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

To: scaram(o)uche who wrote (5184)	12/20/2001 1:35:10 PM
From: Michael Young	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 52153

Good points. But us KOSP investors said the same things when Niaspan was introduced in 1997. But it turned out that the company couldn't come even close to turning a profit marketing that drug alone. It just seems that you can't gain much momentum in the lipid disorder market without a big, aggressive sales force. I don't think KOSP is a goner by any means. I was just considering a short to the lower 20s, upper teens while the market absorbs the disappointing news. But at this point I'll just sit back and wait for the sales results. If they are strong I'll probably get back in the stock. I don't think there is any hurry now. MIKE

To: scaram(o)uche who wrote (5184)	12/20/2001 4:10:47 PM
From: Vector1	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 52153

Rick, the Statin market is very interesting. It is absolutely huge. It is $10b(conservative) today and expected to grow 15% compounded. In addition to cardiologists many different specialties write scripts because the drugs are considered very safe and heart disease is a killer. Baycol may have changed that to a degree but still an enormous amount of scrips are written by GPs and internists. Phama loves cardiologists because they are generally very bright and are very comfortable using drugs. However, not every new offering has been a success. Lescol (Novartis) was a disaster (approx $250m in sales). It was positioned as the low cost low performance but safer statin. It did not sell and Novartis has licenced it to a private company. Most docs prefrered the more powerful statins at lower doses allowing them to titrate up if necessary. The Baycol recall has increased the concern about safety but most cardios and generals still think statins are safe and the statistics do back them up. The Crestor launch, will alter the landscape in that Crestor has characteristics that are supposed to be better than anything on the market with one of the advantages an increase in HDLs. Thus huge marketing dollars will be spent educating the market on the importance of the ratio of HDLs to LDLs and thereby increasing the overall size of the market . This will imo be very good free marketing for Advicor. The other factor in the market is the impact of generic Mevacor. It will be cheap but it remains to be seen whether managed care can force it on the docs. MRK has done a good job of switching patients out of Mevacor. V1