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Biotech / Medical : Theragenics on the NYSE (TGX) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: dfloydr who wrote (281)	11/16/1999 4:05:00 PM
From: fellow	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 305

Thank you for the thorough explanation. I'm now long. <eom> Cheers- fellow

To: dfloydr who wrote (281)	11/17/1999 5:19:00 AM
From: Byelow	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 305

That's an excellent summary of the past three years! A couple of other things come to mind. 1. There is an additional lawsuit filed by TGX against a Belgian company (IBT) for patent infringement. The original founder of TGX, John Russell, lost control of the company from a divorce shortly after it went public. His ex-wife got the bulk of his shares and immediately dumped them on the market. I understand him to have been much the mad and brilliant scientist and less the business man. He wanted to press all company efforts into the Theraspere product for liver cancer. The investment bankers wanted the company to focus on the one product, Theraseed, that was approved by the FDA and immediately marketable. The bankers wanted the company to get some history and results under its belt before launching into an expensive R&D program for a second product. As a result Russell was forced out as he refused to go the bankers way. He went to Belgium and started up a new company to produce the same PD-103 seeds. Many claim that he wanted to be close to the cylotron supplier IBX that is located in Belgium. TGX filed a lawsuit and it has not come to trial yet. I suspect that the reason that the company pursued and obtained the CE Mark and ISO-9001 certification in short order last year was to buttress their position in that suit. Along with the clout of the J&J marketing relationship they could prove that IBT threatened development of their product in Europe and thus keep IBT bottled up. IBT is just now announcing distribution relationships in the USA but I'm not aware of any product flow yet. 2. The Theraspere product was spun off to MDS Nordian for final development and FDA approval. TGX still gets a small royalty on that product but Nordian really hasn't run with the product to market. I still believe that the company may buy back the R&D from Nordian or buy their small investment in that product sometime in the next 5 years. When I floated that idea on the Yahoo board 1.5 years ago I was laughed at by the scientists. They thought I was suggesting that TGX buy Nordian. The latter is many times the size of TGX. I still believe that the product may be viable for TGX! 3. The market potential for Theraseed outside the USA is estimated to be equal to our market size. With the CE Mark and the ISO-9001 certification, TGX has a good head start over competitive products. According to CJ at the 6/98 annual meeting, the 14 cylotrons were for US demand alone. Perhaps this can be part of the reason for the Tennessee facility although IMHO it's for a new product. 4. The tallest obstacle IMHO is the automation of the production process. CJ claimed at the 6/98 annual meeting that this was their biggest hurdle for 1999. I haven't seen any progress on that front and wonder if the recent hiring of the scientist may be related to that issue as well as new product development. I believe there is a definite hint of this in the company press release of 4/5/99 on the Tennessee facility. "As part of this agreement, the DOE will provide Theagenics access to DOE assets for steps in the production process. Theragenics...will construct a facility in Oak Ridge to house the equipment, infrastructure and work force necessary to support the production of Pd-103 using this technology." 5. The company needs to get press wise. Management still steps in it everytime they go out to the press just like the recent brewhaha on the conference call about concern for Y2K. I agree with your assessment under #10. CJ just needs to be more focused on the import of her words and that they can be construed very negatively although positively intentioned. She cannot ignore the press, as has largely been done in the past, if we want the Street and analysts on our side to move the price of the stock back to the lofty areas we have experienced in the past. Back to you!