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Biotech / Medical : Vivus: into single digits -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: MIKE DUBIS who wrote (429)	5/5/1998
From: VLAD	Respond to of 1016

Mike, The newly added sales force started only this week. To my understanding only 50 newly trained reps are out now in the field with up to 150 more to be trained and used as Vivus sees fit. The script data is through April 24th so even next weeks data will not be affected by the additional sales force. I would not expect to see much of an effect in the new sales force at least until the last few weeks in May. The idea is that the GP is well aware of plan B if plan A fails. IMO the advertising was a big waste of money but if vivus didn't advertise everyone would be complaining that management made another error. As I see it, it's almost like the advertising was management's attempt to appease the sharholders and counter the Viagra threat. The bottom line (which of course is at this point hindsight) is that the Viagra hype will get men into the doctor's office and as long as the doctor has a plan B readily available before making a referal to the urologist's office, Vivus will have a significant new pool of customers to hopefully help. Vivus will see better days-give it a month or two and then let the script numbers speak for themselves. VLAD