As far as the European Union countries go we now have the following:
Countries licensed and launched/population in thousands:
1)United Kingdom/58,970
2)Sweden/8,887
Countries recently licensed but not yet launched/population in thousands:
3)Germany/82,079
4)Finland/5,149
5)Denmark/5,334
6)Ireland/3,619
7)Luxembourg/425
8)Netherland/15,731
9)France/58,805
10)Austria/8,134
11)Portugal/9,928
So out of the 15 EU countries there are only 4 left to grant individual licensing for MUSE:
12)Spain/39,134
13)Italy/56,783
14)Greece/10,662
15)Belgium/10,175
Of these 4 remaining countries to get licensing, we have 2 milestone countries. I am hoping to hear licensing of MUSE in Spain in this quarter.
We won't have to worry about profitability being dependent on milestone payments after this quarter. MUSE should be launched in full swing in most of the EU countries in early Q2 which is one quarter sooner than Vivus claimed in the conference call.
We also have MUSE licensed and launched in Switzerland/7,260 and now licensed in Norway/4,420 both of which are not in the EU.
We have almost 30 non-EU countries to seek licensing/launching in and so far only one has launched.
EU population: 373,815,000
Rest of Europe: 453,858,000
Total Europe: 827,673,000
Population so far MUSE available in(England, Sweden, Switzerland): 75,117,000. That means we only have product exposure in 9% of the European market. 91% to go in just the European market.
The focus in the second half of 1999 will be with Janssen and Asia.
China hopefully will approve in Q3 to give us another $2M milestone and expose MUSE to a $1BILLION plus Chinese market.
Japan is even a bigger market than all of Europe with a population of only 126M.
This is because Japan is more affluent than the whole of Europe. Japan will probably be able to get over $40/dose in the market(if they were to only charge $20/dose the Japanese consumers would think of it as "cheap junk" that doesn't work).
The institutions need to start to wake up and smell the coffee on Vivus especially now that the female SD market is beginning to be noticed and discovered and Vivus will be at the front of this train!
Vivus made its mistakes as a naive and rapidly growing biotech company. Vivus knows better now to ever get into the sales/marketing of any of its products. This is a lesson well learned. Vivus will only have to focus on R&D, patent approval/protection and production. Never again will this company be involved in sales/marketing. Of course Vivus is doing some minor targeting in the domestic market while they wait to wrap up a domestic partnering deal. |
