David, good point. Hereby you are appointed thread "archealogist." -g-
More to the point of current ARIA holders, buyers, sellers is the question of what is a fair price for ARIA and what is ARIA, really?
First, genomics? Not really, the list published in GE News a few months ago included ARIA, correctly, because of their significant interest in the HMR (now Valentis) Genomics Center. Well, as we all well know, this interest was sold back to Valentis for $40M. Sure, ARIA, like many other non-explicitly genomics companies (ABGX, MEDX, VICL, VRTX, CRXA, GZTC, etc, etc, etc) can benefit from the "genomics revolution." However, this does not make them, IMO, direct "genomics plays." The huge ARIA stock performance in the last 3 months is due to their resolution of the damaging floorless convertible issue (see older posts here, particularly by Harmon, DAK, celeryroot and Suzman for the details). If you change that stock performance table to 12 or 18 months, you get a very different picture. I think many people have known all along about ARIA and ARGENT, but stayed away from the stock given the prospect of massive and destructive dilution as consequence of the convertible. Once that was out of the way, it was possible to measure ARIA with the same stick we may want to apply to other development stage biotech companies. Large stock appreciation from that point was a foregone conclusion. How large is "reasonable" is what I am trying to determine now.
Second, what does ARIA have today? ARGENT, great, perhaps, unlimited potential. But, this is a very complex technology with a number of components, each with its own nuances, complexities and controversies (a huge understatement, especially, as it refers to gene therapy in general, and to the whole sad Wilson/UPenn affair). Given this, I believe it is imperative for ARIA to forge at least one big pharma partnership involving ARGENT. Osteoporosis, we really know very little about this project's progress. Anything else we can assign some value to at this point? (Please, do not say "genomics").
Last, in the current environment (which many think is bubbly), it is not too unreasonable to expect a market cap for ARIA in the $200-300M range, higher if some of the concerns in the previous paragraph are addressed. This is of course, IMO, and critically dependent on the qualifier in the current environment -g-
PB |
