She won't tell me much and I don't ask much because I have to be careful not to inadvertently get tradable info out of her, since, for example, she usually knows about upcoming clinical trials long before they're reality and I trade and invest in pharmas.
I was surprised to find that she'd never heard of this company, though.
She said that as far as she knows, industry practice is to follow client specifications to the letter and that though TB tests are pretty common when screening trial candidates for quite a few drugs, it's the client's responsibility to request them, since they're paying for them.
She couldn't/wouldn't tell me how commonplace it is for a CRO to suggest or insist on any trial specifics not already specified by the client company.
I should point out that she is only indirectly involved in getting sales for her company. She's a techie big-wig on the FDA-submission side and her outside-world involvement is usually limited to being brought in for meetings where a prospective client needs reassurance that her company has the technical expertise to meet their needs or giving speeches at CRO/pharma conventions.
As such, her area of expertise is the technical details of putting together FDA submissions.
While I'm on the subject, I saw some discussion on the Yahoo SFCC board about the recently-adopted poison pill and there was a lot of misunderstanding about it.
The bottom line is that the poison pill gives existing shareholders the right to buy stock at half price if the company gets acquired. This is usually done to make dilution prohibitively painful for would-be takeover attempts.
One person had commented that they'd never seen a company successfully get acquired after such a poison-pill had been implemented.
I beg to differ. My wife used to work for Marion Laboratories (formerly MKC), run by the late Ewing Kaufman, who is a much a local icon as Favre is to anyone in Wisconsin, and who is the example by which I guide myself professionally.
They implemented a poison pill in which all unvested employee stock options immediately vested on a change of ownership. The company was acquired just a few month after the poison pill was put in place, adding dramatically to the number of "Marion Millionaires". Not that the employees who kept their shares as they vested were hurting. The company had done 5 stock splits in 3 years, driven largely by their flagship product Cardizem.
I don't really know how many stock options were involved, so don't know just how poisonous that pill was, but SFCC's looks much more poisonous. They're not going to get acquired unless the buyer thinks the company is worth nearly double what they're paying, making a takeover an extremely unlikely event, IMO.
I think the poison pill was put into place solely because the company was feeling particularly vulnerable at this level. Acquisition happens a lot in this area. It's how my wife's employer (formerly Nasdaq: QTRN) ended up in a commanding position in the space and is a reason the company was taken private. So it couldn't be acquired itself.
I consider the poison pill largely a non-factor. It's simply the company saying "We won't allow ourselves to be acquired at the current price." No more, no less. |
