DoctorFaustus

QLGN; A Good Idea, but can they make it happen?

NASDAQ:QLGN   Qualigen Therapeutics, Inc.
DISCLAIMER
This is in no way, shape or form, fluid and function, an analytical, qualitative or intelligent compte rendu. I am obviously not rich, so obviously I haven't made it with my own thinking, so definitely don't put faith in me. But maybe read and learn some things about a company that may or may not make some major moves.


Thesis/TL;DR
This is the definition of a biotech startup with infinite room for risk and reward. Please do not blindly trust anything from this article, I add links to every source for you to do your own research. Furthermore, I am not rich, so looking for true financial investment advice from me is just silly.

With all of that said, this company does have some attractive aspects, positions itself as a solid acquisition target, and has some space to run for a few years without stock dilutions. With no idea what price movement could look like, enter and exit at your own risk. I genuinely don't know which way this company will pan out, even after doing ~20+ hours of research on this one. I have no firm belief in any single product in its pipeline, nor any belief in staff that can make magic happen. What I do believe is that they have some great patents, they could easily take some seed money from a bigger pharmaceutical money for licensing deals and development on current pipeline, or they could just be looking for a paycheck before their next company startup venture.

The Board
Lets start with the CEO, Michael Poirier link:
He has a history in biotech's, last was at EnSys (never heard of it, nor his products there), and Sanofi. He's a lawyer and ex-Navy, and doesn't much like having his picture taken. My personal feeling is that he has a proven background in moving products through the motions, but not drugs. He's a fancy pants lawyer, went to Zurich and Navy, which makes me think he has old money, and quite convinced of his own superiority. Again, totally not real, but the fact remains that law school in Zurich and navy makes me think of money. Which is definitely what he had, because Qualigen was private until their acquisition of Ritter pharmaceuticals last year. Furthermore, it looks like Poirier had a bunch of his own money in acquiring Ritter based on SEC filings showing him the personal owner of the company. With that said, he does have a fair amount of shares and invested part of his Roth IRA on QLGN, so it will be interesting to see what happens.
Next up is Amy Broidrick, their EVP and CStrategyO; aka the second in command, especially with her strong experience in biopharma's like Merck and Pfizer, which isn't to say that's great as they have had and continue to have a long string of failures. But it does put her in an interesting spot on working on a buyout position, especially with her as Chief strategy officer. The CFO and VP has been with the company since 2002, compared to the recent incumbent Broidrick. It will be interesting to see how the power dynamic plays out in the office, if the VP and EVP don't play well together, it shreds morale and forces turnover, delaying or killing projects and momentum.

Their CSO looks to be the guy behind most of the tech. Press has him as the mastermind behind everything at QLGN, most likely he is just a point man, as their CSO he is going to be on all the papers. It looks closer to them being a shuttle for various projects coming out of University of Louisville. If you roll through their Corporate Deck, all of their images are sourced from Uni of Louisville. Not a bad thing, just something to note.

The final person I want to talk about is Ira Ritter. www.crunchbase.com/person/ira-e-ritter This guy looks like he is a big political player in California, chosen by the Governor of CA several times for various "public roles", namely head of prison stuff, etc. He started and brought Ritter Pharma public, as well as an art gallery. He is also listed as the head of a few other small time businesses, mainly focused in CA. This worries me, he has all the right titles, jobs and "professional equity" to look like a deal broker, and everything that makes me feel ill. I have no idea if Ira is a good person, or a sleazy political low life looking for some hardcore money to do bad things with. His continued role on the board after Ritter's buyout leads me to believe this is ceremonious, as well as a buyout deal is in the works. In fact, all of their directors listed on their board lead me to believe they are trying to make themselves as attractive as possible in selling various programs, tech, or possibly themselves. www.qualigeninc.com/.../board-of-directors/ Half of their directors are from investment banks, and the other half are from a long line of biotech's no longer around. On top of all of that, their Chief Medical Officer is a urologist and has his own long string of jobs, feels more like a proxy member to give the company more "fundamentals".

I will say that the most impressive quality of this board, is their military service. At least 2 members of the board, CEO included, started with a military career. Albeit the entirety of them sound like professional directors from birth, their military careers more closely resemble that of a politician than anything else.

Science - Possible Pipeline
I want to start with what I think is the coolest part of their pipeline, and what could end up being truly revolutionary.
www.qualigeninc.com/...tics-pipeline/stars/
This thing right here is like a biochemist finally looking at medicine and wondering why are they so far behind. The concept is simple, run blood through a filter such that you are able to specifically remove a toxic agent. A simple way to explain this is with magnets; Person X gets cut with a rusty screw, now there are magnets in their blood that will make them sick. Hook them up to a dialysis machine, and instead of removing water (or if you've given double reds before, they use these to remove the double reds and put back everything else into you), and it will remove the magnets by using a tube filled with magnets of the opposite polar charge. Now the magnets floating in Person X's blood will be gone, and all of their normal blood can go right back in. This program has the opportunity to treat every blood-borne disease with an appropriate capture system (think magnets, but pulls out exactly what you want). Their Fastpack diagnostic system is the perfect start; Qualigen is an expert at handling blood and looking for very specific things. Now they need to flip it on it's head, pull out the very specific things and leave the rest.
d1io3yog0oux5.cloudf...+Deck_April+2021.pdf Go to page 11.
There is next to no information on this project other than the title and description. The only thing they have developed on this, is the technical patent, with little to no program milestone revealed.

Next lets go to their RAS platform:
www.qualigeninc.com/...tics-pipeline/ras-f/
I believe that therapies targeting the RAS pathway may one day be viable, I just don't see how Qualigen, a start-up with little cash on hand, little to no scientific expertise in this, and limited amounts of personnel to get this started, can make this happen. And of course, this is another partnership with University of Louisville. There are much bigger, much grander companies taking on the RAS pathway to little or no avail, and if there is a treatment there, part of me thinks QLGN lacks the ability, and time to get there in a meaningful way. This doesn't mean it shouldn't be tried, it just means I don't feel like risking my money on them to do it, especially with no in house specialist or scientific source that gives me confidence in their ability to do so.

Lets save their best for last, so on to QN-247 (ALAN) www.qualigeninc.com/...pipeline/as1411-gnp/
This targets any cell with a specific protein, Nucleolin (what is does really doesn't matter here), and causes the protein and the gold nanoparticle plated with QN-247 to be swallowed into the cell. In 100 patients, they claim no serious side effect and strong clinical benefits in 7. Not a terrible IND, but the strength of this isn't in the 7 helped, but rather the 100 with no major side effect (albeit the dose could have been too low, and these are dying patients with little opportunities otherwise). Nucleolin may not be the greatest target, but if their is any specificity, then you can put plenty else on the gold nanoparticle and target specific cancer cells specifically. That is to say, any cancer cell that happens to have high levels of Nucleolin such that it is expressed on the outside. I rate this project a solid 3/10, it could bear fruit, but promoting it now is a fool's errand, or a buyout tactic.

Now to their best, QN-165: www.qualigeninc.com/...ics-pipeline/as1411/
If it feels familiar, that is because it is. It is the exact same thing as QN-247, but not with the gold nanoparticles.
Check out d1io3yog0oux5.cloudf...+Deck_April+2021.pdf page 8.
They are using this to specifically target COVID-19, likely trying to get some government grants and investor sympathy for COVID therapies as more strains that pressure immunity from current wave of vaccinations are identified and spread. They just filed trademarking on this 4/1/2021 (uspto.report/TM/90619023). The claim is that Nucleolin is used by COVID (and other viruses) in its replication cycle, meaning if you stop Nucleolin, you will have much less COVID virus that is unable to make more of itself, and thus ending the infection. The issue: How are they going to target Nucleolin in the cell? If they rely on Nucleolin outside of the cell to get their package into the cell, how are they going to get their drug into the cell and block Nucleolin? I would love for this one to work out, but there is no data to support this, no mechanism that would make sense unless they were completely wrong about their previous mechanism of action of the drug, and no data or evidence to suggest this project works outside of laboratory work from University of Louisville.

Fundamentals - Investors
Let me start this with insiders: CEO + directors have just over 1 million shares of the 28.5 million float. The only insider buying is 2, one being the CEO with his Roth IRA, the other being a director, and both are small amounts. Not terribly surprised, its been a bull market, so if anyone invests, QLGN has not been the best investment yet. Furthermore, they just went public, which means they may not have worked out too well what is going on, and aside from directors, their employees are probably lower pay so not in too much investing territory.

The institutional ownership % is extremely low, 4.14%, which I am about to argue is a good thing. No one knows about this stock, its tiny, tiny market cap, tiny float, little to not volume, no institutional ownership with a tiny price. My hypothesis is that a lot of shares are floating around in retail or small quantity hedgefunds, things that won't have to file, and possibly things that might not move. 28.5 million shares at 2$, I bet I could slowly accrue a 13-F claimable stake 10 million dollars over the course of a few weeks, especially until they get a real catalyst that doesn't make everyone feel like its a dumpster biotech stock.

The built in financials on trading view aren't matching with Qualigen's reported cash in hand of 24M, which they also say is enough to get them into 2022, but expenses should make this last for quite a bit longer.

2 big things to note! Javelin Venture Partners used to be 10% owner of Ritter, it looks like they are selling their share of QLGN, which is why the price has gone down. So this either isn't on other institutional investors radars, or no one wants to bet on them. The other institutional investor, Sekusui Diagnostics, which is a 10% stake owner in QLGN itself, and thus tied to the actual company, has been buying shares, albeit not many. I will say that Sekisui looks like the kind of company that would want to just eat QLGN for their fastpak tech, take the rest of it as a bonus or sell it off, but maybe they don't want to take on that debt.

Some major funds involved with QLGN are Susquehanna and Citadel, both with large amounts of puts and calls. Any potential investor should be aware of what chaos Susq and Citadel have been bringing across the market, so be prepared for the same short selling antics seen here as with every stock Susq and Citadel are involved with. Reported short volume ratio for 4/12-4/23 was 20%, which is pretty average for the market right now (which is of itself an insane thing to say).
fintel.io/ss/us/qlgn
Their fail-to-delivers seem rather high for the volume, float and short interest. This leads me to believe that there is a possibility that liquidity is drying up, if they are unable to pay the few hundred grand for these big chunks of FTDs, combined with the obscene volume action and price movement not being correlated to, part of me believes there could be a small short squeeze if appropriate pressure were applied, such that the short sellers would be forced to buy back, combined with the low float to buy from.

3 Big Possibilities - A guide on risk
First: The company goes no where. While the least likely option, every program could fizzle and their market capitalization be entirely drawn down to one thing, their diagnostic FastPack technology. Ritter Pharmaceuticals didn't look like it had a real wealth of a pipeline. It had a tiny market cap and was bought out for not too much. There may legitimately be nothing of value in this companies portfolio aside from its clinical testing capabilities.

Second: the company goes to 0. Why? Because they have too many big fish in a little pond. Their directors all have a long history of movement and selling things. If none of these projects work out, or if there was some liquidity issue that forced them to need to sell more shares, and caused the price to tank too much, this little boat will sink.

Third: the company explodes, is bought out for a decent price (as they have nothing legitimately close to clinic, and their best attribute is being a holding company for tech coming out of University of Louisville), and everyone moves on to something else.

I don't even know what kind of time frame these things could happen. They could be working on a deal right now and be no more within 2 months, or they could just get tired and all quit next week, most of them are old enough to earn that.

The Play
I have outlined the company, the directors, the brief history, the pipeline, the various paths this could go down, and I am left with nothing. My general plan is to sit and watch this one for now. If they get some great news, or it looks like an acquisition is in the talks, this could be worth some great returns. If there is bad news, this could hit a cliff and just not stop. As stated before, my general feeling is a major investor is selling off, likely Javelin, and that the current share price and float is in a mix of retail and smaller funds who may not have to submit 13-F/Gs. I would not be surprised if there are a few stocking up some shares on the chance this goes well, its certainly cheap enough, but I would not be surprised if this was a primarily retail-owned float.

Should things change, there could be some serious value here. Here is a list of things that we would definitely want to keep an eye on:
  • Acquisition/selling specific technology: this is worth a modest boost in price, even if they lose one of their gold star techs, it will be for a solid deal and the only thing keeping them at this market valuation is their current sales and increasing possibility of sales projections with advancement of their Fastpack tech.
  • Phase 1 trial applications: This is a mild one, could be used to tease a company to take a look at them, could also mean they have some real data and are ready to actually try something out. My intuition is telling me that they are unlikely to start something that could fail, as all they have is fancy pictures and no real product to back it up. My intuition also tells me Taco Bell is a good choice for breakfast, lunch and dinner, so trust your own intuition more.
  • Director retiring: Pretty much any of their director's leaving would be a bad sign. It isn't because any of them are worth a billion dollars, but it's because it will change the whole image of the company and could be a significant sign of dire times ahead
  • Massive insider trading: For a bunch of rich people, they certainly don't have too much insider trading going on. Their director's could stand to dump some of their money in and give themselves the look of self-confidence. Likewise, if they sell what they have, be careful.
  • Any major news not coming from Benzinga - My belief is that Benzinga is not so much a financial news site as a hedgefund dropping trash tier articles that trick people into thinking it isn't an advertisement for bagholders anonymous. This is the definition of a pump and dump attempt article: news.yahoo.com/quali...covid-171636096.html - Zero research, mimics corporate letter language and pushes forth scientific disinformation: Nucleolin is hypothesized to interact with other COVID viruses in the cytoplasm and bring it to the nucleus, where as previous mechanism data reports that QN-165 requires Nucleolin on the outside membrane of the cell, not in the cytoplasm, to get into the cell and work. Thus this mechanism of action is not in line with research (from 2002): www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov...articles/PMC136173/.

Overall, I see strong components to be made for Bears, Bulls and Buyouts, but nothing currently suggests any of them winning out.

DISCLAIMER
This is in no way, shape or form, fluid and function, an analytical, qualitative or intelligent compte rendu. I am obviously not rich, so obviously I haven't made it with my own thinking, so definitely don't put faith in me. But maybe read and learn some things about a company that may or may not make some major moves.

Investing is a second job, especially with something like QLGN. There may be good timings to enter and exit that present themselves over the next few years, but they could be very dangerous and ethereal. Stay safe out there.
Comment:
Instant EDIT: This post has been brought to by the comma key ",". My true hero, and possibly my most used key. #Based,
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