Hammerfall 2.0: Bouncing The Rubble

(Editor's note:  My apologies; responses may be delayed as I am headed to The Ranch this weekend for my monthly visit.)

One of the last vestiges of the layoff that indirectly triggered this entire relocation to New Home 2.0 -  rather unoriginally known as "Hammerfall 2.0" (to differentiate it from my first layoff in 2009 "Hammerfall") is the fact that I have continued to stalk my former employer on line.

Originally this was done from somewhat from a sense of tracking my friends and former workers (most of whom had their own Hammerfall a month after we were gone), but also from a rather long standing habit I have of tracking my former employers to track the one of two seemingly inevitable outcomes:  buyout/merger or liquidation.  My record here stands almost unvanquished in this one realm:  few of the companies that I have left through layoffs or moving on make in on their own.  Most of that is simply due to the modern market of the biopharmaceutical industry:  If you cannot go big (and few companies can, anymore) you either need to have something someone else wants or prepare to fight a rearguard action against dwindling funds and likely dwindling interest.

This week, the law averages caught up with my former employer.

There was a hint of course, a big solid hint when at the annual meeting three weeks ago, they laid off 60% of their current employees (I keep a few shares from my one time "This is the thing that is going to propel me to retirement" options trove, mostly so I can vote in the annual meeting).  The simple math after the layoff indicated they had something like 12 employees remaining after that.  12 employees, in case you are wondering, is not enough to keep a biopharmaceutical company running, especially with clinical trials ongoing.

Last Friday, after hours, they lazily let an SEC filing slip into the InterWeb (doubly convenient as it was a banking holiday on Monday) that the Board of Directors, after a careful review of the situation, had decided to wind the company down - followed by the typical sorts of things one finds in these announcements:  continuing to seek opportunities to partner, have engaged a third party firm to assist this process, all but key management laid off, etc. etc.

The stock price acted pretty much like you would expect, plummeting an amazing 73.5% upon the news.

For once I can take a ball park guess at the amount of money that was wasted (there is no other word) during the life of this company.  My estimate:  Probably around $200-250 million, of which only approximately $9.5 million remained at the end of 30 June 2024.  And a then burn-rate of $8.1 million a quarter, which means they were pretty much down to pocket change and coupons:  even a fool like me can do the math.

Oh, the promise that was there. Oh, the great things that were going to be done. Oh, the enlightened corporate atmosphere we were to have.  All now reduced to a number of empty labs and manufacturing spaces filled with equipment, reagents, product, supplies - and no-one to utilize them.

The end is written:  investors, creditors, and companies looking for a bargain will swoop in and buy things for pennies on the dollar.  The documentation and quality systems will quietly pass into the server version of limbo, the product (if there is anything left) sold off or disposed of, the office furniture and lab fittings and manufacturing equipment (at one point we had over 200,000 square feet of office, lab, and manufacturing space) disbursed among new, eager companies ready to try their luck or old ones looking to start up pilot plants and labs.  The name - as they always do - will slowly fade into the background of people's resumes, becoming a wispy memory that is never mentioned again other than "Oh yes, at one time I lived in New Home and worked at Company X".

I have a few corporate sanctioned materials:  A rather nice shirt, a coffee mug (I always keep the coffee mugs), a yoga mat.  Likely I could write them off as a donation for more than my stock is worth now.

This is the way.  This has always been the way.

You may note I sound bitter. I am, probably a bit more than most of the companies I have been at.  The errors were too big and the spending too egregious for anyone but the willingly ignorant and deceived to miss the signs.  Like many startups, they forgot their first job was to make product and generate income, not to do everything under the sun.  And like many startups, they failed in a series of downward falls, the wreckage of human lives strewn across the proverbial landscape.

And now, the baleful eye of Sauron turns towards the initiator of Hammerfall 3.0.  There can only be, of course the Current Employer to rule them all.