|
Post by agedhippie on Apr 19, 2023 18:07:49 GMT -5
I had an interesting conversation with someone from DTCC today about start and end of day spikes. His comment was that a lot of the trades happen in the literal closing seconds of the day with the bulk being in the last second. This is a combination of derivative traders settling their books for the day, and index traders making their EoD trade to match the index. Usually the market maker will absorb that spike with naked shorts, and clear it on the open. Occasionally the market maker screws up and you get an end of day spike that collapse the next day because there are no real buyers.
|
|
|
Post by agedhippie on Apr 19, 2023 18:00:54 GMT -5
UTHR withdrew the federal filing (under the Defend Trade Secrets Act) and refiled in NC State court under a NC statue (North Carolina Trade Secrets Protection Act). This is a civil case rather than criminal which usually means the evidence isn't strong enough for a prosecutor to pick up since civil cases have a lower standards of proof. This case would not delay a launch but I think it's still interesting. Appears you are right about the civil case. So they are making claims under both NCTSPA and UDTPA is that correct? 23. At issue here is whether UTC has sufficiently plead: (1) a claim for misappropriation of trade secrets under the NCTSPA against both Roscigno and Liquidia, and (2) a claim for unfair and deceptive trade practices under the UDTPA against Liquidia. • Violating the UDTPA subjects a defendant to potential treble (triple) damages, costs, and attorney's fees. Yes. If you can win under the NCTSPA then you would definitely want to sue under the UDTPA. This is the NC version of the UDTPA and not the Federal version since this is a State court but the penalties are the same.
|
|
|
Post by agedhippie on Apr 19, 2023 13:07:29 GMT -5
... I do not pretend to understand the case, however is LQDA changing the size of the molecule? "We will continue to combine our proprietary, innovative PRINT Technology with new and established medications, offering the potential for both better precision and improved clinical outcomes." I don't know that much about the LQDA technology, but from what I have seen they have the ability to stamp out precisely sized particles which lets them design what they claim to be the best sized particles for the active component molecule they are delivering. Based on the trial data it seems to work. That exhausts my knowledge of the LQDA product
|
|
|
Post by agedhippie on Apr 19, 2023 12:03:09 GMT -5
That’s true. I’d keep in mind that the trade secret theft is a federal crime and employees from biotech companies have gone to prison. There’s been at least a couple recent big cases where this happened. IMO United wouldn’t be pursuing this unless they had strong evidence, and, at least according to UT, they do. It will be interesting to see how this case unfolds. ... UTHR withdrew the federal filing (under the Defend Trade Secrets Act) and refiled in NC State court under a NC statue (North Carolina Trade Secrets Protection Act). This is a civil case rather than criminal which usually means the evidence isn't strong enough for a prosecutor to pick up since civil cases have a lower standards of proof. This case would not delay a launch but I think it's still interesting.
|
|
|
Post by agedhippie on Apr 19, 2023 7:52:05 GMT -5
Thanks for confirming the time range in bold agedhippie. Your view of end result and timing sound reasonable to me. When it comes to technical matters, my opinion is authorities like to rely on subject matter experts. I agree the PTAB results are likely to carry a lot of weight and may contribute to a faster conclusion, but normal long timelines for judicial processes could easily push the conclusion to 2024. And then LQDA will be free to capture fully 10% of the PAH market (which is itself 10% of the ILD market size that UTHR is working to serve if I understand correctly the request for treating ILD with Tyvaso DPI). I am not bothered by LQDA as a threat. However, they have already said will go after the ILD market as well although with, I suspect, the same results. In short I expect LQDA to get around 10% of both markets which leaves UTHR (and MNKD) with 90% of the market - that sounds pretty good to me!
|
|
|
Post by agedhippie on Apr 18, 2023 23:06:39 GMT -5
..."until the launch" in 2024 or 2025, correct? If they ever launch. They still have the patent infringement case which has not concluded yet and the trade secret theft case. Liquidia attempted to get the trade secret theft case dismissed but the court denied the motion. From Liquidia’s March 2023 annual report: Trade Secret Litigation ...In May 2022, the Company filed a motion to dismiss all of the claims made by United Therapeutics in the lawsuit. The motion was denied by the Court in October 2022. Discovery in the case is ongoing. I wouldn't set to much store by the dismissal being denied. You always file for dismissal even though it's almost always denied because who know, you might get lucky! The opposition must have screwed up truly spectacularly for a dismissal to be granted.
|
|
|
Post by agedhippie on Apr 18, 2023 22:58:30 GMT -5
The answer is that the market is always more excited by possibility than fact. Right now LQDA has possibility - how much of UTHR's market share can it grab? Once it launches this clarifies and the share price will fall (aka. buy the rumor, sell the news.) I would expect the LQDA share price to continue to rise until the launch, and then to steadily decline for a while. ..."until the launch" in 2024 or 2025, correct? The launch is most likely to be around mid 2024. It's possible the courts move quickly in which case it could be as soon as late 2023, but TBH that's unlikely. At this point UTHR have lost the patent challenge, lost the patent board review, and are on to the judicial review, then they will appeal the judicial review and at that point it's all over. While it's possible they will win the judicial review or the appeal it is also vanishingly unlikely - if you lose at the PTAB like UTHR did it's almost never overturned by the courts. Basically with the patent case UTHR are using the courts to delay LQDA, not because they expect to win. Once LQDA won the PTAB it became a case of when and not if they launch.
|
|
|
Post by agedhippie on Apr 17, 2023 16:34:06 GMT -5
Traders are trying their best to keep us humble while we await the next quarterly. Many of us would rather not hear good news about MNKD, because it so dependably predicts a share price decline. Meanwhile, inexplicably, LQDA rises, with a SP 20% higher than MNKD. Wall street: You have to love it. It is so quintessentially tilted in favor of game playing. The answer is that the market is always more excited by possibility than fact. Right now LQDA has possibility - how much of UTHR's market share can it grab? Once it launches this clarifies and the share price will fall (aka. buy the rumor, sell the news.) I would expect the LQDA share price to continue to rise until the launch, and then to steadily decline for a while.
|
|
|
Post by agedhippie on Apr 10, 2023 22:39:33 GMT -5
Understood but paying anything, especially double digit royalties in perpetuity, is not total control. It's fine to have a different opinion. They are paying royalties on the net sales rather than gross revenue. Once you have pulled all the sales costs out that headline double digit royalty is greatly reduced, and that's what they will be looking at. It's not impossible that they would buy MNKD, but I think it is unlikely because the RoI would be hard to justify - it would be years before they recovered that purchase.
|
|
|
Post by agedhippie on Apr 10, 2023 18:28:48 GMT -5
IMO, every BP eventually wants total control of their supply chain of a successful drug, especially when going global. It's doubtful UTHR will ever desire to takeover MNKD in it's entirety as that's not their lane. Nor do I believe MNKDs controlling shareholders would accept it. I do however expect UTHR to make an offer for the pulmonary indication sector within MNKD versus paying sizeable and growing royalties year after year. When would be anybody's guess; this year, three years, five years? Frankly, I'm more interested in hearing an update about UTHR's next MNKD molecule partnership versus speculation of M&As...though the two might just be interrelated UTHR can have control of their supply chain any time they want. All they have to do is build the manufacturing plant and MNKD have agreed to help them do this on demand. Remember that the original idea was that UTHR would do the manufacturing post launch and it was only later that MNKD took over that role. This is a high value/low volume drug so having MNKD manufacture it rather than incurring the cost building a production line makes perfect sense - then buying MNKD rather negates that!
|
|
|
Post by agedhippie on Apr 10, 2023 15:26:41 GMT -5
How about $2B for 51% in a 1 for 15 UTHR for MNKD shares - sets the floor at $15 per share, doesn't it? It's not like Martine doesn't understand the tech or business model and couldn't provide value adding marching orders post-acquisition... This would never happen. Funding round pricing models in unlisted companies are largely a matter of convincing people what the speculative valuation will be at IPO based on partial information. A listed company has it's stock price which is the agreed value of the company - it's not speculative in the same way. If Martine attempted to buy 51% of the company for 3x the share price she would simply be overpaying 3x and not raising the valuation and the share price would collapse back immediately UTHR stopped buying (anyway, the shareholders would never allow it.)
|
|
|
Post by agedhippie on Apr 10, 2023 13:56:51 GMT -5
Depends on the deal. The market is poop right now, and MNKD is manipulated. The difference from the past is the market is poop. I don't think MNKD is being manipulated (there are easier target in the micro-caps) but it is likely heavily influenced by the UTHR share price. If you look at the two charts you can see the relationship. I think that the MNKD stock is being treated as a proxy for UTHR with a higher beta. Fundamentally the profitability of MNKD is tied up in UTHR until either Afrezza becomes profitable, or another pharma signs up like UTHR for delivery. The upside to this is that if UTHR does well I would expect MNKD to also rise and they have the market to themselves for another 12 to 18 months.
|
|
|
Post by agedhippie on Apr 3, 2023 10:15:34 GMT -5
200,000+ shares traded in 6 minutes. That's an interesting start to the day. The volumes are always highest at market open and market close because a lot of orders are placed to execute then because the spread is usually the tightest (because of the volume because the spread is tightest, rinse repeat, ...). It's a complete pain if you have to size matching systems because you need to size for those times which leaves you with pretty awful utilization rates on your equipment the rest of the day.
|
|
|
Post by agedhippie on Apr 2, 2023 13:46:46 GMT -5
I was referring to ATS not ETFs. ETFs per se are not stocks and don't show up in stock volumes. They as "baskets" of stocks lent out from a mutual fund company to a bank and then bought and sold like stock shares but they are really the "3rd shift excess capacity" in the mutual fund company. I think this is a bit confused. An ETF is definitely not an exchange like NASDAQ, NYSE, or indeed any ATS. Those are locations where trades take place, while an ETF is a collection of the shares that precisely align to an index allowing you to effectively trade an index, for example the SP500 with SPY or Nasdaq with QQQQ. These shares are held by that firms such as Vanguard or Blackrock, there is no lending involved, and used to form the ETF. When a customer trades an ETF the institution places a matching trade for the same quantity of shares for execution at end of day (since trackers are calculated at end of day). If they performed the transaction at any other time they would diverge from the index which defeats the purpose of the ETF. The composition of the ETF is non-discretionary which is why there can be arbitrage opportunities in individual stocks when indexes are periodically rebalanced and the firms have to buy or sell stocks to align to the new composition. An ETF doesn't care about making a profit, that's not it's job, but it cares a lot about matching it's index because that's it's reason for existence.
|
|
|
Post by agedhippie on Mar 31, 2023 10:44:12 GMT -5
Lol. That goes nowhere, but it will get the shareholders off the management's back for a while. The real problem is that they are going to have to cut their dividend because their revenue is dropping as they sell off properties, and with a REIT that's very problematic. Take this from one who invested in a REIT that did exactly that (yes, I am looking at you CORR.)
|
|