Hi George. The thread has been snozing, but the company and the stock hasn't. The earnings this last quarter were disappointing, and the excuse, Lancer, has become stale. But they still look very good and selling at a good price considering their products on sale, and in the pipeline. I assume the current small spike up is due to a newspaper article which I believe ran yesterday, on the need for doctors to use easy at-home tests to detect blood in the stool.
As far as spiking up this year, I think it will be more gradual and remain at a much higher level. That's assuming they do well on the sales front and get the profits up. Of course, FDA approval of the PSH (or is that PSA?) test would spike it, for certain, and for good reason. About 200,000 men (last I heard, contract prostate cancer every year, and 41,000 men die from this every year, about the same as women dieing from breast cancer. Twice as many men contract the cancer as women contract breast cancer, and manyo of these are then castrated as part of the therapy, and have to deal with "stuff" that isn't too kind for the rest of their lives. BTW, federal funding for Prostate research and education is about 1/7 the budget for breast cancer research (for us men, $59 million; for the women, $400 million. I guess that means our lives are worth 1/7 that of women's? and our quality of life about 1/14th). No matter how you think about it, a good, fast, inexpensive test will mean big profits once approved by the FDA and/or sold in Europe and elsewhere. For one thing, the disease caught early can mean fewer side effects, and less lifestyle changes, and yes cost the HMO's less money for treatment. (Okay, I'm not angry about this, just because my tax dollars are being used so equitably, why should I complain? I don't know anyone who's had breast cancer, much less died from it, and some of my favorite people have died from prostate cancer. It's all political, of course, a way to buy votes with our taxpayer money - "your taxes at work" to re-elect the demogogues (sp?).)
Hope you don't mind the asides, just one of my big beefs about the income tax system: they take my money, and use it for the good of just about everybody else, it seems. Meanwhile, if they didn't take my money, I'd have all that dough to give to my favorite research groups and other charities. |
