OncoSec Medical Inc (OTCMKTS:ONCS) Appears On Television

Prior to March 2011 OncoSec Medical Inc (OTCMKTS:ONCS) was called Netventory Solutions, Inc. and the company’s business was in the field of online inventory management solutions. They failed to make an impact in this market niche so they decided to go down a different route. They purchased some technology and assets from Inovio Pharmaceuticals Inc (NYSEMKT:INO) and after a name and a ticker change, they officially became a medical company. The old management team was relieved of their duties and new people with a lot of experience in the field took the helm. The address of the company’s principal offices was changed, a 32 for 1 stock split was performed and the number of authorized shares was increased to 3.2 billion.

As you might imagine, back then, ONCS was still in its infancy so trading was pretty inactive. Someone decided that the pumpers might help and a couple of emails flew around. They quoted ONCS as “a buyout alert”, said that the ticker could go from $1 all the way up to $38 and there were even rumors of a parallel hard mailer campaign quoting the same optimistic price targets. The increased interest did give the price a push in the right direction and it was probably the hype through the snail mail that kept it in place. Not for long. After about a month of staying relatively level, the slide started and when the promoters left the ticker alone, the wipeout was even more noticeable. By the end of 2011 ONCS were well below the $1 mark meaning that the aforementioned price targets are now just an elusive dream.

Does this story sound familiar? Arch Therapeutics Inc (OTCBB:ARTH) obliterated a further 18% of their value yesterday and if you have a look at our articles on them, you will see that they went through the same exact procedure. The change in the name, ticker, business and management team; the stock split; the increased authorized capital; the pump; the hard mailers – it’s all there. Their promotion ended sooner than expected and we wrote yesterday about the possible reasons for this but, after all what’s really important is the end result.

Speaking of which, here’s another example of the typical pump set up – Stevia First Corp (OTCMKTS:STVF). They were a mining company based in China back in 2011. Then came the new name, ticker, management team and business plan (developing stevia products). The pump for them came a few months after that in April 2012 and, just like ONCS and ARTH, they went through quite a big campaign with similarly optimistic colorful brochures, emails and the whole nine yards. The ticker reached nearly $3 per share at one point, but, once again, the hype was short-lived and soon it started correcting violently. Right now, a year and a bit later, it’s sitting at $0.35.

It’s the classical pump set up and if you take the time, you’ll find hundreds of penny stock ventures that have gone through the same scenario and the common thing about all of them is that they (or rather, the people who invest in them) suffer the consequences of the artificial hype.

Why are we telling you all this? We did it because, apart from the rather dreadful performance under the pressure of promotions, ONCS, ARTH and STVF have one more thing in common. Namely, the Chairman of the Board – Dr. Avtar Dhilon. He occupies the same position in the three ventures and this somehow leads us to believe that the similarities in the stock performance are not coincidental.

Other than that, ONCS seem to be moving along nicely for now. As we wrote in our previous article, apart from the lack of revenues, they have a relatively strong financial statement and a few recent press releases suggest that they’re making some progress. They even received some coverage on ABC 7 a couple of days ago which is probably the reason for the increased volume and the 8% gains from yesterday.

They have also managed to stay away from paid promotions for quite a while (although some free alerts come by every now and then) which is also a plus. Nobody knows for sure if that trend will continue, though, and the historical performance of Dr. Dhilon’s other projects (especially the colossal ARTH failure which you can see on the right), makes us somewhat suspicious.

Time will tell if ONCS will manage to succeed with their electroporation system and we certainly hope that they will. Still, doing your due diligence and having all the risks in mind before investing any money is, in our opinion, crucial.