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Biotech / Medical : Neurocrine Biosciences (NBIX) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: fred hayes who wrote (1612)	6/24/2006 12:03:37 PM
From: Icebrg	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1834

>>I'm still puzzled by the timing of pfe's pullout.>> I believe the only explanation that makes sense is what Lyons said at the cc. It was a portfolio question, as far as PFE is concerned. Evidently they felt that 5 and 10 mg IR formulation plus the 15 mg MR would not generate the turnover/profit they are looking for. Especially since NBIX was also supposed to have a nice cut of the cake too. I don't believe that they have an agreement (with whom?) to buy Sepracor. There was anyhow no reason to kill Indiplon before they had Lunesta in the bag. Losing the higher MR formulations killed the product as far as PFE is concerned. Erik

To: fred hayes who wrote (1612)	6/24/2006 12:05:05 PM
From: Robohogs	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1834

There is another weird way to look at. If PFE knows there is too much work to be done, and given the economics, they lose money selling only IR (the royalties to DOVP and NBIX, supporting the new clinicals AND supporting NBIX's salesforce (which I never understood)), and they therefore knew they were pulling out, AND they do not want to buy SEPR but know one of the competitors is going to do so, their pulling out raises the cost (in a multi-party bidding situation) given the improved fundamentals of SEPR. Strange - their pulling out raises value of SEPR in the market's eyes. Except, someone wanting sleep, and only sleep (and not patent challenged respiratory), might do a different style deal with NBIX (except for the noise PFE raised there) which can make money on much worse terms to NBIX (i.e., we will give you $200 MM and a small royalty and NO salesforce and a milestone payment if MR approved). So this would decrease SEPR value. Weird game theory here. Another way of thinking about this is that pulling out now does not help with SEPR. 180 days from Friday is basically the same as 180 days from next week (if that is when a bid was going to be announced) AND in delaying the cancellation, competitors in a bid situation would have been left confused and hence might have under-bid for SEPR handing it to PFE, who could use its superior knowledge of the playing field to raise its bid just enough to win. So this has the look of PFE not bidding for SEPR. Right? Jon