Troubled times: With its back against the wall, little Tenax sends out an SOS while IMV takes out the budget axe, chops staff

The tally of restructurings in biotech continued to go up today with news from two small players that are in financial hot water.

Tenax Therapeutics may be down to its final crisis.

After years of spikes and plunges, the share price has long been flatlined in penny stock territory. And with dwindling cash and a “going concern” alert in its SEC filings, the executive crew is doing what it can to see about setting up a deal of some kind — and everything, including a sale, is on the table.

With a nanocap market value under $6 million and a stock that trades for pennies, presumably anyone who wants any or all of the outfit could pick it up at a bargain basement price.

In the meantime, Tenax $TENX has decided to delay a planned late-stage study of an oral version of Gleevec, shoving the start date from later this year into 2023. They also have a “Phase III-ready” drug, oral levosimendan, in the pipeline.

For now, the board says the battered stock price doesn’t reflect the real value of the company. But its options are dwindling at a time public biotechs are finding Nasdaq is sucking down a host of players in the same position.

Andrew Hall

In the meantime, the Canadian biotech IMV says that it will axe a third of its staff so the company can continue on with their clinical work, most prominently a Phase IIB trial for DLBCL and another in metastatic ovarian cancer.

As part of the reorganization, Saman Maleki has joined the board and the company promoted Brittany Davison to chief accounting officer. CEO Andrew Hall is chalking it up to maximizing shareholder value.

“We have made the decision to strategically reconfigure IMV in order to maximize shareholder value and focus resources on driving to near-term value-creating milestones,” Hall said.

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