was done. Those were the days……
Knew it was too good to be true, but it did catch my attention for most of the full hour. Great sales pitch, especially via video!!! I got in early enough this AM to catch the ride; I figure it had to be Stellar because Michael Robinson (what a generic name and he never showed his face) used some of the SAME video clip as the company’s website video. I was wondering how many individuals purchased either a couple hundred (for the heck of it) or couple of thousand of dollars hoping for August 31st Nasdaq offering. Wouldn’t those who did spend $2k to get a “package” at least spend another 2k or so purchasing this stock? (That is where Robinson is making his $$$) If it is a pump and dump stock when is it ideal to exit?
Yep, certainly possible. This is a big part of the reason why I write these pieces: If you spend $1,000 or $3,000 to learn about a hot stock you’ve “bought in” and will have a huge bias toward buying the stock as soon as they tell you what it is… if you learn about it for free, you can think more objectively about it. Heck, you might even decide you like it enough that you want to subscribe to the newsletter… but you do that based on your own thinking about the stock and your own research, not based on a wild, overhyped teaser pitch that skews your thinking entirely.
Mimi. You ask when to exit? These would be my triggers. The first down day with a trading volume of over 1 million shares. or when it reaches 1.93 which is 90% of its 52 week high. The mugs who suscribe to the teased newsletters will not all have received the gen until sometime next week – so there could be more upward pressure from them coming in. It is worth holding on until either of my triggers occurs.
You must be my alter ego.
Make sure to always check out “discussion” boards. You could have had this one under 1.02 all afternoon long Monday after it was thinkolator’ed mid day.
So, where’s the metal? I read that the raw stuff made by the snail contains copper, but this must be refined out before use in research. There’s no metal listed on the product MSDS, so my guess is there is only a trace, at best. As for the precious metal comparison, it looks like he’s using a troy oz, or about 31 grams for his thimble. With a gold density of 19g/cc, this is a tad less than 2cc…a far cry from the “thimblefull” I’m accustomed to, which is a small shot of fine whiskey. More to the point for investors, the questions yet to be answered are: how many mg are needed to cure a patient, and will Medicare pick up the tab?
Copper is the metal. It chelates within the protein somewhat like iron does with our heme (blood). And yes, there isn’t much in there, comparatively.
Looks like the metal is in the scientific name of the mollusk…Hemocyanin megathura crenulata. Wikipedia’s definition of hemocyanin starts with, “Hemocyanins (also spelled haemocyanins) are proteins that transport oxygen throughout the bodies of some invertebrate animals. These metalloproteins contain two copper atoms that reversibly bind a single oxygen molecule (O2).” Bit of a stretch to tout this as a rare metal.
Thanks, Travis, for sitting through their horrendously long presentation (I threw in the towel after around 30 minutes), and more so for your analysis–which, as usual, puts things in a different (and usually much less favorable) light.
You don’t have to sit through any of those presentations. Just “exit” the presentation and you will be given a choice to either leave the page or stay on it. If you pick “stay” you get a transcription that you can scroll through as quickly or slowly as you want. I typically spend 5 minutes or less on any presentation. I scroll to the bottom to get to the meat of it, and then if it sounds interesting I’ll go back and pick and choose what to read. As long as you don’t close it out or shut off your computer you can return to this transcription at any time, picking out where you want to pick it up, and even re-reading any parts you might be interested in. It works for me.
i discovered this one for myself about 2 years ago following another teaser. got in,and got out with a small gain when it started to fall back. didn’t recognise it this time, because last time they talked about sea snails, not limpets, and metal was never mentioned. so its the pump and dumpers back for a second bite at what must have been a very plump cherry.these guys should be in jail -but i have to admit they employ brilliant copywriters.
i’m new to gumshoe – you are brilliant.
keep it up
It gets a WHOLE lot better as an Irregular, but that costs $49. Ouch 🙂
Nick Hodge of Early Advantage pitched SBOTF to me when I joined in mid-July. I got in at 0.83 but after its newsletter-induced rise and the comments about the briefness of the pump, I will look closely to get out tomorrow and take a short-term profit.
This week, I have been spammed by so many “miracle cures from limpet blood” that I began to suspect several promoters of newsletters had conspired to spike up just one stock with teases. ALB, your plan to dump this before the promoters do so sounds wise.
Lots of promotions, but all are in the end from the same publisher selling the same newsletter. Most of the big publishers collaborate to share ads with each others’ readers.
Just to correct the math a bit (touched on by others, but somewhat tangentially as I read it): The $287 is for 20 mg of active ingredient, not 100 mg, so there’s a factor of 5x there from many of your calculations for potential revenue.
BUT, given how speculative the whole venture is, as you nicely highlight, that detail is not overly relevant. The expected value of future revenue stream, when the chance of it occurring is overall quite small, leaves the 5x somewhat immaterial. Clearly you’ll gain more than your calculations show if it is successful, but the probabilities are low enough that this remains very, very risky.
Great article. Thanks!
Unless I just made a mistake, the price was for a five-pack of the 20 mg vials from Sigma Aldrich. But regardless, yes, it’s just an exercise in trying to add some current reality to the “cure Alzheimer’s hype” —
And I hope, of course, that our friendly giant mollusk CAN cure all kinds of diseases through immunotherapy. Just not betting my money on the price the little fellas might fetch for their blood in a few years.
I was excited over Robinson’s video. Luckily, I decided to do some more research and found your article. Thank you for keeping me from making a big mistake.
Isn’t this the same Company?
Stellar Biotechnologies Inc OTCQB: SBOTF
Yes if you read through the early posts you will see the company is principally traded in Canada under ticker KLH and the symbols you state are for the over-the-counter listing in US.
tsx-v = Toronto stock exchange ventures, the shares are flying yesterday went to $1.70.
I know of a product that does everything that this does and more.
It is called Z Radical and the magic bullet is fucoidan that comes from a brown seaweed. It has been studied for over 50 years . It helps mend the cracks in one’s immune system so that you can fight off things that are in our environment.
Go to pubmed.gov., type in fucoidan and see that there are 1172 studies right now. This is our national library of health.
The pharmaceuticals have tried to copy it , but there are molecules that can’t be duplicated, so they just toss it out, but it is incredible for cancer and so many other conditions.
E-mail me and I’ll send you information about it. afischer2@woh.rr.com.
I sold half my position of SBOTF yesterday at $1.61. Why…this stock broke my heart. I originally bought is at $0.78 in May 2013, and touted Stellar to all my friends & relatives… then chided all those who failed to listen to me as the stock rose to over $2.00. Then came a two day trading halt. I listened to all the bloggers opine/speculate that STOBF was a takeover target and we investors would get at least $4.00 for our shares. Well when trading resumed, Stellar had make a private placement of shares in exchange for $12 million in cash @ $1.25, then languish for several months as the stock dropped to around $1.00, then drop to below my original investment to $0.68. I was delighted to find out the stock had suddenly had new life and my shares were again trading around $1.50. I couldn’t wait to get my money out of the stock.
I hope the hype over SBOTF turns into a gigantic profit for all of you (us), but my remaining shares are being ‘played with the houses money.’
Great that you are taking profit. No one can fault anyone for making a profit.
However – there seems to be a little problem with your story terrycuppies…if you purchased your stock of stellar in May 2013, the stock price never went over $2.00 a share before the halt of stellar on Aug 20, 2013. Stellar hit $2.00 a share in Sept and Oct but not before the halted stock.
Are you here to scare people away from the stock or are your facts a little fuzzy!?!?
KLH has been known in immunology for about 50 years; it is a good immunogen.
however in man it is used now to generate an immune response against self-antigens modified by disease, in combination with another ingredient which will be different in each disease and in each pharma company.
so it is the combination that has to be effective, to constitute an efficient vaccine, and for me there is not yet a definite list of effective combinations to reach a market authorization.
KLH can be administered to man and is tolerable, for exemple in this trial on >1,000 patients:
http://theoncologist.alphamedpress.org/content/16/8/1092.full
this trial is NEGATIVE. however it is mainly the second ingerdient that probably does not work.
in waiting for better results, Stellar with this rare protein may have a greater market now only with sales for achieving clinical trials, that is what they imply. Probably they want to reach the nasdaq soon….?
and there seeems to be a financial operation underway…
I live very close to Stellar Bio’s office. The aquaculture part of the company is on a military base, which is very close to the HQ office. This is why Robinson can say “it’s guarded by Marines 24 hours a day!”
If you let Robinson’s presentation play out, the written version will appear on your screen. Right there near the top it states that Mch (KLH) will sale for $141,000.00 PER OUNCE. There are 28.349 grams per ounce. The math says that’s $4,974 dollars per gram more or less.
There are 4405 grams in a gallon. That’s $21,910,470 per gallon.
To reach $620,000,000 in revenue Stellar needs to sell 28.3 gallons of KHL more or less.
These figures are all based on Robinson’s figure of $141,000 PER OUNCE. Forget the thimble full analogy. Hope this helps illustrate things.
I bought some shares yesterday. I think this thing has legs.
I knew they have a foot….but a snail with legs??? This one will run and run..
however in a second analysis with certain criteria, this same study became positive, with survival advantage:
http://www.jcancer.org/v04p0577.htm
science is not always easy…
Hello Fellow Gummies! Jim Skelton here, your resident “Blind Squirrel” and monthly contributor to the Gumshoe site.
This being a new thread, some of you may not recognize my name or why I’m commenting on SBOTF. Here’s why.
It was about April 2013 when Travis presented a tease from Nick Hodge entitled ” Minting Millions from the Magic Molecule” or something to that effect. Look it up in the archives on the site homepage – worth the read if you are in or considering getting on the SBOTF bandwagon. He “unteased ” it for us in his usual brilliant manner and revealed that the company Hodge was promoting in order to entice investors to subscribe to his newsletter was Stellar Biotechnologies (SBOTF). It was an enticing presentation that Hodge made although filled with the typical hype and spin that these newsletter publishers often use to make an idea seem somehow exclusive and sure to make an early investor rich.
I got interested and, long story short, began to buy in on July 19th. In early August I opened a blog on this site entitled “Stellar Biotechnologies The Real Deal Or Just More Tulip Bulbs?” That blog attracted a fair amount of attention and a lively ad lengthy discussion of what Stellar Bio was, what the heck is a Giant Keyhole Limpet is, and what is this stuf made from their blood called KLH – and so on. Do yourself a favor – go into the Gumshoe archives, find this blog, and read from start to finish. It will give you a good, accurate timeline of how events there have unfolded over the past year, the misconceptions people had back then (and some still do today), the major financing deal that was agreed to (VERY important to understand this and its future implications), and so on.
NOTE: don’t forget that these sorts of newsletter promotions ARE NOT what is referred to as “Pump and Dump” schemes. Although the two things may have a few similar characteristics, they are done to achieve different end results. The newsletter promotion wants/ hopes to see the price of the stock under discussion rise, sure. But not so they can accumulate a huge position for themselves beforehand, drive the price up with all the hype and hoopla, then suddenly sell it all and reap immense profit. This while the ordinary investor who bought in on this promotion gets totally fleeced.
With the newsletter publisher, the end game is to get you to subscribe to the newsletter. If you make money on the stock, great. That increases the odds you’ll become a believer in the newsletter and pony up for a subscription.
The Pump-n-Dumpers are a totally different breed of bottom-dwelling scum. They are PAID by the company to promote and push the stock. This to get investors believing and buying, driving the price up. Then, one fine sunny morning, the insiders at the company will take their stock, accumulated for pennies if anything at all, and throw it all on the market. They will be sold within minutes, the stock price crater, and investors will be left with little if anything at all. The insiders get rich. The P&D people make a small fortune for making this happen, and you get burned badly. Those unethical and often destructive P&D’s are to be avoided at all costs.
But this is was not and is not a P&D in my opinion. The only thing that has changed is the publisher/writer/newsletter that has reinvented a story for Stellar and has been actively sending out the notices these past several weeks. And it is working – the stock price has skyrocketed from about $0.60 a few weeks back to around $1.70 at last Friday close. That Hodge and the current publisher was/is making some far-fetched predictions and stretching the truth a bit was to get your attention and interest in the newsletter, not necessarily to drive the price of the stock up and then sell it all in one fell swoop. So don’t make that mistake and call this a Pump and Dump plan. It wasn’t then and I don’t believe it to be now.
OK, that settled, here’s what I’m going to do.
Rather than make this a very long post covering several issues I already see arising, I’m going to break it down into several smaller ones, each addressing just one at a time. That way, if the system goes wrong and something isn’t published, I won’t lose all the time and effort.
So stay tuned .. I’ll be back with what I hope you’ll find to be useful and helpful info on Stellar and some of the messages I see posted here.
Jim Skelton
The Blind Squirrel