Peregrine Pays the Price
Well, that was quick.
Peregrine Pharmaceuticals (NAS: PPHM) shares are diving once again this morning following an SEC filing disclosing what many investors already feared: It defaulted on a $30 million loan agreement entered into on Aug. 30. For those of you counting, that's less than a month from underwriting to default!
The loan -- which was underwritten by a consortium of lenders including Oxford Finance, Silicon Valley Bank, and MidCap Financial SBIC -- included a number of qualifying "events of default." Here's the legalese (emphasis added):
The Loan Agreement also includes events of default, including, among other things, payment defaults, breaches of representations, warranties or covenants, certain bankruptcy events, the failure to achieve a positive End of Phase II meeting by June 30, 2013 and certain material adverse changes, including a material impairment of the perfection or priority of the Lenders' lien.
Rewind back to Monday, and you might remember a 78% sell-off in shares after the company disclosed a critical error in its phase 2 data for lead drug candidate bavituximab. As you might expect, it wasn't hard for the lenders to argue that a "material adverse change" had occured.
Peregrine didn't object, and on Tuesday, it returned the $15 million it had drawn on the loan, along with accrued interest and a $975,000 "final payment fee." All told, the damage was right around $16 million. Assuming the company doesn't attempt to access capital through an equity offering, it now expects to have enough cash to operate through the end of April 2013, about seven months.
Foolish bottom line
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The article Peregrine Pays the Price originally appeared on Fool.com.
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