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

To: Henry Niman who wrote (15148)	2/16/1998 2:35:00 PM
From: Brian Moore	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 32384

Henry, I imagine biotech companies go through phases. Phase one would be product research. Here the company has nothing for sale, just a lot of bright scientists working on ideas they hope will pan out. The stock is priced low. It may go up and down a little based on press releases, gossip and the like, but no huge moves appear. As soon as it is apparent that an effective drug will hit the market, I imagine the stock would rise dramatically. People could estimate what the demand will be, see that large revenues will be coming in. Companies can stay in Phase One for a long time, experimenting and testing away. Ligand still appears to be in this phase. Sure, things look promising, but you never know. The next trial might not show results. Looking at the stock price, it appears to have just been moving up and down in a small trading range for the last couple of years. Clearly nothing big has happened. If that had it would be obvious -- the stock price would have gone through the roof. My question to you is, what events happen in the life of a company just before such dramatic changes? You seem to be saying that some positive press releases may be coming out in the next weeks or months. That's nice, but it still sounds to me like a company in Phase One. Heck, two years ago there were probably good press releases. One year ago there was evidently a big presentation at some meeting. The stock rose, but fell back afterwards. Now it's up some again. One annoying poster said that the company is still testing on rats. If you look at the grand scheme of things, maybe he has a point. Can we really expect, given the known steps a company has to go through, any reliable, hard evidence of success anytime soon? Structurally, we know the hoops these companies have to jump through before they can say "We have a success on our hands." Has the company nearly finished this cycle? Can we expect to hear make it or break it news in the next few months? Doesn't Ligand have a definite amount of time ahead of them before any possibility exists that they can say, We've done it! In the meantime, don't we have to resign ourselves to press releases that are nice, and show the company is working on things, but really don't indicate one way or the other whether something actually will come of their work? My real question, then, is: Since the structure of drug development is known (get some scientists, work on ideas, test them, do animal tests, do human tests, get FDA approval), where is Ligand in this process and how long will it be before we know, one way or the other, whether one of their products is a winner? If I had asked you this a year ago, would you have said, Well, they will have some interesting things to say at a conference, but there is little chance that any definitive results will be out in the next year. That, in fact, was the case. Structurally, I am guessing there was no possibility for them to have a answer last year. I'm wondering whether the same is true for this year. When will the real, reliable results be out?