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TMFDeej (99.47)

Wow that was fast...MAXY Catalyst Materializes Less than Two Weeks Later

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May 14, 2012 – Comments (2) | RELATED TICKERS: MAXY

Two weeks ago I went long MAXY in CAPS saying the following:

I have personally invested in and sold Maxygen, a biotech that is in the process of winding down, in the past.

I am going to dip back into the MAXY well again after coming across an interesting article by Apsara Biotechnology Research on the a potential $30 million milestone payment that could be made by Bayer sometime this year. Thirty million bucks amounts to around a buck per share on MAXY, so with the company currently trading at only slightly above the cash that it has on the books it looks like there's the potential for the stock to advance $0.50 to $0.75/share in the near future when the payment is officially announced. That amounts to a 9% to 13% increase in the stock price. Whether that actually beats the S&P 500 will depend upon how long it takes for the pament to occur...if it actually does...and what the index does between now and then.

Well that certainly didn't take long, Maxygen's stock is up 7.1% today on news that it is going to receive said $30 million milestone payment from Bayer.

Maxygen to Receive $30 Million Payment from Bayer

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/maxygen-receive-30-million-payment-130000643.html

That would have been one heck of a nice real-world short-term trade.  The MAXY is up 7.12% versus a drop of over 4% in the S&P 500 since I picked it in CAPS on May 3rd.  The jump was only $0.40 versus the $0.50 to $0.75 that I was looking for, so now I need to decide whether to hang on to squeeze another percent or two out of it or not.  Perhaps I'll wait until tomororrow, or at least late today to close out. 

It wasn't a huge gain, but I'll take a quick 11 CAPS points.

Thanks for reading everyone.  Have a fantastic day!

Deej

2 Comments – Post Your Own

#1) On May 14, 2012 at 5:08 PM, MegaShort (99.95) wrote:

Deej, do you do any M&A arbitrage or tender offers, or just stick with open-ended special situations like spinoffs etc?

For the past few weeks I've been buying shares of VQ below $11 and selling some above $11.  The CEO is trying to take it private at $12.50 and has scheduled a shareholder vote early next month.

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#2) On May 14, 2012 at 7:59 PM, TMFDeej (99.47) wrote:

Hey MegaShort.  I'm open to anything, but I really haven't done much with tender offers or M&A.  I believe that I've played exatly one M&A situation over the past calendar year...and that was mostly to take advantage of some odd merger securitues that were supposed to be issued.  It eventually ended up in a bidding war...even better.

Unfortunately, I've found that with all of the hedge fund and other money floating around that the Merger Arb spreads are usually pretty thin.  There have been a few good ones out there lately, but nothing that I've played recently.

I remember there being a ton of atractive merger arb deals out there back in the credit crunch.

I'll have to take a look at the VQ deal.  Thanks for the tip. 

See you around.

Deej 

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