May 20, 2020 – Sorrento Therapeutics’ announcement of Covid-19 “cure” follows management’s long history of unsuccessfully tailgating fads while squandering hundreds of millions in fresh investment capital.
Viceroy Research are short Sorrento Therapeutics (NASDAQ:SRNE) – a biotech company with wild claims it has basically found the cure for SARS-Cov-2 (Covid-19) amid a history of apparent stock pumping by its management team and transaction advisors. We believe Sorrento deliberately rides the pandemic wave for the sole purpose of pumping its stock price, with a propaganda machine to match.
Amid these COVID-19-related announcements, Sorrento have executed a new share sale prospectus for $250m of shares at VWAP to capitalize on the destruction of the pandemic. This will be the single largest value deal for sale agent Alliance Global Partners (AGP). AGP has uncanny propensity to flood capital markets with garbage.
Sorrento has virtually no revenue and has burnt through over $420m of cash over the last 3 years at an increasing rate. Sorrento has failed to significantly monetise any of its assets and seems to exist solely to raise billions in capital from equity and debt markets. Their development catalogue is extremely varied with several product stalled in clinical testing or R&D.
Part of this cash burn and asset stripping has been called into question in the past from major shareholder Wildcat Capital Management.
Given Sorrento’s lengthy history of false promises and bad company, Viceroy doubts management can coerce investors into burning cash once more, and the company will fizzle out of existence.