baited

There is timing and there is timing.

The CEO of Oramed Mr Nadav Kidron presented at the Cantor Fitzgerald Healthcare conference 30 September 2021 with promises of clinical trials for the delivery of insulin and a covid 19 vaccine in the form of a pill sometime in 2024. 

the money

Oramed raised $100 million from wide-eyed and sophisticated investors after its Chinese shareholder said no mas. 

Oramed raised some of the money through Cannacord Genuity which might hold the record for the shortest tenure as an underwriter in capital market history. 

Cannacord was hired by Oramed in June 2021 and fired in August 2021 long enough for Mr Kidron to unload at least $4 million in shares joined by Mr Rakin.  Cannacord required Oramed to represent that it had not violated at least 11 US Healthcare Statutes and certain other international regulations.  Oramed responded by replacing Cannacord with Cantor Fitzgerald. 

Cannacord has a life science specialty, Cantor Fitzgerald is a generalist, so Cantor agreed to be the relief underwriter and offered Mr Kidron an opportunity to display his company's wares at the Cantor Virtual Healthcare Conference on 30 September 2021. 

the pitch

Mr Kidron devoted half the presentation time to the pill for insulin that was funded by Chinese owners in 2015 with whom a dispute had arisen over Mr Kidron's moonlighting. The insulin story promises continued trials, patient enrollments, and no potential FDA approval until at least 2024 or nine years after the journey began. Mr Kidron devoted the remaining half of his time to the pill for a covid 19 vaccine for which Oramed has neither a pill nor does Oravax have a covid 19 vaccine. 

cystron lives

Oravax's conception was the tortured outcome of Mr Kidrons hidden interest in a shell company, Cystron, that brought together underwriters HC Wainright, Premas Biotech, and Akers biosciences in a pantomime.  

Mr Kidron was and may still be a shareholder in Cystron formed in March 2020 at the inception of the pandemic to draw from the public trough. He did not bother to tell his Chinese owners who had a Covid 19 vaccine that he was a shareholder in a potential competitor.  Premas Biotech promised a secret sauce for a covid 19 vaccine that it did not have then and is no closer to having now.  

The Cystron of yesterday is the Oravax of today. Oramed owns 63%,  MyMd,  the old Akers Biosciences through a reverse merger owns 13 %,  and Premas Biotech that refunded some of the public monies raised in 2020 though found it convenient to hang on to at least $2 million for experimenting on 50 mice.

from mouse to men

Clinical trials move from evenings inspired by distilled rye to musings, animal studies, humans, and tend to cost more than $500 million over ten years raised from public markets blessed by the SEC. 

In the 17th minute of the presentation, Mr Kidron observed that to conduct a clinical trial on humans for a covid 19 vaccine today in Israel requires finding unvaccinated volunteers of which there would be few. 

The thinking is to start in Israel and South Africa, subject of the international covenants in the underwriting agreements, with humans, no permission yet, with a promise to migrate to the United States in q1 2022 without unvaccinated humans available for the trials. 

sacrament

The selection committee at FTSE Russell thought that the Oramed business model of $100 million in accumulated losses and promises of a pill to cure everything was suitable for inclusion in the Russell 2000 index which meant that the brand names of investment, Vanguard, Blackstone, had to own the stock in their mutual funds home to global pensions and retirement savings. Oramed's market capitalization doubled as the institutions bought. 

the big short

Mr Kidron and Mr Rankin  could not imagine their good fortune and sold, 220,000 shares at $20 for Mr Kidron and 20,000 shares at $20 for Mr Rankin presumably from which the IRS will be paid its share. Mr Kidron's sale has been replaced with grants of the same number of shares at 0.

One Oramed Board member, Mr Leonard Sank, used US capital markets to sell Oramed shares at $3 in a market bid at $9 bid to a Tortolan trust controlled by his wife. The largesse of accepting the $2.5 million capital loss or the beneficence of gifting the capital gain was noble.

a shell to far

MyMd, the old Akers Biosciences, has migrated to mental health with a faculty from Johns Hopkins and fancy press releases. As a shareholder in Oravax MyMd could prescribe a palliative for the Oramed Board because the Delaware Chancery Court reminded Boards everywhere that they have a duty to know what is going on in their circus.

a swan of any color

One day after Mr Kidron's Cantor presentation Merck promised a pill for the pandemic which had been in legitimate clinical trials in partnership with Ridgeback Biotherapeutics since April 2020. 

the aggrieved

Oramed claims to have 34 registered shareholders for the 38 million shares outstanding.  Nine of the shareholders are officers or directors. The most recent shareholders are institutional investors that bought 2 million shares at $25 in November 2021 which are now bid at 6.

The absence of suits from shareholders holding a bag worth 70% less is intriguing. A simple standard in securities fraud without debating intent is that insiders sold at a price inflated by statement of omission, commission, or undisclosed conduct unbecoming. 

The Italians have apt phrases for those less than polite moments that require visceral exclamation that may or may not be coursing through the larynx's of Blackrock, Vanguard, Morgan Stanley, TIAA CREF, and I Shares Russell, ugatz.