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

To: Tunica Albuginea who wrote (5279)	2/3/1998 11:36:00 PM
From: qz	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 23519

can someone explain the trading pattern of vvus in the past few days: low volume, tight spread, high sell/buy ratio, and yet, the price stayed very much unchanged. today, in particular, it seemed that someone, along with the market makers, refused to let vvus go under 15. is this a sign of quite accumulation, dumping or a coming major shake up?

To: Tunica Albuginea who wrote (5279)	2/4/1998 12:07:00 AM
From: Chris Delap	Read Replies (5) \| Respond to of 23519

To All, A couple of "real world" practical notes. The following information is from my wife's pharmacy practice and the Pharmacist information packet she received from Vivus. The kit price is in the neighborhood of $100 for a 6 pack of the highest dosage (500mcg.). This is a relatively expensive drug. The patient is the only person who can answer whether this is too expensive. This drug is covered by HMOs and other managed care organizations for 60% of the patients. For a pharmacy to carry a drug they have to have some idea what the turnover will be (i.e. if they stock the drug how long will they have it before they sell it). Initially a pharmacy will special order the drug until a proven market exists. After the pharmacist decides that they can sell the drug they may stock the drug. Vivus has included in their Pharmacy information packet a refrigerator magnet that says "Vivus accepts the return of outdated full or partial boxes." This type of return policy is very important to a pharmacy especially for a drug this expensive. This also means that Vivus can't count shipped product as sales, this may not be significant. To date my wife has only filled 2 prescriptions for Muse (her pharmacy is a independent pharmacy located in a office with 10 family practice physicians who are part of a large hospital owned managed care group). She has indicated that there have been availability problems, born out by other entries on this thread. The sales rep. who calls on my wife's pharmacy indicates that sales were down and the 250 mg. dosages are currently (Feb. 1998) on back order. The sales rep. also feels that the competition from the Viagra will be stiff (no pun intended, ok, maybe just a small pun) and he doesn't expect the drug to become a big seller. But as my wife quickly added he isn't necessarily qualified to determine the suitability of one med over another. One last note, her professional opinion is this is still unknown territory. From her perspective the unknowns are: whether the competition will effect the drug, whether advertising will effect sales and market forces (this is pharmaceuticals market not the stock market, i.e. are doctors satisfied with the results). As has been mentioned before on this thread ED is a sensitive topic, if open advertising releases latent demand then we may have a winner. If on the other hand advertising has no effect then we ... I hope this is beneficial for everyone and not just rambling.