Iovance Biotherapeutics Inc (IOVA) News

Loading back to 120 and hopefully not having to sell the 30 at 12 SP.

 This yo-yo will continue but I hope, and logically speaking, now that we are commercial stage as GMH noted it will be shifting the yo-yo upward from 8 - 12 to 12 - 16 overtime.

Iovance Biotherapeutics Inc. (IOVA): Among the NASDAQ Stocks with Biggest Upside Potential According to Analysts

The path to profitability is well defined at this time. Good luck to the longs.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/iovance-biotherapeutics-inc-iova-among-124913333.html

Someone on ST mentioned TG Therapeutics so I took a look and think that IOVA share price will likely follow the same pattern. Big pop upon approval (Dec 2022) with a subsequent sell off over the next quarters down to pre-approval levels; run-up to prior highs once they hit break-even (6 quarters post approval). So far, seems to be the pattern we are following.

GMH, good points. The major funds along with WR have mostly added to their positions since approval, so that's an indication to me of what they're seeing. Agreed that some traders have moved on to different pastures, but I won't go as far as to say greener. If it's daily action that they're looking for, IOVA may no longer be that stock for some of them.

We do know there are numerous upcoming events that if timed properly will allow for some trades in IOVA, but we've also recently seen that the share price is still open to the vagaries of a fickle market and the abuses of hedge funds and market makers that can play the stock price as opportunities present themselves. Back to $8 is great if you're still trying to build a position, it's also potentially good if you're swing trading, but it's frustrating if expectations were we'd never see these prices again following a very solid Q3.

Referencing a friend (you know who you are) who's been preaching the need for the market to see 3-4 full Q's of earnings with reasonable revenue growth along with solid 2025 guidance offered with the Q4 results, at that point we should see more stability in the stock price and likely higher highs as well. The good news is that's when many of my shares will be long term capital gains should I decide to sell a few. Personally I expect the much bigger share price numbers to start appearing later in 2025, and by bigger I mean 3-5x or more from where we're at now (the upper range of the analysts' price targets) so why sell too soon?

GMH. keep sharing, it's always appreciated.

Good luck to the longs.

BK

At the beginning of this year, IOVA was considered a clinical biotech start-up. Starting in Q1 2024, IOVA is now considered as a commercial biotech. That shift is similar to the ones you get when a company goes from a high growth company to a value company. As a clinical stage biotech, the valuation is based solely on the pipeline and trial readouts and buyout potential. As a commercial stage biotech, there is going to be a shift for people looking more to the financials. I am wondering if we are not range-bound until the company can show continued top-line growth, margin improvement and road to profitability. I think IOVA is making good progress in that regard, but I suspect you do get a bit of a shift in investor base in moving between those 2 stages. I have found that clinical stage biotechs are always simply trades as you just move from catalyst to capital raise, rinse, repeat with the hopes of a buyout at the end. Commercial stage biotechs have the 3rd option of moving towards a viable stand alone company. This does not mean that a buyout will never happen, but it doesn't need to be the only endpoint.

Share price is being be held tightly in low 8’s. Hope it does not crater to sub-$7 is they miss Q4 patient ramp up and revenue target

FWIW, another day with a large AH's trade - a single block of 5.26 million shares changed hands in today's AH's. Over 42 million shares traded in the last three trading days in addition to the 27 million shares that traded on Nov 8th alone.

Active to be sure and out of the ordinary.

Several job postings of note - Australia: https://iovance.bamboohr.com/careers/1586

And all of the 0042-CELL THERAPY FIELD TEAM postings: https://www.iovance.com/current-opportunities/

Get ready for what's happening - rapid growth as seen in the job listings and current hiring. As stated in today's Stifel Healthcare Conference with Iovance, the company is well on its path to profitability and a multi-billion dollar annual revenue stream.

Good luck to the longs.

BK

$IOVA

Quick messy thoughts from listening to part of the Stifel chat:

1) no slowing of demand, ramp continues for amtagvi
2) ATCs still on track towards 70 but more importantly a lot of them are themselves ramping up! Some of the ones doing 1-2 per month are large and scaling up towards 1-2+ per week within a few months.
3) NSCLC readout next year and there will be a full readout with 2026 with all 120+ patients
4) they have a clear line of sight to profitability without needing a “significant” capital raise

Stifel Healthcare Conference with Iovance just concluded. Certainly worth listening to when time allows. https://ir.iovance.com/events/event-details/stifel-2024-healthcare-conference

What have you verified?

Great post with tons of verifiable information. Not like OTCM scams that put out fake press releases and unaudited financials.
Thanks for your hard work!

Stay up to date with Iovance and IOVA. Here's some source material to get you started:

The Iovance corporate presentation: https://ir.iovance.com/static-files/f81194ff-6f65-4ed4-af92-67362eb17901

Iovance is a fast growing company with a lot of career opportunities: https://www.iovance.com/current-opportunities/

Iovance events and presentations: https://ir.iovance.com/news-events/events-presentations

Who owns Iovance? : https://ir.iovance.com/stock-information/ownership-summary

Here's the approved TIL therapy for Melanoma: https://www.amtagvi.com/

Share the company, share the news, and most definitely share with friends and family that may be dealing with cancer. Numerous other trials for solid tumor cancers are going on at this time: https://www.iovance.com/patients/

Good luck to the longs. Good health for friends and family.

GMH, thanks for that information. When it comes to all the rules for required reporting of stock trades, I'm not well versed in what trades need to be made public and when. I appreciate all that you provide for this board and your efforts to inform.

BK

JDC, you moderate a board for a stock that is trading sub 1 cent and you're here to protect us from posters who may celebrate this investment from time to time. We were all "unsuspecting newbies" at one time, and yet here we are, succeeding (sometimes just surviving) in this shark infested water of investing.

Lesson one, do not rely on any message board for accuracy of info. Lesson two, if someone tells you they're here of their own free will to protect you from some other poster, question their intentions.

Message boards are great places to share ideas and to encourage additional due diligence prior to any investing decision. We've all inadvertently posted incorrect information, even when we had no intention of pumping or lying. Feel free to stay and share, but please don't presume to save us from ourselves. Nearly everyone here has already learned the lesson that they are personally responsible to verify information shared by others.

Personal responsibility - your money, your rules.

JDC, since you're a moderator, maybe revisit what you've agreed to do and to not do when you accepted that role. As for sharing individual trades, lead by example if that's what you believe is of great importance.

Good luck to the IOVA longs.

This board is mostly longs with positions based on the fundamentals and long term projections. Certainly there’s also trading around cores and options but there are no unsuspecting newbies here lol.

Post your trades sir. I highly doubt your self statements. You were pumping this at $11 and now your said you sold? Were you pumping when you were selling? Please post your proof of trades otherwise none us on the board believe you.. 

Are you illiterate? I believe so.

surfkast

Member Level
Re: jdcpa1 post# 1822

Saturday, November 16, 2024 2:19:03 PM

Post#
1833
of 1834
I agree! Glad I sold months ago and bought back in at $7.44. Hope this reverses soon/.
All my posts on the site are to be considered opinions.

Readers determine the veracity of the posts they read and the credibility of other Users

17.44 buy in is crazy.. no wonder why you constantly pump away here.  

I agree! Glad I sold months ago and bought back in at $7.44. Hope this reverses soon/.

I am almost certain these are all Market-On-Close orders. If you invest in mutual funds, you know they require you to submit a buy/sell order usually 30-60 minutes prior to market close. They then aggregate inflows/outflows and put in a MoC order based on the net. This has to be into the exchange 10 minutes prior to close. MM will then adjust pricing to cover all the MoC orders. These also come from day traders wanting to square their position prior to close.

If you go to any chart for the Friday close, you will see the big spike in volume last minute. I checked about 5 including AAPL and all the same. Think you get bigger spikes on market sell offs as people want to exit their mutual funds and move to cash. You can see each individual trades if you go to the exchange website (nasdaq.com for IOVA).

Dark pool trades to not hit the exchanges so these would not show up on the charts which are fed from the exchange data.

Investopedia.com is a great source for anything relating to trading and the markets. Gives insights and stem a lot of the conspiracy theories that get spread around.

Dark Pools: https://www.investopedia.com/articles/markets/050614/introduction-dark-pools.asp

MoC: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/m/marketonclose.asp

Corsair, I don't have a good guess to provide regarding that large block of shares that traded right after regular trading hours. Possibly a dark pool trade? MM getting flat per agreed arrangement at end of day (doubtful)? I'm sure others can address this question far better than I. I don't think we'll know the real answer any time soon.

If anyone has a possible explanation, I'd love to hear it as well regarding the 8+ million share block at the close. It seemed far too big to be tied to options for Nov 15th.

Have a great weekend.

On IBKR, the last downgrade they show is from Piper from back in July. All others showing are maintained or initiated at Buy/Outperform.

Hitcham - you see this in a lot of biotechs. They will run up into a PDUFA or other "known" catalysts and then you get a sell-off. There is always a big FOMO trade in biotechs, but they are always raising cash so they are an easy target for short sellers. That is why I want IOVA to get to break-even cashflow as soon as possible. This takes away the cash raise risk substantially... although it is always there to some extent until they start handing out a dividend.

BK
Sorry to be off topic, read somewhere that 4 of the analysists have lowered their ratings. Have you seen or heard if that's true. I can't find any more details and wondering if it is a short piece. Also any ideas on the end of day trade, shows up here but not on Yahoo.

Syndax dropped by 6% yesterday, announced FDA approval after closing then the SP recovered only 1%!!!

Bulls are in control of the market now and not only iovance and surely all growth stock that are still not profitable. 

I am bracing for a difficult couple of weeks before it gets better and I hope I am wrong...

GMH, that was more of a statement, and yes, fully aware of that. My point was one of implication - meaning since WR has not reported any purchases, he may be locked out due to having MNPI - material non-public information. If he's involved in any on-going discussions with possible suitors for the company, he would not be able to buy or sell. That's all I meant by stating it the way I did. As always, thanks and have a great weekend. BK

Because Quogue is wholly owned by Rothbaum, they would need to disclose any change in ownership as an insider within 3 days of the transaction. Because of that, I do not believe they are required to provide quarterly updates.

Look again at the top 10: https://ir.iovance.com/stock-information/ownership-summary

Everyone added except MHR and Geode reduced a tiny bit (and we don't know what WR/Quogue has done for quite a while). Even they couldn't have predicted all this recent craziness. I would bet they're still adding as we speak.

GMH, if you want to see some unexpected put risk, take a peak at today's SMCI options. There's a lot of new shareholders today that thought they were totally safe when they sold those puts that were way out of the money a while back.

When I sell puts, I like to limit my exposure to shares I'm willing to buy anyway even if my expectations are that I won't ever see those shares. I did sell a handful more today on IOVA for Jan and Mar with a willingness to add those shares if necessary. I do have some puts that I sold a while ago that are currently underwater, but I suspect they won't be at expiration. It's always possible that they could put those shares to me sooner, but not likely as there is still some premium attached to those contracts. Again, I'm okay with that as I'm still accumulating shares, but I certainly didn't expect these levels would be seen once more.

Today was a very healthy pullback across the board and especially in this sector (see XBI) on fear and uncertainty. As for Iovance, all the reasons to be long haven't changed. Whether you bought at $14 or $7 (I've done both), the future of this company will make both of those prices seem like good deals in time.

Have a great weekend. Good luck to the longs.

Timberrrrrr

I am retired and most of my assets are in market index ETFs. If IOVA were to go to $0, it would wipe out about 10% of my value... not concerned about the equity risk but the Put options I kept selling on pullbacks. Biggest risk for me is 7.50P expiring Jan. Couple of days ago, I thought those were 100% safe... now, not so much.

I am in the same boat my friend. 90 k shares so 350 k$ drop over a week.

BUT

I am holding to my shares...

The only change is that I am now adjusting my strategy from 110 +- 20 k into 90 k +- 20 k.

I need to strike the right balance between long term gain and short term blood pressure increase!!

Don't give up all, the fundamentals have not changed. 

Criminal at best!

I have added too much exposure already this drop... fingers almost cut off from all the falling knives. I am going to wait for a couple green days in a row before considering it a bottom now.

Good call, Hicham, the market is making (hopefully) one big last flush. Good luck to the bargain shoppers today.

This one trades more like a P&D than a NASDAQ Biotherapeutics company with FDA products!

Pig piles!!! Lol

For valuations on these pre- or early revenue companies, I try to create a pro-forma P&L looking out 3-5 years (to estimated peak sales). I then adjust the parameters as facts emerge. For a lot of biotechs, you hear people say "but they have an approved drug/treatment", but if the target patient population is too small, they will never get to profitability, even with a treatment at $2+M. People also always over-estimate adoption. Even for IOVA, people say "these patients are dying, of course they will treat", but even looking at my mom, who is 92 and relatively healthy (for 92), if she developed MM, I am 100% sure she would not treat, even if she was eligible. This is critical to getting to the "real" treatment population.

Having said that, I think IOVA does tick the boxes. For US population, I estimate peak patients at 1,800 for L2+. RoW should add about about 2,200 patients (ramping end 2025), but at a 15% price discount, for a total incoming at 4,000. Hitting about 100 patients/month should allow IOVA to hit efficiency to get to GM target of 70% (ultimately I think they can get to 75%-80%). This also assumes a drop rate moving down to 20% (which was where the trials were but higher FDA cell count requirement in the Assay hurt that). These two alone, get to a $35-40 price, assuming IBB PE and a PEG of 1.5. I think EU/RoW approval at 90%+ since CAR-T was approved. Adding L1, other IND including NSCLC only leverages the bottom line up and the SP would be multiples of the price noted.

Bottom line, for my core holdings, it only matter where I bought it (ave $9.90) and where I sell it (I expect much much higher). On the pullbacks and events, I use options to "play the game", just need to make sure I do not over do it so I can stay in the game.

GMH, Perceptive did add a small amount, MHR is unchanged. Updates will be posted on the company website soon enough. Perceptive's filing posted today: https://ir.iovance.com/sec-filings/sec-filing/sc-13ga/0001193125-24-258737 .

JE, MHR, and WR do seem to be in lockstep with each other based on share totals. WR with the most, Vanguard now 2nd on the list, JE of Perceptive 3rd, and MHR currently 4th. I'm unaware of any other major changes coming that would knock any of these 4 off the top spots.

The top 10 institutions have controlling interest of Iovance with over 54% of the shares for whatever that may mean. It won't take much to get agreement should the time come for a vote of the shareholders.

All still looks solid and stable amongst the top owners, but share price is still frustrating regardless. I still interpret this to mean that they're all on the same page as to what the future holds for Iovance, whatever that future may be - whether a buyout or to go it alone, a possible partnership or even an acquisition of another company. My guess is they all understand the plan as it was explained earlier on when they took large positions.

Just my opinion, of course.

Thanks for posting. Most of the holdings by the big firms (Vanguard, Black Rock, etc.) are the collective decisions of all the various fund managers they employ. The ones I am most interested in are Quogue, but that will only change when WR buys/sells so I don't think there will be an update on that one. Perceptive and MHR have big bets and this is there space and they are "in the know" so will be interesting what they have done. The others is just a mish mash of buys and sells by hundreds of fund managers. Hard to get a take on that.

Surf, nothing wrong with caution especially when preserving capital is important at a certain stage in life. I'm invested a bit more than I had originally planned, but I also have an eye on the what if...

I don't want to have to make my wife go back to work at her age, although she still can outwork most of the younger kids. Dang, maybe I should send her back, lots of companies need good employees. If we were in the Philly market, I hear Iovance is hiring.

Here's a little gem of a note: Hood River Capital Management LLC increased their holdings to 8.14 million shares, an increase of 5.41 million shares as of 9/30/24.

Best of luck to us.

I reached my limit when it was back to $7.44. 10 or 20 m years ago after the run I I would have flipped. Getting old and too cautious. LOL

Surf, what I can say is I increased my position today to get to my personal total number of shares goal and maintaining a price average below $9.50. I know Hicham sees reason to wait a bit longer and will try to catch the bottom, but at this point we're all just playing for small change. Nothing wrong with saving a few extra dollars on the purchase price if you can. My impatience got the best of me today. A year from now, I doubt I'll be too worried if I could have saved an extra quarter or two in the near term.

I took advantage of this drop reasonably well, but certainly not perfectly played.

Good luck to the longs.

Thanks!

Surf, actually, we've seen increases for Vanguard Group, State Street, Black Rock, and even Perceptive added a few more shares. Some new big positions and a couple big increases, but certainly a few that had sold down some shares probably right after the rise following Q2 earnings back in August. Some updates will appear in a day or two, but here's what's currently listed:

https://ir.iovance.com/stock-information/ownership-summary

As for how this stock gets beat around - it does seem well organized to a point. I'm guessing there's plenty of money being made selling the calls and puts and then wiping them all out just in time for options expiration. I've seen this game played on other stocks I've owned while the company was growing its business. But in the end, the good companies do win out and the share holders are rewarded. Options players have to take their chances on timing the moves properly - that's not such an easy task with a young commercial company.

Good luck to the longs.

Institutional injvestors shorting heavily.

We are all tempted to buy more but I am not sure we have hit the bottom. Whoever is dragging this down seams to be totally in control and therefore the SP can ever drop further...

 I personally prefer to wait until the dust settles. Not selling but not buying more ar this stage.

I agree. Feels like something big is brewing. I'm not scared, I'm more confident than ever we are about to hear something soon. Keep buying like they are! I know i am.

Good luck to the longs.

People always claim manipulation with stocks. Well IMO, you can see it with IOVA.
I have traded stocks full time for 5 years and watch charts on daily basis.
I was just watching IOVA on a 1 minute chart when it went to 9.04.
Immediately, 2 blocks of around 100000 shares came in to knock it back down.
That is almost 1 million dollars per these trades.
So what is that? Retail - not at all likely. A large institutional trader selling part of position - doubtful.
So what? IMO - it is naked shorting. They are trying to break the retail trader this week.
The ASK is reloaded on every upswing aggressively.

Just my thought.