spelunking

spelunking

Clinical-stage biotechnology companies raise equity and pay expenses to be recovered in the future when a product is developed or when a suitor, collaborator, or partner appears willing to pay more for the cumulative good works than was invested in an accounting term known as goodwill, the premium paid for intangibles like intellectual property, brands, customers, and proprietary technology.

Think about quarterly operating losses as premiums paid for a series of options contracts that have the potential to pay off in seven years, the product development lifecycle, and those contracts are marked to market daily at the price of a publicly listed security on an exchange.  The operating losses are paid for by the issue of future shares issued at varying prices over time.  The successful development models have collaboration from the scientific community, research institutes, associations, and government partners, the more the better.

There are over 400 publicly listed biotech companies to sort through in the United States along with 2400 private outfits that aspire to a public listing.  India has 2,700 biotech startups a number that likely vaults by the month.

In the cave

GOVX

A vaccine hunter that collaborates with everyone, a market capitalization of $25 million on accumulated losses (the option payments) of $50 million. Thinking double the accumulated losses to $100 million and handicap assimilation at four times that (a guess) implies a value of $400 million or about twenty times. 13% of the float is short.

The company has collaboration and partnership agreements with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases of the National Institutes of Health; the HIV Vaccines Trial Network; Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; U.S. Department of Defense; U.S. Army Research Institute of Infectious Disease; U.S. Naval Research Laboratory; Emory University; University of Pittsburgh; Georgia State University Research Foundation; University of Texas Medical Branch; the Institute of Human Virology at the University of Maryland; the Scripps Research Institute; the Burnet Institute; American Gene Technologies International, Inc.; Viamune, Inc.; Vaxeal Holding SA; Virometix AG; Geneva Foundation; Enesi Pharma; UCSF; BravoVax; and Leidos, Inc. GeoVax Labs, Inc. was founded in 2001 and is based in Smyrna, Georgia.