Hello, fellow techinvestors...
I'm new to SI, fairly new to investing, but I caught on to AGPH when it was $56 pre-split. Wish I had bought in at that point, but I'm learning - the hard way, actually - I bought at 100 1/2 pre-split!! Live and learn!
In response to the following quote from the article that margie posted....
" But Alsenas cautioned that in the wake of competition from Crixivan, Merck & Co.'s (MRK) protease inhibitor, "it'll be interesting to see if (Agouron) can maintain the really strong adoption rate for their products." "
I'm personally experienced with Viracept, while my partner takes Crixivan (started before V. became available) and I can tell you that ease of dosing will drive sales for a long time. I don't have to worry about food/no food/when can I eat again, as long as I stick to a regular schedule. On the other hand, my partner, who works a very demanding & erratic schedule as a college professor has to bend over backwards to stick to his dosing. Crixivan is socially inconvenient as well, because you may have to refuse a lunch/dinner date because of dosing :-)
Based on my pharmacist's statement that V. is $500 wholesale for 1 month supply ($1,500 per quarter) and Agouron's sales figures of 79M, that comes out to about 52,000 people taking the drug (which jives with The Company's own estimate of 50,000). Once on, you are on for the foreseeable future, so even with losses due to patients failing the drug, it is a safe bet that sales with be at this level or better. Multiply this out by 4 quarters and the CEO's estimate of $300M+ sales is not unreasonable.
The only concern I would have is that the HIV drug pipeline is picking up speed and older (relatively) drugs will get bumped quickly in favor of newer ones. However, because the virus is a sneaky little SOB, _any_ drug that a patient hasn't used (or developed cross-resistance to) will still be useful. |
