To: Michael Burry who wrote (28 ) 12/15/1997 6:20:00 PM From: Tom Wilkes Respond to
Hi Mike, Re: Novartis, thanks for the Bloomberg tip. I'll check it out. Each of the last two issues of MONEY magazine have also recommended it. But, I am ahead of you. I bought my first shares of Novartis a few days ago when it dipped back into the 70's (it was 85). Yeah, the Gerber part is a nice thought. It is not only a good franchise, but one also gets a good feeling about owning it. Yes, I think Novartis is a good buy today, and its projected p/e is only supposed to go down during the next year. Value rules! Yes Schering-Plough looks good. Pfizer may be a bit pricey. I hear good things about Smithkline Beecham because it specializes in vaccines, and may be coming out with a big malaria vaccine soon (there are millions of people with malaria). Worth investigating. BMY is solid. So is Warner-Lambert. Roche slumbers, but they are buying up stuff and restructuring. The way I figure it, if you own 3 or 4 different pharms, they will all do well and one of them just might be the company that cures cancer, etc. There's always that potential. And whatever the government does to them (a la Hillary), the American population is aging. Demographics alone should assure future success for the pharms. Probably also for small medical companies that do interesting things with laser beams or hip replacements (e.g. Stryker). So, on top of tech, oil (potentially big), and telecomm (I like the fiber optics stocks, like Ciena, Lucent), that's the way I am playing it. But, then, I'm from Georgia, so I'll never sell my Coca-Cola stock either! Keep me posted of any pharm news. I'm off to find the latest issue of Bloomberg.
