They blew the socks off this forecast from what I have heard.
PathoGenesis plans to go solo on 1st drug
by Kerry Dooley and Kristin Reed
Bloomberg News
PathoGenesis intends to work alone on selling its first drug, an inhalable version of an antibiotic for cystic fibrosis patients.
That sets the Seattle company apart from many biotechnology companies, which form partnerships with large drugmakers to sell their products. Led by former university professors and scientists, they give up some profit for access to people more experienced in marketing and manufacturing.
PathoGenesis intends to draw on its own management. Its top executive helped build Baxter International into a company with $8.5 billion in medical-products sales in 1992. That year, Wilbur Gantz left Baxter to help found PathoGenesis.
"Everybody is going to be looking very carefully at how well we do in marketing the (new) product," Gantz, 60, chief executive and president of PathoGenesis, said.
PathoGenesis's share price has risen 90 percent in the past year on confidence that the company's drug - known as Tobi, short for tobramycin for inhalation - will take sales quickly from existing injectable forms of the antibiotic tobramycin.
Tobi already has support among cystic fibrosis patients, who see the drug as a safer and more effective way to fight even the most serious lung infections. Many already improvise their own inhalable versions of the available intravenous drugs to get higher concentration into their lungs.
Cystic fibrosis makes glands in the lung go haywire and produce extremely thick phlegm. That creates a breeding ground for infection, and makes breathing difficult. Few people live beyond 30 years with the disease, which about 40,000 people in the U.S. have.
PathoGenesis already has made connections with many patients and their doctors by testing the drug at 69 of the 113 hospitals and centers that treat cystic fibrosis, said Alan Meyer, PathoGenesis's chief financial officer.
"We wanted wide exposure of this drug," he said.
That strategy may work. Tobi could have sales of $45 million in 1998, rising to $72 million by 1999, said Meg Malloy, an analyst with Hambrecht & Quist.
That could narrow PathoGenesis's annual loss to an expected 9 cents a share in fiscal 1998 from an expected $2.05 in fiscal 1997, according to the average estimates of eight analysts polled by IBES International.
PathoGenesis said it plans to seek expanded FDA approval of the drug, such as using it in patients with tuberculosis.
Some analysts see the company earning its first profit in 1999, which would make it one of the few biotechnology companies to stop operating at a loss. |
