As a person with urology device experience, I have had my eye on Theragenics for some time but have never bought it due to price/value concerns. After the freefall on Thursday I am seriously considering jumping in on Monday. I have been very impressed by the quality of many of the postings yesterday. Very thoughtful and incisive. Allow me to offer a few comments of my own:
1. I too would forget about the MM conspiracy theories. I always get a kick out of people looking for someone or something to blame behind every bush.
2. The fear of prostate seeds becoming a commodity product, driven by low-cost of supply concerns has been obvious for some time. Please see my postings 28 on INIS thread and 488 on NASI thread. Prostate seeds will become a commodity product with lower prices over time. The successful company will be the one who can drive production costs down quickly, and who also can control the distribution costs.
3. For this reason, my long-term money would be on Amersham with JNJ/ Theragenics (long-term) in second place. Ultimately, there will be a tugawar between the manufacturer and distributor in all of the collaborative arrangements such as JNJ/Theragenics; Mentor/NASI; Imagyn/INIS and Uromed/Bebig. Of course, when this happens JNJ could buy THRX but I wouldn't expect a 100PE.
4. The reason Dain didn't downgrade URMD is obvious and two-fold. URMD is a good year from entering the business and what's the point in downgrading what would now be a pennystock, if they hadn't recently done a reverse 5 for 1 split.
5. I too would forget about the article in Journal of Urology for severals reasons as it is indeed flawed from an investors perspective.
a. First of all, the top urologist at Johns Hopkins in Dr. Pat Walsh, who is a fine, honorable man and a skilled surgeon. He is also the inventor of the surgical technique known as "nerve sparing prostatecomy". This is very difficult surgery and should not be performed by the garden-variety urologist in the phonebook. Said simply and crudely he is a superb surgeon who likes to cut and will never be an advocate of seeding.
b. The editorial board of Journal of Urology has always been controlled by like-minded, old-school types who are generally all based in university medical schools. Do not forget that seeding is a direct and huge financial threat to these university-based surgeons. The more patients who stay in the suburbs and get seeds implanted at County General Hospital, the fewer patients get referred to the university docs for their surgical expertise.
c. I would view the article as a desperate, last ditch attempt to stem the tide in favor of seeding back to surgery. Forget it!
So what's the prediction, is there a dead cat bounce on Monday or does it fall lower two days later as is often the case when this happens? The PE still seems too high for me. |
