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

To: Henry Niman who wrote (23502)	7/26/1998 12:02:00 AM
From: Robert L. Ray	Respond to of 32384

Henry, With the benefit of 20/20 hindsite I'm curious as to whether you think the LGND/AGN partnership was a net positive for LGND or not. I suppose the jury could still be out on it because we don't know what the eventual value of the compounds LGND gave up will be. Don't figure in the recent sales of LGND stock into your evaluation because they are merely a short term technical depressant of LGND's share price. I'd just like to know what your thoughts are as to whether this erstwhile relationship was a net positive/negative/neutral for LGND. Also you've several times stated that you felt LGND wasn't a take over target. Are there any specific reasons you feel this way or is it just a general feeling or just against the odds? The odds being simply that the odds are always against any sort of takover. Personally I myself am not predicting any sort of takover either but you have to think that some cash rich big pharma with a weak pipeline would always at least be on the lookout for someone with a rich pipeline. I know that takeovers of medium sized biotechs by the big pharmas have been few and far between so that would ague against one. It's just that the whole biotech arena has been depressed for ages while the stock prices of the big pharmaceutical companies have gone sky high. In general, this type of situation would seem to argue in favor of biotech takovers by big pharmaceuticals on a stock swap basis simply because it would make sense to take advantage of those sky high stock valuations. At any rate that's the way it always seems to work in high tech computer related industries. I.E. Companies with astronomic valuations take over promising smaller companies right and left because they are able to use cheap currency (their stock). At any rate like I say I'm not predicting anything either. I just thought I'd sound out both your and the threads opinion on these subjects. We could use a little bit of serious LGND discussion from time to time as a diversion from all the sillyness eh:)