A couple stray facts:
1) The press release specifically mentioned large potential for Remune. If they know about pending disaster, they court litigation by saying the opposite.
2) Viracept is not a "blip" to WLA. It would be their third or fourth largest revenue producer, behind Lipitor ($2.2B annual sales), Rezulin ($748mm), and maybe Neurontin ($514mm). Viracept would increase WLA's pharmaceutical sales by 10%, and total company sales by 5%. For all of this, they only dilute their stock by 4%.
3) WLA plans a huge increase in R&D. Clearly, much of the money will go into what had been Agouron and Alanex programs.
4) Peter Johnson and crew have done a great job, bringing this company very far, very fast. They broke out of the pack of over 1,000 US biotechs to become one of the top ten. Anyone who thinks he is a poor negotiator or is "gutless" should review what Johnson did with the JT and Roche negotiations back when Agouron only had a compound purchased from Lilly, and a fraction of the money that would be needed to take Viracept to market. If moving to the top 1% of the biotech industry and competing head-to-head with Merck, Abbott, and Roche isn't great performance, I don't know what is. |
