Andy Carpenter Tries to Save Ecosciences Inc (OTCMKTS:ECEZ)
It would appear that some people are quite desperate to pump up Ecosciences Inc (OTCMKTS:ECEZ). They first tried to do it in November 2014. A lot of money was spent and many alerts from a variety of promoters hit our inbox, but unfortunately for the third parties, the campaign turned out to be a rather big flop. The stock refused to go anywhere and investors seemed unmoved.
It looked like ECEZ will be left dead in the water, but yesterday, the third parties started splashing out on a new promotion, and this time, they brought out the heavy artillery.
A budget of $300 thousand was set aside and Andy Carpenter from Wall Street Revelator pocketed $11,600 of it. In exchange, he set up one of his delightfully colorful landing pages and said that if you buy ECEZ right now, you might see it reach $3.67 per share. The newsletters also got a piece of the pie and they are frantically trying to spread his optimism around.
Mr. Carpenter’s presence is definitely felt. ECEZ still seems reluctant to make a more significant jump in the right direction, but it’s also holding its ground rather well. Yesterday, it added 2% and closed the session at $0.54 after investors traded more than $226 thousand worth of shares.
ECEZ is a long way away from being the hottest penny stock out there, but $226 thousand is not a small amount of money, and, as we mentioned last week, it was put in a company that boasts a rather horrendous financial statement.
Still, it must be said that, as far as the press releases are concerned, the people at ECEZ are trying to get the business off the ground. Yesterday, for example, they announced that they have completed their first shipment to a South African distributor and said that they expect this to be just the beginning of a long-lasting business relationship. Earlier today, they issued another press release and informed their shareholders that they have put their product through a marketing campaign. Apparently, the results are encouraging.
It’s up to you to decide whether the good news really is enough to help ECEZ climb out of the financial hole that it’s in at the moment. And while you’re at it, you might want to think about a few other things as well.
Andy Carpenter’s involvement, for example, is quite worrying. The chart you see on the right belongs to a stock called Cardinal Resources Inc (OTCBB:CDNL). In January, CDNL‘s price was hovering quite close to the levels currently occupied by ECEZ and back then, Mr. Carpenter was trying to convince investors that it could reach more than $1.70 per share. As you can see, this hasn’t happened.
Then there’s the matter of the millions of shares floating around. If you have been around promoted penny stocks for long enough, you won’t be surprised to find out that ECEZ in its current incarnation exists thanks to a reverse merger. If you take a closer look at the 8-K form covering the deal, you’ll see that immediately after the acquisition, there were a total of 673,503 shares issued and outstanding. 560,003 were held by Joel Falitz (the current CEO), the former management team, and the shareholders of the then-new subsidiary. This leaves us with 113,500 shares and you might be wondering who was controlling them.
If you look really hard into the filings prior to the merger, you’ll see that these shares were sold during the initial offering at a price of $0.10 per share a little less than four years ago. $0.10 per share already represents quite a discount, but of course, that’s not the end of the story.
Shortly after the company assumed its new name and ticker symbol, it went through a 500 for 1 forward split which means that the 113,500 shares from 2011 were turned into 56,750,000 shares. These, as you might have calculated already, were initially sold for a grand total of $11,350. You should be able to do the math and see for yourself how much they’re worth today.
