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Biotech / Medical : ACMI - Accumed Inc. -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Cisco who wrote (638)	12/10/1997 11:33:00 PM
From: Cisco	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1894

Please note that the Sales for the 12 trailing months for CYTC should have been $18.3M not 1.8M. Sorry for the typo. Cisco

To: Cisco who wrote (638)	12/11/1997 12:18:00 AM
From: Frank Buck	Respond to of 1894

Cisco, Thanks a heap! I know how much time and effort went into that research treatise. Phenomenal work. You probably saved some poor uninformed souls from selling at the open tomorrow morning for a substantial loss. Now maybe they will "hold" and be able to send their kids to an Ivy League College with the profits they will reap later. Maybe one of these young adults will study medicine as a result. Maybe they will go into research and develop a vacine for cancer!That's it, there goes AccuMed's Cytopathology Division. Cisco what did you do? It's late please excuse my making light of a serious situation. Getting back to the research fundamental comparisons. When r-e-a-l-l-y looked at in that comparative perspective its amazing that anyone in their right mind would be selling, 'UNLESS' their collective desire was to 'initiate' and 'instigate' further selling by the weak shareholders, only to repurchase those shares at a lower price. It kind of reminds me of how Native Americans used to drive the bison (buffalo) off a cliff to maximize their kill yields. Pretty effective for the Natives, and it seems pretty sensible for the collective group that can drive the weak-sellers to sell. King Solomon said "There is nothing new under the sun". The prey it seems has changed from four-legged to two-legged. If one subscribes to the year-end tax selling scenario then it makes for very opportunistic timing. A few more weeks and the tax-selling window will be closed and the quarter will end. Until then 'dig in' and watch the weak-sellers sell off.

To: Cisco who wrote (638)	12/11/1997 8:12:00 AM
From: Chuck. Edwards	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1894

Cisco, I don't have a real strong feeling about ACMI one way or another, but just a couple of thoughts -- The Pap smear business is widely regarded as a zero-sum game -- a lab can only buy so much equipment, and if it buys from one company rather than another, the latter company suffers. I own Cytyc, and as far as I can see, it has a technology that is superior to all the others you covered. It is one of the two that is projected to make money next year, and it is projected to have a substantially higher EPS than ACMI. (Of course, analyst projections for companies like this are akin to witchcraft, but they are all we have to go on.) And several recent studies do show that Cytyc substantially reduces the number of samples rejected as inadequate, which substantially reduces overall costs (which insurance companies like). Also, I don't put too much importance on unanimous "buy" ratings -- stocks with a 1.00 rating are likely to be sparsely followed, with a few enthuastic analysts -- the more analysts you have, the more likely you are to find a single dissenter, which reduces your average. In this case, ACMI is followed by four analysts, according to Zacks, all with a "Strong Buy" rating, leading to a 1.00 rating. Cytyc is followed by seven analysts, five with strong buys and two with moderate buys, leading to a 1.3 rating. Do Cytyc's five strong buys trump ACMI's four strong buys? Or do the two Cytyc analysts with "only" moderate buys constitute a fatal flaw in the Cytyc case? I don't know that this comparison means much. Finally, corporate restructuring to save costs in a small, growing firm is not a good sign in my opinion -- that's for the big guys with an established product line and bloated corporate expense accounts. If you are growing the top line at a dramatic pace (as small companies like ACMI and CYTC should be doing), you shouldn't be spending time counting postage costs. Restructuring argues a pessimistic outlook, and the need to hoard resources for tough times ahead. Of course, saving money is always good -- but to repeat my point, companies like this should be ramping up their expenditures and buying lots of new "stuff" to support expected new sales, not touting their cost-cutting efforts. This may come out like an attack on ACMI, and I don't mean it to be. But I just don't see the case for investing in this stock -- the best technology will win in the end, and it doesn't appear to me that ACMI has it. This is all IMHO, and correct me if I am wrong. We're just talking here! :) Chuck Edwards