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Biotech / Medical : Biotech Valuation -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Miljenko Zuanic who wrote (4576)	8/30/2001 1:52:49 PM
From: OldAIMGuy	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 52153

BPUR vs NFLD In comparing Northfield and Biopure, I have found a variety of things that are both similar and different. I'm no expert on biochemistry, but have been under the impression that the hemoglobin protein is rather generic. Whether it comes from an ant or a zebra it's basically the same material. Does anyone know whether, once isolated and purified, hemoglobin can be identified as to its source? If not, then whether it's human or bovine derived should be of no consequence. However, Biopure states, "Hemopure should not be used in patients with....... a known hypersensitivity to bovine hemoglobin..." There appears to be some difference in the compounding of the protein once it's been extracted, purified, "polymerized" and blended. There have been comments about Biopure's compound giving some problems in vascular constriction leading to temporary kidney and blood pressure problems. Northfield states that their blend is: "a polymerized form of hemoglobin designed to avoid the undesirable effects historically associated with hemoglobin-based blood substitutes, including vasoconstriction, kidney dysfunction, liver dysfunction and gastrointestinal distress. " Biopure by comparison states: "In these trials, side effects (>= 5% increased incidence versus control group) included abdominal pain, weakness, hypertension (mild to moderate), jaundice (associated with the conversion of hemoglobin to bilirubin and not associated with liver dysfunction), nausea, rash and discolored urine. Transient mild to moderate isolated increases in enzyme levels may occur and are not associated with clinical hepatitis or pancreatitis." Each company is quite clear that they have created procedures that essentially guaranty there should be no possibility of disease transmission via the fluid. Each has secured a variety of patents as to the purification, conversion and formulation of their product. Biopure talks about a stable product at room temp. for up to 36 months where Northfield mentions stability refrigerated for 12 months. So they seem to be doing things a bit differently. From a business point of view, Biopure has a head start in that they have their veterinary product manufacturing, distribution and initial sales in place. By contrast, Northfield has not yet implemented any production or distribution. Northfield says they have formed some strategic alliances for marketing and distribution world wide if the product is approved. NFLD says they have "adequate capital for construction" of a commercial scale plant. However there's no detail as to what they consider commercial scale, potential production capacity, whether they've secured a human blood source, etc. BPUR by comparison has a plant that has small scale production in place (for the veterinary product and test quantities of the human product) that's being modified currently to increase capacity and also co-produce the human use product. They have secured financing and site location for a plant capable of producing 100,000 units of "Hemopure" a year. The site and plant expense is anticipated to be $85,000,000. Their financial contribution to this new facility is also stated to be in the neighborhood of $10,000,000. This information is much more specific than that of NFLD at this point. Comparing NFLD and BPUR on a more elementary basis I see: Employees BPUR 173 NFLD 51 Debt, long and short term BPUR 0.0% NFLD 0.0% Market Capitalization BPUR $572MM NFLD $245MM Revenues BPUR $3.3MM (most recent 4 quarters) NFLD $0.00 Cash & ST Investments BPUR $88.8MM (10/31/2000) NFLD $38.2MM (05/31/2000) Total Assets BPUR $121.2MM (10/31/2001) NFLD $41.7MM (05/31/2001) Shares Outstanding BPUR 25.1MM NFLD 14.2MM Institutional and Mutual Fund Ownership BPUR 8.9MM (35.6%) NFLD 1.9MM (13.5%) Insider Stock Ownership BPUR 17.3MM (69%) NFLD nil (<1%) So there are also some differences in the size of the two businesses at this point. Bigger isn't necessarily better but one company has had more business experience at this point than the other. There's also a difference in how the stock ownership and companies have developed their business models to date. It is clear enough that a suitable product is desirable and, because of world wide shortage of disease free blood relative to demand, is in need. Finally, for those who like to trade equities rather than just buy for their long term potential here's a comparative graph of the two stocks: siliconinvestor.com It would appear that while both stocks have generally followed the same trends, one has had quite a bit more volatility than the other. Best regards, Tom

To: Miljenko Zuanic who wrote (4576)	8/30/2001 3:01:53 PM
From: Biomaven	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 52153

This last week has marked one of the strongest decouplings of the biotech from the NASD in a few months. It's impossible to overstate how much these macro trends influence individual biotech stock prices (at least for the larger cap stocks). Over the last month or so the following stocks were most closely linked to the BTK index based on hourly stock price movements: hgsi compx mlnm spx.x chir rut.x amgn medi drg.x indu idph pdli medx affx abgx The following non-pharmas were most closely linked to the DRG index: btk.x spx.x indu compx hgsi mlnm rut.x pdli The following to the COMPX: spx.x rut.x indu btk.x hgsi chir drg.x mlnm abgx medx amgn imnx And the following were most closely linked to SEPR, a stock I follow closely: btk.x rut.x pdli compx regn spx.x drg.x bmy medx The following stocks were "twins," moving together very closely: AMGN/CHIR ABGX/MEDX It's interesting thinking about this for a moment. It's pretty reasonable that say ABGX and MEDX should move together - they have indistinguishable prospects from the perspective of most observers. But why should say SEPR and PDLI move together (although their correllation is much weaker than the "twins" above)? Their fundamentals are essentially unrelated. All that really relates them is that people have of late been buying and selling them together. Note: The above calculations were not done by finding all the correllation coefficients, which would be the "official" way of doing this calculation, but I think the results should be pretty similar. Peter