Peter--
An excellent recap of the conference call. I think everybody heard, not only the great news about the quarter that just ended, but also about a very optimistic outlook for fiscal 1998 and beyond. It is going to be very interesting to see now the analysts will adjust their earnings outlook for fiscal '98 and '99, as well as their price target.
As an aside, I think all stockholders of Agouron should be very grateful to Peter Johnson who in 1984 had the forsight to found a company that was based on a new technology called "rational drug design." Now it appears many companies are following his lead (Vertex, as an example), and of course all the major pharmaceutical companies are developing an in-house capability.
He was then able to develop Agouron into a company with a potential blockbuster drug, Viracept, as well as an enormously rich pipeline of potential drug candidates. He did this while maintaining substantial rights in all our drugs and was able to do this on revenues derived from collaberations with other companies. Remember, we only have 14,000,000 shares outstanding; one of the smallest capitalizations in the biotech arena, and today on the conference call he said the company had in excess of $90,000,000 in cash, and would have to do no financing over the next year -- a very important point.
I am very pleased to be on the same team with Peter and certainly would hate to be betting against him.
Congratulations to the entire Agouron team, and as Doug Lind of Morgan Stanley said, "Agouron under-promises, and over-delivers."
Cheers to all!!!
Biopicker |
