I ain't no guru but MLNM came up in a couple of other threads and here I am posting one I did a couple of days ago. I will try to collect two or three more (check the "VD Portfolio" and AFFX threads) and perhaps this will attract some guru ....
see also exchange2000.com
(from biowa)
and
exchange2000.com
(from Boyce Burge)
for follow-up and expansion on the information below
*** pasted from "VD portfolio thread" ****
First off, and for a recent broad-strokes view of the genomics field, one can start with the Feb 7 issue of
Science and its series of articles "Betting on the genome." INCY, HGSI, MLNM, SQNA, GENXY, GENE,
AFFX, among others, are profiled and described in general. They put MLNM with SQNA and GENE as
practitioners of positional cloning.
MLNM went public last year and collected $60 mill in their IPO. As of Dec 96, they still had over $60 million
in cash and other securities and 22 mill shares outstanding (this was increased by about 5 million shares after
their purchase of ChemGenics in February), so market cap is close to $450 mill.
MLNM has announced deals with Roche (obesity and type II diabetes), Pfizer (fungal diseases), Lilly
(artherosclerosis, oncology, and more recently in helping set up MLNM "BioTherapeutics"
biz.yahoo.com ), Astra (respiratory inflammation), AHP (central
nervous system and bacterial diseases). These deals add up to almost $300 million (if all milestones are met,
but not including potential royalties); this does not include the most recent Lilly deal nor the MIT-AFFX-BMY
deal.
As Rocketman mentioned elsewhere, upper business management comes out of the Mayfield Fund (Mark
Levin is CEO and Grant Hedrick remains on the board of directors); also in the board is MIT's genomics guru
Eric Lander.
MLNM's science is absolutely first class; and their scientists publish with some frequency in Science, Cell,
Nature, PNAS, etc. See biz.yahoo.com for a very intriguing
(meaning where is the money tomorrow?) recent example. Some of these papers deal with important gene
discoveries, for which Roche et al have paid them handsomely -- not purely academic, in other words. In fact
they have been criticized (see Science May 30) of doing "science by press release," meaning announcing an
important gene discovery without submitting a scientific paper at the same time (they did this last November
re. diabetes).
On the negative side (and this may account for their far from stellar stock performance; it's trading at around
$16 these days), they may be trying to reach too much. I do not think the Street liked their ChemGenics
acquisition very much, and I am not sure how it is digesting the recent announcement of the establishment of
their "BioTherapeutics" unit; it was positive initially probably because of Lilly's participation, but this did not
lead to a sustainable "breakout" in the stock. Many of us have enjoyed and appreciated Rocketman's insights
into INCY's strategy in contrast with those of HGSI and the like; his points may be considered here. |
