Baltbear on Finance markets are like marshmallows

someone suggested to me that i was paid to bash biotime (btim.ob). i replied that the paid bashing on the net was being done by steven seinberg, chief financial officer (cfo) of biotime, in posts to the securities and exchange commission.  it is of interest possibly to note that  some anonymous person publicly stated a day or 4 ago that biotime was about to receive a $5mm grant.  That’s the kind of world where bucket shops and boiler rooms thrive: people doing honest analysis must be “paid bashers” while people doing mindless and dishonest cheerleading to protect teir positions are considered “loyal shareholders.”
here’s an example f what i mean:

the 8k filed on 0417 describing what happened on 0415:

The maturity date of our Revolving Line of Credit has been extended to December 1, 2009 with respect to $2,669,282 in principal amount of loans. (a revolving line of credit for $2.669mm got a new date, 7 1/2 month away.)

“We repaid $223,834 of principal and accrued interest on loans that matured on April 15, 2009 and were not extended.
(some part of the credit line was shut off, and paid out. does biotime bother to be honest enough to say which part?)

” In addition, certain lenders exercised their right to exchange $572,404 of principal and accrued interest on loans for an aggregate of 473,131 of our common shares.”
Does biotime bother to say how much of the $572k was principal and how much interest?  some loans were at 12%.
if one speculates that 12% is the figure, and 1 year the time period, then the lender lost oportunity for 1 year on apx $511k, and then was traded for 473k shares, for a basis of 1 3/32 ish…. ($1.08).
And actually, its worse than that. How??
becuase, to use a term from aother world, biotime had to pay vigourish on the loan. it was forced to give for free  91,526 shares, based on a 6% iterest rate, to the lenders.
91,526 is therefore 6% of what? 6% of the $2mm comes to $160,156. and that converts to 91,256 shares how? on a basis of 1 3/4 ($1.75 a share).
does this sound like an invented number?
biotime identifies this number:
“Promissory notes that were exchangeable for our common shares at a price of $1.50 and Embryome Sciences common stock at $2.50 until April 15, 2009, may now be exchanged for our common shares at $1.75 per share”
and i offer that as evidence of the soundness of this analysis.

a coupl;e of days later 14ds were filed with the sec, and the movement from the dtc to the recipients had to cross the tape. it crossed it at prevailing prices f the moment, cuasing some to see a “rally” which they traded into and or out of.
However, the idea that the buyers actually paid anything more than is stated above is a fiction.
Biotime would, imho, have a moral and fiduciary duty to identify it as a fiction.
Did it?
ask the reporters who called (or were they called??) what the ceo, dr michael west said.
then the prudent speculator has a metric for the integrity of the “science” of biotime.

the “good news” in this 8 k is that the exchange price isn;t 16 cents.
the hoest news is that this is the 5th amendment to a credit agreement that is nowhere near being retired, and there is no evidence in the 10k as to how it ever will be.
bottom line?
people buying biotime stock are not buying equity in biotime, bcuase there is no equity except patents 1/2 way thru their life.  they are supporting the acquisition of biotime by al kingsley and neal bradshear, who are paying next to nothing for it.

” We may borrow up to an additional $830,718 under our revolving line of credit if we elect to do so and are able to obtain additional loan commitments from our current lender or from new lenders.”

notice how bio time cannot, unnder thee covenenants borrow $1 mm from somebody new.
notice how biotime evidently needs permission from the current creditors to eve look for financing, up to the $830 mark.

Posted under business

here are the highlights of the 10k–which came out amazingly “early”. of course that can have nothing to do with my woofing about the biotime habit of waiting til the last minute.
The number of common shares outstanding as of February 26, 2009 was 25,213,569
that’s a 3 million share increase.
“As of March 10, 2009, there were 6,676 holders of the common shares”
was that increase in authorised discussed at the last annual meeting?
when was the last annual meeting?
“We intend to submit that amendment to our shareholders for approval at our next annual meeting.”
:” Management’s report was not subject to attestation by our registered public accounting firm pursuant to temporary rules of the Securities and Exchange Commission that permit us to provide only management’s report in this annual report.”
lolol…
for thoughts on accounting and filing with the sec, see
http://baltbear-on-finance.com/stock-market-speculating-is-a-hold-up-shoot-them-with-x-barrels

and  lookie lookie…some amusing info about “big al’s basis”. wunderbar:
:”We paid Greenbelt $90,000 in cash and issued 200,000 common shares for services rendered for the twelve months ending March 31, 2007.  Greenbelt permitted us to defer until October 2007 paying certain cash fees that otherwise would have been payable earlier in the year.  In return for allowing the deferral, we issued Greenbelt an additional 60,000 common shares.  For the 2008 calendar year, we agreed to pay Greenbelt $135,000 in cash and to issue 300,000 common shares.  Greenbelt permitted us to defer paying the entire $135,000 cash fee until January 2009.  In return for allowing the deferral, we issued Greenbelt an additional 60,000 common shares during January 2009.  We have agreed to file a registration statement, at our expense, to register Greenbelt’s shares for sale under the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, upon Greenbelt’s request.  We also agreed to indemnify Greenbelt and its officers, affiliates, employees, agents, assignees, and controlling person from any liabilities arising out of or in connection with actions taken on our behalf under the agreement.

ok, 620k share at a basis of…..zero.
zero.

and: $225,000 in cash.
so, here’s the algebra problem:
a train leaves the nasdaq at 9:30 in the morning with 620k shares which can be sold at any price at all, and bought back at any price less than sold for;
a train leaves park avenue with $225k cash
to buy stock at any price and sell it for any amount more than was paid for;
what is big al’s  basis?
the answer?? 0 on more and more of the shares in his control+ 9% profit after trip tickets are paid for+ $225,000 in cash.
extra credit question:
if late comers to biotime should have to pay 4x more than al pays, what should be their basis?

Since inception, we have primarily financed our operations through the sale of equity securities, licensing fees, royalties on product sales by our licensees, and borrowings.

our total research and development expenditures were approximately $1,700,000 and our administrative expenditures were approximately $2,600,000.
The Credit Agreement permits us to borrow up to $3,500,000, and as of March 6, 2009, BioTime had outstanding Credit Agreement loans of $3,330,000.

Current loans under the Credit Agreement bear interest at the rate of 12% per annum and will mature on April 15, 2009, at which time the outstanding principal balance of the loans plus accrued interest will be due and payable.

Currently, lenders may exchange their notes for our common shares at prices ranging from $1.25 to $1.50 per share,

and our ability to commence and complete the clinical trials that are required in order for us to obtain FDA and foreign regulatory approval of products, depend upon the amount of money we have.

so, taking “big al” lol..out of th equation, what is there for fair market price in the opinion of those who have access to serious due diligence???
1 1/4–1 1/2 ….divided by 1.12.

hmmmm.
that put’s a price amusingly close to 1 3/8..which got defended as a raw marker…
and verrry close to 1 5/32….right where the defense kicked in.

so, those who see that hextend >>>works<<< and give a dang aobut that;
who see that hetacool therefore >>might work<<;
who think that “dr west” matters one way or the other;
and who can overlook an over 20 year trip to the gorss receipts level, and overlook the r&d/g&a of this puppy;
now know what price to pay.
there are 2 ways to pay it:
call them up and ask when they are getting ready for the next level of dilution (which is alread oocurring by seling embryome stock)
or trade this puppy into accumulation s that u end up with shares closer to “big al’s” basis.
so..what is big al’s basis???

anybody notice what this burst of news, did for volume?? 9k thru 2 pm…another 7k tossed back and forth in the last 30 minutes to to create illusion?
http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=BTIM.OB#chart2:symbol=btim.ob;range=1d;indicator=bollinger+ema(20,50,10)+psar+ke_it+volume+rsi+volumema(10);charttype=candlestick;crosshair=on;ohlcvalues=0;logscale=off;source=undefined
anybody notice that the whole “sector” as a “story” play now rests on the spines of 8 rats?

Posted under finance

This is a general piece for the prudent speculator. It is about a tool for measuring, at an amotional level some cold hard facts ypou are going to need.
A little history:
once upon a time when the people who said this liquidity crisis couldn’t happn hadn’t been born yet, every 3 months publicly traded corporations wrote up dozens to hundreds of pages of impenetrable beancounter language and sent it to the sec as “proof” of something.
Then, eventuallly, the sec said it would no longer accept “the dog ate my homework”, “10k? the mailmain must have lost it”.
(if an adult reader doesn’t think this kind of excuse is till being made, i offr the 10q of biotime, btim:obb which contains the statement that becuse creditors of the self-styled stem cell research company are in different parts of the country, it took an extra time period to give an honest statement of the debt. some weeks later biotime filed, and the debt had been restructured in a d/e swap showing a clearing price of $1. )
the sec said that a transparent and liquid market is the goal of regulation, and thus mandated electronic filing of text files with readable data.
in just a few years the sec got around to noting that the .txt files could be made almost unreadable by human beings, and that the goal of regulation is a transparent and liquid market. thus, filins in .html became required. (this gives a file that opens from the sec website through your browser window, and then “reads” like a piece of paper.)
as an example:
compare the effort of reading
http://sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/876343/000091957409002146/d964196_13d-a.htm
with
http://sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/876343/000095000502000064/p14825_s3a.txt

A while ago, the securities and exchange commission got serious about the idea that actually, since relational databases and accessing data from them has been around for 50 years, they might have value for thw actual owners of a corporation–the people that hire management that then thinks it is the ownership–and potential owners have a right to not read, but actually understand what the filings say, as internally consistent documents.
since lotus notes, excel spread seets etc had been around for about 25 years, average people could find the relationships that had meaning to them.
since in about 1998 there had been serious work done, in part by tim berners lee, to find algorithms which would describe relationship between relationships seen by others, there could be an extensible markup language….xml..
CAn you see a thought emerging in the pea in the brontosauric sec’s head yet?
can you begin to imagine that since adobe acrobat has been capable of making a .pdf that contains pictures, movies, music–a complete little “website” all in one document, secure and shippable and readable, for >>>4 years<<< that corporations wishing te trust and money of the american people could be obliged to make the critical elements inside their filings “clickable” so that people could jump through them making sure there was honesty in them?
thus, there came, after lots of “pick me” “can i buy your congressman a nice plane ride” ? etc… a defined “extensible business relational language.”
xbrl.
an sec filing in xbrl is as searchable as this blog.
and any prudent speculator deserves one.
looking at some new ticker? wanting to get a feel for what your dd can get you?
call investor relations and ask them abot xbrl. if the answer is “we’ll do it as soon as we wil be kicked off the exchanges if we don’t” no matter how that is phrased, walk.
away.
the phrasing can be tricky. recently i was told by one posssible whore to dance with that management was far too involved in creating new products to hace paid much attention to another burdensome government regulation. i’ll never get near that puppy, becuase i never short.
i was told by another that they are looking forward to providing xbrl docs to the sec, because it will reduce calls to i/r to only those that point the company to ever more transparent means of presentation.
in reality, most tickers that speculators can work from are not your friends. they see you as fruit to be smashed to give them the juice to party on.
with this knowledge in hand, you can rob them of the secrets of their failures, double speaks, waste, hype, etc, by taking an x-barreled shotgun to their filings.
if they don;t want you to have that weapon, they are not your friends.

Posted under business