BioLargo, Inc. (OTCMKTS:BLGO) Soars on Hyped-Up News
Yesterday morning BioLargo, Inc. (OTCMKTS:BLGO) blew up on a news release. By the closing bell the aftershocks of the news had sent the ticker 32% in the green, to a close of $0.66 per share.
A news release cropped up in BLGO‘s PR feed yesterday, announcing that on August 17, industry experts gathered at the University of Alberta for an unnamed event. During the event, the “biggest breakthroughs in water treatment” were unveiled, and, if the PR is to be believed, chief among them was BLGO‘s AOS Filter.
The bombast of the release picks up speed, claiming over 100 studies conducted by some “team of researchers” showed that BLGO‘s filter disinfected water “more than 100 times more effectively” and “greater than 10 times faster” (sic) than all known competing products. This is not the end of it though – the PR claims BLGO‘s AOS Filter also offers 20-fold energy savings compared to its “closest competitor”. Investors obviously thought this to be an excellent source of rock-solid information and rushed to buy BLGO stock up the chart.
The piece was accompanied by a bit of video coverage produced by the entity that put up the news story, called secfilings dot com. Despite its name, this entity has nothing to do with the SEC and actually receives occasional compensation for similar articles and coverage. As a matter of fact, the extended disclaimer of secfilings dot com reveals they received over 36,000 BLGO shares directly from the company as payment for their services. This could explain the hyped-up tone of the news piece.
Does BLGO indeed have the best water purification and decontamination technology on earth? Traders should be able to figure this out on their own, with a little help from the company’s last official quarterly:
- $96 thousand in cash a/o June 2015
- $709 thousand in current liabilities
- $39 thousand in Q2 revenues
- $1.29 million in Q2 net loss
The news article speaks of BLGO gearing up for commercialization of its downright amazing technology sometime in 2016, with no further details on a time frame.
Investors may also find BLGO‘s latest 8-K to be an intriguing read. The filing informs of a rather convoluted debt restructuring that led to one type of promissory notes being converted into new convertible notes and Series A stock purchase warrants. The newly originating convertible notes have a conversion price of $0.25 per share and the warrants are exercisable at $0.40 per share – both a pretty hefty discount from the current market price.
