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Biotech / Medical : IMAT - ultrafast tomography for coronary artery disease -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Brian Moloney who wrote (2638)	7/29/1998 5:15:00 PM
From: Angel Medina	Respond to of 3725

Hi Brian Just passing this site along. marketguide.com

To: Brian Moloney who wrote (2638)	7/31/1998 12:14:00 PM
From: Bruce Rozenblit	Respond to of 3725

I just spent 70 minutes listening to the Imat Conference Call! Here's the scoop. The federal government has issued $10 million to study ECBT to reduce medicare costs because medicare gets stuck with all the sick people. Lou Meyers made several pronounced statements about lobbying our congressmen-- He means us! Write to them people. I have already sent my letter. The big insurance companies want a three year payback for the scan and they have some screwy mathematical model that says the payback is 7 years. This is a big problem. That's worth another letter to Washington. The big market for Positron's PET scanner is Japan. They reimburse $2000 for a PET scan and they want machines. Seimens is the only major player. Imat wants to eventually dilute ownership from 51% to about 20%. Meyers thinks this is a big potential market. A lot of doctors think the machine only detects hard calcium but what they don't realize is that total plaque load can be accurately gauged if you multiply the calcium score by 5. Image problem with Doc's. He reiterated that HeartScan competes against scanner sales and was a major factor slowing sales, particularly in Chicago. The focus is to be a manufacturer and not a service provider. You can't straddle the line. I guess he agrees with me now. The gross margin for the scanner is now 45% to 48%. They want to reduce costs and get the margin to over 50%. I doubt that happens and Imat SHOULD use any savings to lower the price. Are you listening Lou? I don't believe in that inelastic demand crap. Price is king in todays world. GE acts as a sales rep only, no exclusivity. GE values the technology highly. They have a dedicated sales force strictly for the cardiology community so as to avoid the political conflict with the radiology community. Imat is free to market concurrently. GE gets a commission of about 10% to 15% depending on the sale. That reduces Imats margin to about 35%. GE provides financing which is a big help. Imat has sold 7 machines first 6 months which means 6 in second quarter, very good. Meyers insists that about another 20 will be sold in second half of the year for total revenues of 50 million which would be great. And he expects backlog going into 98. He is another area where Mr. Meyers didn't listen to me. In my letter of early 97, I told him to market to life insurance companies because the longer people pay premiums, the more money they make. He just had a meeting with a lot of big shots form major life insurance companies in Washington and they are very interested in the scanner because it keeps people from becoming non paying corpses. He acted like this idea was a revelation. Sorry buddy, but I told you about it first. The preferred stock sales have all cleared. Things look very promising into 98 but the rest of the stock buying world doesn't seem to realize it. Let's see what my score is to date. I was right about HeartScan competing with sales. I was right about marketing to life insurance companies. I was right about the need to write our elected officials and get the government involved. Now are you listening Lou? Here comes some more ideas, no charge! Drop the price. Pass on whatever manufacturing savings you can to the customer. Focus R&D to reduce costs. Price is everything. Losing the distinction of being the worlds most expensive CT machine would be wonderful. Market to the military. They have a lot of overweight middle age people and smokers. Market to the FAA to find sick pilots. These applications will give good exposure and validation. Keep pounding on the government. Ross Perot made billions selling to the government. I hit three homeruns in a row. That's a pretty good average. Maybe my ideas will take hold this time.