IsoRay, Inc. (NYSEMKT:ISR) Goes Wild
IsoRay, Inc. (NYSEMKT:ISR) was relatively quiet until yesterday. The stock was fluctuating between $1.50 and $1.80 and it seemed pretty happy with these ranges. Wednesday came, however, and everything changed.
In a matter of a single session investors traded more than 50 million shares which pushed the dollar volume up to $136 million. The stock opened the day above the $2 mark for the first time in over five months and it then hit a 52-week high of $3.38. It met some resistance there and it slipped, but it still finished the day at $3.12 per share which is a massive 93.8% above Tuesday’s close. In other words, ISR almost doubled its value. Why did it do that?
Well, Awesome Penny Stocks seem to be touting the stock. We have yet to receive emails, but we can see that the successors of one of the most infamous promotional outfits are pretty determined to pump up the ticker with the use of numerous tweets which are basically saying the same thing – that ISR is about to explode. APS didn’t disclose any compensation, but they did say that they have bought a little over 2 thousand ISR shares at $2.90 which means that they certainly want to see it go further up.
Some of you, especially the ones who are used to trading OTC stocks, might be a bit worried at the moment. APS, under their current incarnation, have only been around since the end of last year, but they’ve already managed to log a pretty terrible track record. In January, for example, they tried to pump American Leisure Hld (OTCMKTS:AMLH) and they briefly succeeded in pushing it above the $0.40 per share mark. Right now, it’s sitting at just $0.03. A few months later, they unleashed a no-compensation campaign on Cubic Energy Inc (OTCMKTS:CBNR), but it’s fair to say that they made a rather big hash of it.
There are, however, a few major differences between APS’ previous picks and ISR. For one, ISR is not an OTC stock which turns it into a completely different ball game. A lot more analysts and serious investors are looking at the NYSE MKT stock exchange which should make for a more interesting ride. And unlike some of APS’ previous picks, ISR is actually a working company. The 10-Q for the first quarter of 2015 looks like this:
- cash: $1 million
- current assets: $11.9 million
- current liabilities: $881 thousand
- quarterly revenues: $1.1 million
- quarterly net loss: $950 thousand
And APS didn’t just jump in for the fun of it. They, like most of the investors who bought ISR shares yesterday, did it because of a press release which came out about an hour before the opening bell. It said that Dr. Bhupesh Parashar MD from Weil Cornel Medical College has studied the effects of ISR‘s Cesium-131 treatment on lung cancer patients and he has come up with some brilliant results. Apparently, the 5-year survival rate is 100% and there are no notable side effects.
So, the stock peaked because of some actual news and not simply due to APS’ pump. But does that mean that jumping in is the most logical thing to do?
Most investors around the internet forums and social networks reckon that the stock has the legs to go further up and they seem convinced that Dr. Parashar’s report will result in more sales for ISR. Hopefully they will turn out to be right because, as you can see from the figures above, the revenues and profit margins are not that impressive. Some other people, however, are not quite as ecstatic about the news and are assuming a more bearish position.
It’s up to you to decide which camp you should side with.
