Frost, Hsiao and Rubin bought shares on Friday
Nov 14, 2023 20:48:09 GMT
sgard434, Chuck-2, and 2 more like this
Post by luxetvox on Nov 14, 2023 20:48:09 GMT
I know I am new here. But, for the life of me I am having a hard time understanding why “certain” posters continue to defend at all cost Dr. Frost and Opko. They have done a terrible job to date of helping shareholders. I get that some people “averaged” down, or got in when it was $1. Great for you. You found the bottom and I guess that gives you the right to defend. But, most of us here have been hammered by SP over the years. For example, I have an average price of around $5. Of course I should have sold when it was in the $4’s, but was waiting for NGENLA which I thought would boost the share price. Boy was I wrong. As for averaging down, why would I keep throwing money at a company that has not and does not perform? Regardless of share price. I guess my long winded takeaway is I just don’t understand the constant defending. It makes no sense unless some of you are either insiders or paid to do this (which I highly doubt as that would be more wasteful than the salaries they pay some of these people). But, not to realize and criticize the shitty job Frost and team have done is really, really, really weird.
There is interesting information on this forum. And there are folks who really dig. But, yes I am the king of that coordinating conjunction on this board, but.......the thing is that if one had purchased stock almost anywhere along the way, over the many years, based on info posted here (info that in some cases arguably could have and should have been released in some form by the company), you would have lost money. Certainly huge percentage losses and, for many here, huge losses in absolute dollars. Meanwhile, not a single executive in the C suite has taken a pay cut.
Frost may have had some success in the past. But it is the past. And, as Gutset pointed out, his personal investing acumen has been nothing short of terrible. Leaving aside all his investments in these micro cap companies that have either gone to near zero, or undergone multiple reverse splits, or both, just his record of investing in Opko has been a disaster. There is simply no other way to characterize it. I started investing along with him many many years ago when I saw his buys in the $2s, $3s, $4s. And he continued pretty much all the way up to, and down from $19ish. And before Frost's chief defender attempts to parse that last statement with some distracting table listing his buys in the teens and how close they were or weren't to $19, I don't give a hoot. His many many purchases have largely resulted in losses. So, there is his woeful investing record, there are his abject management failures (like buying BioReference without proper due diligence), there are his amateur deal making skills like the GeneDx sale. Besides telling us that it was a 'gem' and that the genomics IP would lead to innovations in drug development, when the gem had apparently lost its luster, and the IP lost its value, he apparently either passed on or didn't even look for an all-cash buyer. Remember, Sema4 had NO cash; they had to raise the money via equity to buy GeneDx. LFATB would have you believe that he got the best of Sema4, 'unloaded' GeneDx for a bunch of cash and a lottery ticket, implying that the losses at GeneDx were of such amounts that there was no company willing to pay a higher all cash amount for GeneDx. So therefore, he sold it to a company that had no cash. Makes sense right? And he was so convinced that the Sema4 stock he took on behalf of us was as risky as a lottery ticket, that he took some of Opko's much needed cash and bought into the PIPE, apparently throwing good money after bad.
Then comes his profound and perennial inability to manage the lab that he bought, nor the nephrology drug, to any kind of profit for shareholders. And then there's his reputation among investors, and his record with the SEC.
When you combine the above with a compliant board of directors who have failed in their duties to shareholders, while being paid for such failures, you get mortal wounds, at the company and in the stock.
Opko as an investment has become a story of hope, and little more. The cap structure makes an EPS story a non-starter. The hope then is not for profitability. That may come, but almost by definition it cannot be impactful because of the utter destruction Phil Frost has wrought in the form of a share count that is often the realm of.....well, penny stocks. QED. The hope is for Frost to see the light, in one form or another, so to speak.
Phil Frost has forgotten more about medicine, and certainly biological science than I'll ever know. He demonstrates that sharpness on occasion in his public remarks. While that's obvious, it's also clear that his knowledge about running a public company is at best anachronistic, at worst terribly flawed. If he goes, one way or the other, then maybe, just maybe Dr Zerhouni will clean out the executive lineup, and excavate the fossils from the BOD. And Borisy will bring in a strong pharma CEO with a record of operational success, a solid understanding of the three financial statements, and strong relationships with institutional investors.
Near the session end, at 3:42, Opko is up nearly 10c......on 1.5 million in volume. That's not big money buying it. Big money knows everything I just said, and Frost is radioactive to them. Dr Cohen's TALK, on the other hand, having fallen from the $2 area to the high $1.40s recently, is up $0.15c today, ~9.2 %, on ~3.2 million shares, 4x the average volume. And the gain in the stock during his tenure is about 150%.