There may be some confusion about the deregistering of shares, and apologies if I am misunderstanding that there are misunderstandings, but these aren't shares that Cytodyn is cancelling or getting back. This doesn't free up any additional shares that can be used by the company to raise money.

The 297 million shares in question were bought from Cytodyn by investors 2015-2020 as part of offerings and through convertible notes that were eventually paid off by giving the investor shares.

These shares had to be registered with the SEC before those investors could sell them .

If you look at the original S-3 registration documents from 2016-2021 referenced in Friday's filings, they specify that these shares were registered for "resale", meaning that they were bought and held by investors but couldn't be resold without an effective registration document.

The confusing part is that in Friday's filings, the deregistered shares are stated to be "unsold", but that just means that the investors who originally bought them from the company still hold them and haven't sold them.

So the question is why doesn't Cytodyn want the investors who have held these shares for years to sell them now. There are many reasons for a company to deregister shares, so I won't speculate about a specific reason, but hopefully we'll find out soon.