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Biotech / Medical : Biotech for less than cash value -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: scaram(o)uche who wrote (65)	7/7/2002 10:57:37 PM
From: bits	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 684

VPHN Market Capitalization $28.9M Total Cash (mrq) $213.9M Looks interesting, but: But they have has 418 people and 38.9 of current liabilities and 180.1 of long term debt. So their debt is more than their cash, they have no income and at a guess 418 people means their burn rate is something like 50 million just for the people. They have sales of 7 million a year. No wonder they are selling for 1.42. With no sales, I usually determine how much money they have per employee. VPHN has $511,000 per employee. But then there is that $218 million in debt. Looks a little dangerious to me. There short interest is very high, and the they have one strong sell recommendation. Are they going to be making money in the next 2-4 years? Otherwise, won't they go broke? Know nothing about the science, just looking at the balance sheet.

To: scaram(o)uche who wrote (65)	7/10/2002 8:48:59 AM
From: Hank	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 684

VPHM is dead meat. Pleconaril was NEVER a good drug. It doesn't work equally well against the majority of rhinoviruses and it only reduces the duration of a cold by a couple of days. Even if it had been approved, it would never have been a big money maker since the only reasonable application for it is for the elderly and people with weakened immune systems. Furthermore, this drug was patented over 8 years ago. Even if by some miracle they do several more years of clinical trials and finally get it approved for treatment of picornavirus infection, they will only have 10 years or less to make any money before patent expiration. What other drugs do they have? Nothing. Their focus on RNA viruses is way too narrow and depended entirely on pleconaril's success. All of the potential targets for RNA viruses have been thoroughly investigated by big pharma and they haven't come up with squat. What makes you think VPHM can do better?