The Long-Shot Bid to Put Crispr in the Hands of the People

I sat on most of my calls for two to four months prior to the verdict, with most of them having a May expiration. So a few points:

1) I made some guesses on how long the verdict was likely to take based on history and based on how the case was going. For example, did they follow the oral arguments up with a round of interviews involving some of the prominent people involved. Sherkow I'll note nailed the verdict date almost exactly and provided his own reasoning for why he thought it would be in February.

2) At the time I purchased a lot of my calls, May was the furthest out date available. There was almost no liquidity (I purchased some of the first calls ever available on EDIT). Once I bought, I knew I'd need to commit or take a beating trying to unload them near-term. However, over the months, August calls became readily available (so one could have taken an opportunity to roll them; eg sell some calls on an upswing, which EDIT was prone to due to its very low float, wait for a drop, if one occurs then load the August calls at potentially cheaper than what you sold the May calls for).

3) I specifically began buying after EDIT's stock was, in my opinion, bottoming out. It went into the $40s almost right after the IPO, due to a hyper low float and lock-up (plus fuzzy understanding + hype about CRISPR at that point in time). It dropped for about five straight months from those highs. By October 1st it looked to be near a floor, so I began stalking it, it proceeded to double then triple bottom right before the election.

If you had timed it freakishly well, you could have gotten May 2017, $17.50 calls for around ~$1.75 ($175 per contract) right before the election. They peaked recently at $11.x.

4) By timing the stock itself moderately well on bottoming - that is, by paying what I considered to be a cheap price on a well sold down stock - I was able to buy the calls very inexpensively. Why did that matter? Part of the bet was that it wouldn't just stay on the floor for the coming months leading up to the patent verdict and hearing (NTLA for example rallied significantly at one point before crashing back down). By the time it was ~$18 / share, my calls had already appreciated considerably, giving me a convenient exit if I wanted it, or I could just pull my principle. I didn't need to hold through the verdict, I could just take a 100% return or so and walk. That angle helped to offset (if I wanted to sell some) the risk of being forced to wait it all out and watching my position potentially expire worthless.

I also did one other thing that ended up being extremely profitable. I sold some of my calls for a nice gain in the $18s before the verdict came out. Keeping in mind I had no idea it would 100% be in February. So let's say I sold some $17.50s for May 2017 at that point for a good profit. I took some of those gains (not the principle), and acquired even more calls than I had sold, but for the $17.50s calls for March, on a very heavy discount. I paid $1.25 or something for those in the weeks before the verdict. When EDIT spiked in the days following the verdict, those were worth six to eight times what I paid for them and they were purchased solely with prior profit (if I ended up being wrong and the verdict didn't come out in time for the March expiration, I only put my gain at risk on the May calls I sold to do that).

In short, if you want to sell a product, Editas gets right of first refusal to license from Broad, and only if they refuse would the startup be able to proceed to license. If you just want to use CRISPR for in house research, you have to license it; no idea if the fees are prohibitive.