Iris BioTechnologies Inc (OTCMKTS:IRSB) Gets Some Attention

In January, a financial advisory firm called Hanson McClain Advisors filed some reports with the SEC which made Iris BioTechnologies Inc (OTCMKTS:IRSB)’s management team quite upset. A couple of months later, IRSB announced that the information in the reports had been false and that it had led to a “selling frenzy” between January 9 and January 26.

“Selling frenzy” probably isn’t the best description of what happened during that period. Indeed, the price dropped from over $1 per share to a bottom of just $0.15, but the cumulative volume during the eleven sessions outlined by IRSB stood at less than 8,000 shares.

A similar thing happened during the second half of October and the first two weeks of November. The volume was just as pitiful and the fall was just as horrific. In the span of less than a month, IRSB managed to fall from $0.73 all the way to just $0.05 per share. This time, the management team haven’t been able to pinpoint a culprit.

Despite the rather sorry-looking chart, however, investors haven’t abandoned the ticker completely. On November 25, they pushed it on a climb that was also accompanied by some much more solid volumes. Last week, it managed to reach $0.50 again and although it corrected itself back to $0.35 on Friday, the activity around the message boards and social media suggests that people actually care about what’s going to happen to the stock.

The reason for this is a press release that came out of IRSB‘s headquarters (which appears to be located in a virtual office) on November 25. It updated the shareholders on a lawsuit filed by the company against a former legal counsel. Apparently, actions taken by the law firm have prevented IRSB from acquiring a patent which has, in turn, hampered the stock’s planned up-listing to NASDAQ and the commercialization efforts. The case has been dismissed by the Court, but the management team were quick to point out that despite the law firm’s alleged malpractices, the patent is now in place and the company is ready to launch “multiple products in 2016 both in the US and abroad”.

That, after almost seventeen years of struggle (the company was incorporated in February 1999), could be a major milestone, but if the latest 10-Q is anything to go by, it will be extremely hard to reach. Here’s what the figures looked like on September 30:

• current assets: $52,211 in cash
• current liabilities: $275,517
• NO revenue since inception
• quarterly net loss: $207,280

So, there’s not one, but two things you need to do before you trust your money with November 25’s press release. You need to ignore the rough patches IRSB has gone through over the years and you need to believe in the management team’s ability to raise a significant amount of money in an extremely short period of time. How likely the latter is, is for you to decide.