02.02.12
Worthless bioterror defense company propped up by NJ business welfare fund
Soligenix, a small company from the old Alliance for Biosecurity, recently acquired about six hundred thousand dollars from a New Jersey government state tax division function. Essentially, it looks like an accounting trick installed by the state to keep poorly-performing companies alive for a little while.
In the last ten years Soligenix hasn’t brought anything to market. And its main claim to funding has been for development of a ricin vaccine, called RiVax.
There is no demand or need for a ricin vaccine except perhaps among other researchers who work with pure ricin.
More recently it has also hitched its dray to anthrax vaccine manufacturing — another area of endeavor where the taxpayer is a guaranteed buyer.
Soligenix has received $574,000 in funding in a non-dilutive financing through the State of New Jersey’s technology business tax certificate transfer program, the company said Thursday …
The funds boost the company’s cash position to $6.2 million, or $0.028 per share, with no debt or preferred stock outstanding.
Soligenix expects the cash to last until the third-quarter of 2013, it said …
The technology business tax certificate transfer program allows approved and unprofitable biotech companies to sell their unused net operating loss carryovers (NOLs) in addition to unused research and development tax credits for at least 80 percent of the value of the tax benefits to “unaffiliated” profitable corporate taxpayers in the State of New Jersey … This allows biotech businesses to turn their tax losses and credits into cash proceeds to fund additional research and development, buy equipment or facilities, or cover other allowable expenses …
Trading below a nickel, right axis.
More recently the company performed what appears to be another accounting trick in order to boost stock price.
From the Times of Trenton newspaper:
Local pharmaceutical developer Soligenix sought yesterday to shore up its stock price by doing a 1 for 20 reverse split, effectively converting 20 shares into 1, ending at yesterday’s market close with a price of less than a dollar.
The company’s shares have been in a long, slow decline.
This is not precisely true. Soligenix’s stock price went from being worth very little to worth almost nothing overnight, according to the graph.
Soligenix was formerly known as DOR Biopharma. The name change never helped.