MultiCell Technologies, Inc. (OTCMKTS:MCET) Proves Volatile
As you can see from the chart on the right, the last two sessions of last week proved to be quite interesting for MultiCell Technologies, Inc. (OTCMKTS:MCET) – a ticker that was pretty much neglected by traders for months on end.
On Thursday, the company issued a press release according to which they have applied for a US and international patent for the treatment of liver cancer. This was, apparently, enough to draw quite a lot of attention and the stock literally exploded. In just six and a half hours, MCET managed to shift more than 1.8 billion shares resulting in a dollar volume of nearly $3.8 million. The price jumped up by a whopping 90% and the ticker closed the day at $0.0019.
The outlook for Friday’s session seemed just as promising, but unfortunately, something went wrong. MCET opened the day with a gap up at $0.0021, but started sliding towards the bottom immediately. When the closing bell rang, it was sitting at $0.0016 per share which is around 15% below Thursday’s value.
Opinions around message boards are somewhat mixed. There are some people who think that the drop at the end of the week was caused by market makers, a second group of investors argue that the slide is just a healthy consolidation which is a part of a more prolonged run upwards, and there are, of course, some skeptics who reckon that Thursday’s jump was caused by nothing more than excessive hype and that the ticker is about to go further down.
The future performance should show if any of these predictions are right, but in the meantime, we might as well have a look through the SEC filings and see how the company is doing at the moment.
Straight away, we can see that there are some good points. MCET have been around for quite a while and unlike many of their counterparts (Extreme Biodiesel Inc (OTCMKTS:XTRM) and Cannabusiness Group (OTCMKTS:CBGI) are prime examples), they don’t have the habit of changing their business plan every now and then. They have also signed some licensing agreements and the names of big enterprises like Pfizer Inc. (NYSE:PFE) are present in the latest 10-K.
It’s not all good news, however. The balance sheet, for example, doesn’t look like much. Here’s a summary of the most important figures as of November 30:
- cash: $146 thousand
- current assets: $178 thousand
- current liabilities: $1.2 million
- yearly revenues: $49 thousand
- yearly net loss: $1.3 million
As you can see, the working capital deficit is quite substantial, but we should mention that MCET have a securities purchase agreement with an entity called La Jolla Cove Investors, Inc. which could potentially bring in some fresh proceeds. The terms of the agreement are quite interesting.
It all started back in 2008 when La Jolla lent MCET $100 thousand. This amount can be turned into common stock, but there’s a hitch. For each $1,000 worth of debt converted, La Jolla must simultaneously exercise 100,000 warrants at a rate of $1.09 per warrant. As a result, during the year ended November 30, $10,880 worth of debt was converted into a whopping 1.26 billion newly issued shares. At the same time, however, MCET received around $1.1 million in proceeds from the exercising of warrants.
We’ll leave it up to you to decide whether the terms of the La Jolla deal are favorable or not, but you should probably bear in mind that there’s still around $43 thousand worth of debt that can be turned into common stock under the agreement. You might also want to consider one more sentence found on page 18 of MCET‘s report. It says: “We estimate that clinical trials of our most advanced drug candidates will continue for several years, but may take significantly longer to complete.“. Careful evaluation of all the risks and doing a lot of due diligence is absolutely essential before putting any money on the line.
