OXIS International, Inc. (OTCMKTS:OXIS) Is in No Hurry
At the end of March, OXIS International, Inc. (OTCMKTS:OXIS) proudly announced that they want to up-list the stock to NASDAQ. Investors reckoned that this is enough of a reason to start buying, and they pushed the ticker all the way to a 52-week high of $0.07. Unfortunately, the hype wasn’t enough and it soon found itself back at $0.03. It flatlined during the next few weeks which goes to show that some people preferred to walk away, but now, they seem to be coming back again.
It must be said that, when there are no NASDAQ PR’s around, OXIS isn’t the fastest-moving penny stock out there. Indeed, it hasn’t registered a red session since the beginning of the month, but despite this, it only managed to gain about 6% over the last five trading days which is not that impressive in Pennyland. Yesterday, however, it also generated more than $277 thousand in dollar volume which goes to show that investors are definitely interested. But what are they buying exactly?
As we’ve established already, they’re buying shares in a company that wants to go to NASDAQ and mix it with the big boys. When they issued the press release, OXIS‘ management team seemed pretty confident that they can do this, but just a few hours later, they presented us with the following figures in their latest annual report:
- cash: $855 thousand
- current assets: $882 thousand
- current liabilities: $29.8 million
- 2014 revenues: $61 thousand
- 2014 net loss: $23.5 million
Meeting the strict NASDAQ regulations won’t be easy with a financial statement as dreadful as this, but maybe, some investors are confident in the management team’s ability to turn things around. And indeed, in just about every interview or press release, Mr. Anthony Cataldo, OXIS‘ CEO, says that he was once at the helm of Genesis Biopharma Inc which is now known as Lion Biotechnologies Inc (NASDAQ:LBIO). Take a look at this 10-K, however, and you’ll see that Mr. Cataldo resigned from his position at Genesis before the company got listed on NASDAQ. What’s more, when he left, Genesis wasn’t in a particularly healthy shape.
This is something Mr. Cataldo prefers not to talk about and he somehow forgets to mention some of his other attempts at turning penny stock companies into successful businesses. We discussed them in a bit more detail in our article from the end of January.
More recently, we also talked about the threat of millions of shares seeing the light of day at some pretty low prices. According to the 10-K, for example, in some cases, debt can be converted into stock at a rate of just $0.007 per share.
And here’s one more thing you should probably consider – in August 2014, OXIS announced that they want to enter the cannabis biotech sector which means that many people are treating the ticker as a pot stock. The 10-K, however, doesn’t speak about any business operations related to cannabis. You’ll be the one to decide what to think of this.
About half an hour after today’s opening bell, OXIS is sitting at $0.033 (4% in the green).
