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Biotech / Medical : VVUS: VIVUS INC. (NASDAQ) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Zebra 365 who wrote (4378)	1/7/1998 8:59:00 AM
From: Musa Goksel Bulat	Respond to of 23519

I believe they will not have hard time in beating the estimates. They have enough inventory to cover production shortfall. Many distributors would like to have enough inventory for the upcoming ad campaign since they had supply problems when there was no ad. All the concern was about increased distributor inventory when VVUS crashed. In CC VVUS said that for a major ad campaign 45 days inventory was not enough for distributors(it went up from 30 to 45 days). Concern would be for Q1 98 production, since they are not delaying the ad campaign I assume that production is on schedule. If they haven't resolved the problem, to continue with the campaign they should either be stupid or MUSE is really not selling. We all know that thay are indeed smart and recent script report had shown that MUSE is selling. There is only one option left which is, everything is on order. Hopefully they will announce that they bought remaining shares in the previous buyback program and initiate another one. I believe at this stage they should start barrowing money (since interest rates are so low ) to finance expansions even if they have more than enough cash on hand. When Viagra is available ( if ever? ) it may hurt Muse sales for only one quarter. Either it works or not, people will not keep trying it, they will go back to something which works, Muse. However I am confused about their margins, in CC yey said that they wouldn't reduce domestic prices, I saw in some posts here saying that margin will be lower. (some said for international sales they are giving big discounts). If they are not reducing domestic prices margin should be around 71%. They only shipped 150000 units to UK at lower prices but I have no idea what that price is. Ichecked all the SEC filings, in Internatianol agrements it is written that distrubitors will get discount but discount rate is classified as confidental and it is not given. Can someone who commented about the discount rate verify their source? Musa

To: Zebra 365 who wrote (4378)	1/7/1998 4:35:00 PM
From: LoLoLoLita	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 23519

>>refuse to get excited about an early release of earnings until the >>rumor is confirmed, but that should be quite a plus if true. Zebra, I called IR today and left a message for Nina asking them to "confirm the rumored 1/15 date." Someone else called me back in 40 minutes to say "yes, it will be released at market close on 1/15." I asked him (forgot his name) if they could give me any information on the status of the MCA inspection report on the second factory. He said hold on, he would ask Nina. She came on the line and told me that they expected MCA approval in Q1, and FDA approval in Q2. I told her that I remembered hearing in the CC something to the effect that MCA approval was expected in January, and asked if the Q1 approval date represented a delay from what was previously stated for the second factory. She said that "they have asked us some questions, and we have sent back a response." ---- My take on this is that the MCA approval could take a little longer than they expected in December. But it's very bullish that they're moving up the earnings date. David