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Biotech / Medical : VD's Model Portfolio & Discussion Thread -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: WTDEC who wrote (4857)	5/10/1998 10:29:00 PM
From: poodle	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 9719

Thanks for your post. Monday may be interesting. Some irrelevant comments: 1. Not sure automatic sequencing itself is a limiting step. 2. 3% is rather about coding regions than genes. 3. Patent situation is unpredictable. ESTs from the same gene could be already sequenced many times. Who can get the patent? Or someone who sequenced complete coding region? Complete gene? Understood the function? Have a nice evening.

To: WTDEC who wrote (4857)	5/11/1998 5:01:00 AM
From: Rocketman	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 9719

Perkin Elmer isn't that big of an elephant, they've only got a $3.3B market cap with a 93 PE, 1997 revs of $1.4B, and cash and long term assets of about $340M. This ain't no Microsoft. They are also dependent on continued business from their clients to support their efforts. I really doubt they want to alienate their client base. Plus, they are not the only sequencing game in existence. Don't forget the MDYN capillary systems, and the GeneTrace Mass Spec systems that are in development. I'm posting the new sequencing instrument announcement URL too, which will probably put a dent in the sales of 377's for the rest of the year as companies wait for the new system. biz.yahoo.com Per the release, they won't have the instrument done for beta testing until late-98 and for commercial release in 99, ie.) this is still vaporware. Plus, this is the most detailed forward looking statement I've ever seen, I mean they pull out all the stops to cover their butts. I'm always reminded of how long they promised throughput upgrades to the Catalyst 800 DNA Prep Workstation a few years back, I mean it went on forever. What dinosaurs! INCY finally gave up waiting and went to separate liquid handling robots and PCR machines to do the prep job at a fraction of the cost, with higher reliability, drastically less space and power consumption, more flexibility, faster throughput, far less hazardous waste production (the Catalyst made lots of 20% ethanol to dispose of at great cost), but gee you had to have an employee handy to transfer the microtiter plates from the robot to the PCR machines. Plus the Cat 800's used to dribble condensate water all over the bench tops from iced up refrigeration lines, have rusting components that made a nice brown dribble to boot ie.) crappy engineering. I used to hate the beasts, they were hell on laminate counter tops as the constant moisture used to delaminate the tops. PE-ABI is pretty notorious for having a lot of bugs in their early units and chemistries, which is to be expected in systems this complicated. I'll believe that these machines work right reliably and are available in commercial quantity when they hit the market and are proven reliable on a 24 hour basis in extended usage, not because they decide to announce it after a real biomarket hype week. I'd bet PKN stock does pretty well this week though as the sheep jump on board baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa Might be a good ride to take if you could get in before the run up and get out at the top before the wait sets in. But, I'll bet the market makers take the weekend market order placers to the cleaners. Rman hammering on the keys!