A recent post from the same boards as before:
<<Great job by the posters to this board for seeing Asencio's "report" for what it is, a self-serving hatchet job!!! If the general investment community had been reading these boards, they would have seen through this, just as did RSR and others here. I too thought "Harddata" when I read the press release and later the entire opinion. Remember when he first appeared back in April, sounding so knowledgable and authoritative, saying the chances of
Vasomax getting approval were "essentially zero?" As we had time to analyze and question his opinions and "facts", they were shown to be extemely flawed and outright lies.
Similarly, the arguments made by Asensio are weak, contradictory and deceptive. For example, he contrasts Pfizer's spending approximately $400 million on developing Viagra with Zonagen paying $300,000 for the rights to phentolamine. He later chooses to mention Zonagen's accumulated losses of $41.4 million. Most of that was spent on developing Vasomax. Why not include that in his comparison? Probably because it was a fact that interfered with the
conclusion he was trying to manipulate his readers into believing!
He states: "failure to make full disclosure of its studies makes it difficult for investors and the medical community to assess the validity of Zonagen's trial results claim." It then concludes that the data "clearly indicate that Vasomax is not an effective treatment for organic ED." Well, apparently it wasn't too difficult to draw a biased conclusion and try to pass it off as serious analysis.
Asensio takes selected quotes out of context to build a feeble case that somehow, the Phase II numbers could never give the company valuable information in helping construct a Phase III study. Referring to Zonagen, he states, "certain of its consultants and investigators have reputations for promoting experimental ED treatments being developed by small, public companies. These include Drs. Irwin Goldstein, Harin Padma-Nathan and David Ferguson."
Translation: they are on the cutting edge of medicine and are the natural allies of development stage companies trying to develop revolutionary new treatments. Is this something that should be discouraged, much less causing their integrity to be questioned? .
Of the patent, without explanation, he says Zonagen's "patent is not relevant to Zonagen's "impotence pill" business.''
He then said: "On the contrary, the Zorgniotti patent specifically describes the drawbacks associated with oral administration of a drug in an attempt to effect delivery to a specific site." He already contradicted this statement by praising Pfizer's Viagra's efficacy. Which is it Mr. Asensio, or is Pfizer too big a target for manipulation?
Speaking of their patent pending on its Vasomax formulation, he stated: "Zonagen filed a separate patent application in 1995 to cover the formulation and delivery of oral phentolamine. To date, Zonagen has not disclosed whether the claims made in this second patent application have been allowed." Wrong! If he had bothered listening to Zonagen's conference call the preceding day, he would have heard Joe Podolski say that they expected notification
of allowance for this patent before the end of the year. That is disclosure!
What Asensio did was con the media into thinking he is a real analyst. He runs a hedge fund and got lucky with Diana Corp., although that wasn't so hard to figure out and had nothing to do with biotech. He portrays himself as some great defender of business virtue by identifying "grossly overvalued" companies and relentlessly selling them short, extolling the profit motive and working with other like-minded investors. Any careful reading of his
comments reveal not analysis, but advocacy. He did not mention the deal with Schering Plough! I guess that is not a relevant fact to his clients. He never mentioned the Phase III numbers, even as a frame of reference. I have read my share of analyst reports and I have never read one even remotely like this. He was belittling and accusatory of management and Zonagen's consultants. I certainly wouldn't be surprised by some lawsuits as a result
of these highly questionable attacks.
My opinion is that there has been a premeditated and concerted bear attack on Zonagen. No doubt, the timing was not an accident and the perpetrators had their media ducks all lined up. It's obvious they have done this before. Their main arguments are mere repetitions of previously discredited potshots without any real logical or critical thought. I believe the investment community will see through this junk, just as we have. Good luck.>> |
