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

To: jayhawk969 who wrote (30069)	1/10/2000 1:18:00 PM
From: Torben Noerup Nielsen	Respond to of 32384

J.D., My memory matches yours on the acquisition cost. But the point is that it's gone and they're not stuck with severance packages for 50 employees plus all sorts of other crud. Also, they get the cash and they can put it to work in the core business. That's what's important. The Street has a short memory. If people see Robinson doing the right things now, past misdeeds will soon be forgotten. And I'm not so sure that the Seragen acquisition will turn out to be a bad move in the long run. I still think there's something buried here. By the way, Ligand also collected a few million off of the Strom patents which I believe came with Seragen.... Cheers, Torben

To: jayhawk969 who wrote (30069)	1/11/2000 4:11:00 AM
From: Cheryl Galt	Respond to of 32384

J.D., I'm quite pleased with the way the Marathon situation has worked out. This is an accomplishment that I didn't expect, and I love positive surprises. 1) Contract manufacturing is far from Ligand's core competency, and they gracefully brought Marathon to a marketable conclusion and got out. 2) Ligand recovered their sunk cost -- in cash. 3) They eliminated the quarterly losses associated with operating Marathon, while retaining their reliable source of supply of Ontak. 4) Between this $10M sale, the warrant exercise, other recent actions, and their gradually growing revenue stream, it really looks like Ligand can make the cutover to independence without further dilution. This extra cash gives them a substantial position of strength for any deals, imo. They're not "hungry" any more. 5) When they acquired Marathon, it had never produced product at a commercial level -- had merely provided product for trials. Ligand brought Marathon to this level, which it needed for Ontak. 6) They now have a developed-to-their-own-satisfaction supplier for Ontak, and one that will work with them to develop next generation versions. Not bad at all ... <G> Cheryl