Daily Dose Conclusion: Advanced Cell Therapy (OTCBB ACTC): Moving up from OTC BB to NASDQ is always good. This company sports a $200 million market cap and has liquidity so it logical to reverse split the stock. According to the 10K the company ended the year with $13 million and presented at Roth conference this week has a $15 million line they can draw upon. A quick glance at the filling suggests the company has $21 million in losses last year. Clinically its early days for ACTC and like every small cap biotech they will be needing funding to keep clinical programs moving forward. We will have to watch for next catalysts.
From the press Release: MARLBOROUGH, Mass. — March 14, 2012 – Advanced Cell Technology, Inc. (“ACT”; OTCBB: ACTC), a leader in the field of regenerative medicine, announced today that on Monday, March 12 it filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission a proxy statement containing a shareholder proposal for a reverse split of its common stock.
The annual meeting of stockholders will be held on Thursday, April 26, at the Hyatt Regency Suites, Palm Springs, 285 N. Palm Canyon Dr., Palm Springs, Calif., 92262, on Thursday, April 26, 2012, at 9 a.m. PDT, to consider the following proposals: election of five directors, ratifying the appointment of the company’s public accounting firm, and a proposal to effect a reverse stock split of the company’s common stock, at a ratio between one-for-twenty and one-for-eighty, and to reduce the number of authorized shares of the company’s common stock in the same proportion as the reverse split, with the exact ratio to be determined by the board of directors.
“This reverse stock split, which should better align the company’s capital structure with its stage of development, and an accompanying Nasdaq listing application, will represent a significant step toward creating long-term shareholder value and building ACT into a world-class player in the regenerative medicine space,” said Gary Rabin, chairman and CEO of ACT. “I hope that our stockholders understand how important it is to vote ‘For’ the reverse stock split. A Nasdaq listing will enable us to significantly broaden our shareholder base and attract institutional ownership, a process that can build on itself to position the company on very firm financial footing over the long term.”
Stockholders who have questions on how to vote or need assistance voting their shares should contact the company’s proxy solicitor InvestorCom, Inc. toll-free at (877) 972-0090.
Macular Degeneration (from the chairmen's Blog): As you are undoubtedly aware, last July we initiated the first-ever clinical trials using a cell therapy derived from human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) to treat various forms of macular degeneration. The end goal for our clinical trials is to test whether or not the retinal pigment epithelial (RPE) cells we make from hESCs are capable of homing to sites of injury in the retina, replacing the native RPE cells that are lost to disease, and ultimately reestablishing the function of this layer of cells in protecting photoreceptors from cell death, i.e. slowing or halting progressive vision loss. One of our ongoing trials is for Stargardt’s Macular Dystrophy (SMD, aka Stargardt’s Disease) and the other is for Dry Age-Related Macular Degeneration (Dry AMD). Last month we also initiated a European clinical trial for Stargardt’s Disease. That same week, we also published some exciting – albeit very preliminary data – relating to the patients treated last July, in The Lancet.
To date, we have treated one patient with Dry AMD (at UCLA), and a total of four patients with SMD (three at UCLA, and one at Moorfields Eye Hospital in London). The recent treatment of the two SMD patients at UCLA represents the entire first cohort of patients for this initial dose of cells in the SMD trial.
We are pleased to have both trials underway and delighted with the results we have reported so far. Clearly, though, the question arises: why does the Stargardt’s Disease trial appear to be moving along at a faster pace than the Dry AMD trial? This has no doubt been of particular interest to our investors, upon whom the vast size of the potential market for Dry AMD is not lost; a projected market upwards of $25-30 Billion in the US and Europe alone. I intend to briefly address this issue here.