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Biotech / Medical : Ligand (LGND) Breakout! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Andrew H who wrote (11183)	11/15/1997 4:56:00 PM
From: Henry Niman	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 32384

Andy, As soon as Droloxifene is approved for anything other than breast cancer, LGND will recieve a 3% royalty rate on all indications, including breast cancer, so LGND will receive subsequent royalties of 3% on breast cancer sales also. It was kind of strange that three negative posters appeared somewhat close together in time, but some posters are very protective about their stock. However, these posts are nothing compared to what happened on the CHTL thread on Prodigy a couple of year's ago. There were some weird coincindences that kind of fanned the flames, but the response was truely extraordinary. There are some parallels, but the CHTL story is not likely to be matched. The story began when JNJ received approval for Renova (the all trans retinoid, tretinoin) for treating wrinkles. I was vaguely aware a CHTL (they had an anti-androgen for wrinkles and their price had skyrockted from something like $2 or $3 to $28). When I saw the Renova approval I went to the CHTL board and asked what they thought. I gave some background on retinoids and was asked if I thought that CHTL had the expertise to get their compound approved by the FDA. I looked at there balance sheet and saw a few red flags. The market cap had ballooned to $1/2 Billion, but the company only had 43 employees and the President, CEO, CFO, media contact, and company all shared the same first name. I indicated that I didn't think that the company had the resources for FDA approval. Another red flag went up when I found out that they had sought approval in the past, but were now calling their anti-androgen a cosmetic instead of a drug because it improved the "appearance" of wrinkles (as long as they didn't say it eliminated wrinkles, they could call it a cosmetic). I was soon attacked for calling an anti-androgen a "drug" and threatened with a law suit. I found this all very puzzling, since its seemed fairly obvious that an anti-androgen was a drug. A few days later I went into the local grocery store to pick up a copy of Barron's. For some reason, this was one of the few places in Pittsburgh where the Monday's Barron's could be bought on Saturday morning. I looked at the cover and was shocked to see CHTL mentioned. I skimmed the article and saw that there were many reasons for the stock to take a powerful hit at the open. The price had already dropped from something like $28 to the low $20 which I thought was because of the Renova approval. However, it was clear that the stock would be hit hard again, so I posted a synopsis Saturday morning and made predictions over the weekend. When the heavy hit happened, I was accused of leading a bear raid on the company. The posts went on and on and I won't tell you all of the things that happened off line because I would rather not see a re-run. The stock never did recover. After falling to single digits at the open, the price steadily declined and now its trading at about $0.25.