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Biotech / Medical : XOMA. Bull or Bear? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Robert K. who wrote (6389)	5/29/1998 10:13:00 PM
From: opalapril	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 17367

BPI remains an interesting compound and all of that, but it certainly has not relieved the pain of a really grim year for Xoma investors from a financial point of view. Sentiment clearly is deteriorating further on the Yahoo, First Call, and AOL boards, and perhaps here on SI, too. A general depression and negativeness seems to be settling in, even among faithful members of the choir. One assumes all of this is not overlooked at Xoma or by Ellen, to the extent they are concerned about individual investor sentiment. (And what other kind of investor sentiment do they have to be concerned about, I ask you?) I am not one to place much reliance on Internet boards as a gauge of much except the excessive free time so many college kids seem to have, but I admit that I am feeling a certain negativity spreading in me as well. Xoma's stock has been acting just plain sick for quite some time -- too long, in my opinion, for it to be an accident, a coincidence, or a mere aberration. Low daily volume, for the most part. Price movement that looks more like market makers trading back and forth for the sake of appearance rather than in earnest. Every now and then sales are made in suspiciously large blocks. Lower lows and lower highs seem to be the norm. Xoma shows an utter inability to sustain any upward price movement for more than a day or two at the very longest. This is even more puzzling when one remembers that in the past three months Xoma execs have put substantial effort into attending investor conferences and luncheons with brokers. As someone (Murphy?) said of Xoma a while back, "no one cares." I admit to being troubled, too, by some of the questions raised recently on various boards. E.g. -- Why don't any major funds invest in Xoma? Or, is it a fact that they do and Xoma just doesn't know it or won't disclose who they are? Has Murphy reestablished his position in Xoma after jilting us earlier this year? If not, why not? The stock he left us for has had its run; Murphy sowed his wild oats. It should be time to come home to the family again. Why is there so little insider buying of Xoma by board members and key employees? Or, is there more such buying than we know and for some reason they can delay SEC filings and Xoma won't tell us what they're doing? What are the projected commercial sales prospects of Neuprex? (There must be some hard financial projections in the business plan. It's the sort of thing a fund would have disclosed to it; we deserve the same.) Would the answer embolden or scare off the remaining faithful? Does Xoma still plan to raise additional cash, as was forecast less than a year ago, or has the series of smaller deals announced since December with other drug companies alleviated that need? Most immediately is the question I raised yesterday, which seems to have gone ignored: What anecdotal information is known or even rumored about the ongoing trials? I truly believe at least some information is out there. Whether it will pass the smell test is another matter but, speaking personally, I am near the point where any news -- even unfounded, baseless, risible rumors -- would be a welcome relief to the crashing silence that greets every deterioration in the stock price. A final thing occurs to me: It can't be a secret to Xoma executives and employees that if Neuprex doesn't get FDA approval in September the company is washed up with Wall Street, probably for good. Xoma has two loud strikes on its record already. Strike three and they're out. So, a hell of a lot of jobs around Xoma are riding on this trial. This leads me to ask a question that someone else raised a while back: what does anyone know about current employee morale? Staffing? Attrition? Recruitment? Are employees beginning to circulate their resumes to other companies and put their houses up for sale? Or, are they signing up to buy a lot of new cars and shopping for larger homes in the same neighborhood? <<gg>> Unless we can get a firmer handle on answers to some of these questions, I fear things could get really, really ugly very soon.