ITonis, Inc. (PINK:ITNS) Explodes on New Touts
The draw of sub-penny stocks, especially when the respective company is actively releasing news and promoters are helping along with pump emails, has repeatedly proven irresistible for many. Today ITonis, Inc. (PINK:ITNS) is the latest sub-penny target of a huge number of pumps, both free and compensated $15 thousand.
The new touts and the two press releases the company came up with, timed along with the pumps, are mostly an extension of the last pump campaign for ITNS. The focus of the news is a pre-announcement of a marketing plan for a homeopathic line of nausea remedies. This is a continuation of the previous releases by ITNS concerning case studies of nausea and securing a manufacturer for the remedy in question.
Sadly, ITNS remain heavy on the press release hype and very light on filings. The company is stamped with the ‘Stop’ sign on OTCMarkets and is ranked in the Pink No Information tier due to a lack of current filings. The last available report from ITNS is for the period ended August 2012, or seven months ago. Obviously, the company is more interested in pushing hype and optimistic news than in keeping investors informed and up to date on the situation of the enterprise. Even the outdated August report contains some hair-raising figures:
- $160 in cash
- $559 thousand in current liabilities
- ZERO revenues for Jan-Sep 2012
- $5.1 million in accumulated deficit
Assuming this situation has in any way improved since then, it’s strange that the company has not yet posted new filings to reflect a positive change.
It bears repeating that the latest press releases still tout the fact that Charles Hensley is working on the new nausea medicine. Mr. Hensley is once again hailed as the inventor of the Zicam cold remedy. When we covered the previous pump campaign for ITNS, we already mentioned that Zicam turned out to be something of a disaster, after the FDA warned consumers against using the nasally delivered version of Zicam, as it could damage or destroy their sense of smell. Matrixx Initiatives, maker of Zicam, had to pay $12 million in settlement for several hundred lawsuits filed by Zicam users, as reported by NYTimes.com.
Despite the Zicam fiasco, the fact that the company has been keeping investors in the dark for 7 months and the dreary financial situation it was in even back then, the legion of pumpers seems to be quite enough for traders. In just an hour today ITNS generated more volume than it did on its way up during the last pump spike on Jan 30. After it ran up to 3 cents intra-day on Jan 30 with 36 million shares traded, the stock was completely obliterated by the flopping of twice as many shares on the next day for a close under a cent.
This time around the setup looks about the same, only the burn could potentially be much worse, with volume already at 74 million in early trading. With more than enough warning signs across the board, anyone who may end up with a bagful of loss once the pumps stop coming will have only themselves to blame.
