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Biotech / Medical : Ligand (LGND) Breakout! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Henry Niman who wrote (29133)	8/16/1999 9:02:00 AM
From: SPSEIFERT	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 32384

Henry Have you heard anything about earnings. I thought they were supposed to report last Fri. Thanks.

To: Henry Niman who wrote (29133)	8/17/1999 1:52:00 AM
From: Spekulatius	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 32384

LGND earnings The disastrous (IMHO) earnings release is not a big surprise for investors doing their own research. I predicted already in May,that LGND would not be profitable this year and after this release I would not even bank on profits in Y2K: techstocks.com After digging through LGND's number the following facts stick out: 1) Panretin sales only 0.1M$ due to channel stuffing last quarter (worse than expected) 2) Sales expenses (8.4M$) exceed revenues (2.7M$) 3 fold 3) Sales Gross margin 10% ! ? 4) Cash + investments down to 34M$ despite 5) Sharecount up from 39M to 47M (the old dilution story) The increase in burn rate after the product launch is not uncommon,just look at the last reports from GELX and CORR for comparison - but nevertheless its extremely disturbing that Robinson did insist on profits in 1999, which IMHO was totally unrealistic. The high marketing expenses and the low gross margin will make profits a stretch in Y2K and I expect that we will see more and more that the Seragen acquisition is a disaster. I found the low gross margin very disturbing, either ONTAK manufacturing cost is very high or the Marathon plan is operated very inefficiently. LGND need to decrease its manufacturing and marketing costs costs significantly or they will never be able to make a profit with these niche products. Shareholders better ask some serious questions about the near term operating plan. Y2K is got to be great? I personally will not bet my money on this one. This is the first biotech company I started to analyse and a good example what can go wrong despite profound science. LGND has burned through 420M$ so far and my guess is that we will hit the 500M$ mark. Any bets against?