Avrobio announced in July that they are pausing all research programs, laying off half their staff, and looking to maximize shareholder value through a sale, merger, or return of cash to share holders.
After selling one of their programs to Novartis in June for $86 million, they are sitting on $124 million cash and no debt. Their market cap interestingly is only $66 million.
Their cash burn is greatly reduced with the layoffs and program pauses, and a couple activist funds (Tang / BML) picked up 15% of the float.
Could be an interesting arbitrage play, as the stock is trading at $1.50 while their cash alone is $2.34, plus the potentially significant value of their remaining IP. Not without risk, as they could always do a reverse merger and then who knows what happens. Definitely worth taking a look however and doing some DD.
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