Just read XGEN's S-1.. (first half of it anyway..)
Competition: MRI and PET? Is that all these guys can think of? I could only see them competing with INCY, ABSC, etc in the area of "creating a proprietary database of information" rather than the actual imaging procedure.
One big question: is the gene that XGEN 'lights up' patented? Are they trying to patent it? Can they patent it? Can some other company come up with a transgenic 'xmas tree' mouse and sell it as well? The S-1 wasn't all that specific to what 'intellectual property' was patented.. here's the paragraph:
We seek to protect our commercially-relevant proprietary technologies through
patents both in the United States and abroad. We have patent applications
pending in a number of areas which we believe will be valuable to our business,
including gram positive bacterial vectors, animal models of disease, transgenic
animals useful in drug discovery research, imaging systems and computer-
implemented methods for image acquisition and analysis.
If ABGX and MEDX can get a patent on their mice, I don't see why these guys can't either..
No lawsuit garbage for this company. Cool.
Not sure I like the leadership structure: co-CEO's? Most man-and-wife households can't function properly, what makes them think they can run a corporation with the same structure? :) (i'm not trying to imply that Carter and Contag are together or anything, just that I don't believe in this "co-CEO" garbage.. choose a leader, and get on with it.. if Carter took over the operations, that would probably be the better case in my mind.. he's been at the helm before..)
How many full commercial licenses does XGEN need to sell in order to be a break-even entity? The long sales cycle and the fact that you can count the number of current evaluation licenses on your fingers raises the question of how much further the company has to market their devices..
After the offering, they should have roughly 100 million in cash in the bank to do their R&D with.. not bad.. but they obviously won't have any positive cash flow for the next couple of years.. given that, personally I'd hold off until at least after expiration (180 days), let the insiders dump their shares, and then see the prospects for the company then.. obviously if they make $5 million revenues per year on a commercial license, things change a bit :)
The technology sounds novel, but looks like it needs further development.. I'm not exactly sure why they are going public - they have 30 million in the bank which will last them a couple years.. plus if their technology is actually viable (financially), they'd be able to fetch more money in a future IPO while selling off less of the company.. although since most of the insiders got in at pennies a share, I don't think they really care about that right now. |
