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

To: keokalani'nui who wrote (203)	3/5/2003 1:15:16 PM
From: tuck	Respond to of 272

>>NEW YORK -- Shares of Emisphere Technologies plummeted Wednesday morning after the company said a potential big pharmaceutical marketing partner dropped out of late-stage negotiations aimed at helping the company commercialize its experimental oral insulin franchise. Speaking on a Wednesday morning conference call, Emisphere Chief Executive Michael Goldberg said the company had been talking to two big drug makers that had planned to jointly help further develop and market the oral insulin products. "Unfortunately, yesterday evening we received a letter from one of the companies that they would no longer pursue a partnership on oral insulin because of a combination of high resource requirements in a limited resource environment and the partner's perception of expected development time and the probability of success," Mr. Goldberg said. Mr. Goldberg didn't name either potential partner. Emisphere hired J.P. Morgan as an investment banker more than a year ago to find a partner to commercialize the franchise. Emisphere talked with "almost all of the top 10 pharmaceutical companies," Mr. Goldberg said, but recently went into final talks with the two-party partnership. Mr. Goldberg said he still considers a partnership will give the franchise the best opportunity. The company will reinitiate talks with some of the companies that expressed interest previously, he said. In Wednesday morning trading on the Nasdaq market, shares of Emisphere were down $2.12, or 42%, to $2.98 on volume of 931,600 shares. Average daily volume is 105,634 shares. Mr. Goldberg said the pharmaceutical company that pulled out of the talks with Emisphere decided recently to cut its research and development spending. Despite the current market, Goldberg said the company believes "other companies are still comfortable making these bets." As part of its discussions with the two-company partnership, Emisphere underwent two independent due diligence processes, he said. Feb. 12, Emisphere said it lost $71.3 million, or $3.98 a share, in 2002. That compared to a loss of $56.5 million, or $3.18 a share, for the prior year. At Dec. 31, Emisphere had cash and investments totaling about $73.7 million. -Hollister H. Hovey, Dow Jones Newswires, 201-938-5287; << Tuck