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

To: jayhawk969 who wrote (25530)	9/19/1998 1:26:00 PM
From: jayhawk969	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 32384

Thread, Part of everyposters invaluable toolkit. mtnds.com eom

To: jayhawk969 who wrote (25530)	9/20/1998 8:13:00 AM
From: Cheryl Galt	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 32384

J.D. and Henry, RE: Ligand's cash position : Working capital decreased to $32.7 million as of June 30, 1998, from $62.4 million at the end of 1997. The decrease in working capital resulted from a decrease in cash due to increases in clinical trials and product development expenses in late 1997, increased selling expenses, semi-annual interest payments due on convertible subordinated debentures and convertible notes offset by a decrease in accrued liabilities from year end 1997. J.D., I'm concerned too, as my prior post about the 2Q surely showed. It helps a bit that Robinson and Maier said that the 2nd half would be better, but I wish they'd supported the sentiment with numbers (milestone values). Have they? I'm a greenhorn regarding accounting matters, but simple arithmetic leads me to be uneasy. I'll feel a lot better about my investment if one year from now Ligand has survived the absorption of Seragen. Right now it feels like Ligand pulled Seragen out of the water into a leaky lifeboat filled with pipelines. I've spent the last couple of hours noting links and gathering info from prime source documents, cleaning up my notes on this stuff (and getting my keyboard to quit typing the darn "O" key as an "I"). J.D., The hyperlink to support that Working Capital data in your post is sec.yahoo.com. I mention this, because I thought I'd LOST the place where I found that data. For my notes, since Yahoo links aren't long for this world, I TRIED to find the SAME data at ligand.com and at Ligand's press release section in Business Wire. NO LUCK. Unless someone else can find it, this Working Capital data is NOT in those places --- and certainly is NOT in the 2Q Report, which I read with a fine tooth comb -- or rather, I searched for "working" with the help of the Find command. I'm uneasy now about that omission. Maybe someone better at reading the 2Q balance sheet can COMPUTE the working capital numbers from the other cash figures in the 2Q ????? --------------- Whoops -- CANCEL all that.... I just FOUND it (indirectly) on Ligand's own web site. (I'm still getting used to finding my way around the thing ...) On Ligand's home page, on the narrow frame at the LEFT edge --Click o Financial Information, and you'll get switched over to Edgar. Once there, Click the line that reads "LIGAND PHARMACEUTICALS INC 10-Q (08/14/1998) 107020 Bytes" Good. I'm GLAD Ligand references it by POINTING to the official source, rather than COPYING the information -- though I'd be extra impressed if Robinson had addressed the issue in the 2Q. -------------------------------------- Next, I collected all I could find about the Seragen acquisition -- into an MS Word doc and an Excel spreadsheet. Starting from the left-hand frame on the company's website, ligand.com and reading their Aug 12 businesswire Press Release about the Seragen merger, I noticed ANOTHER near-term big payment coming due -- $8 Million -- for Marathon Biopharmaceuticals, LLC. Has Marathon ever been mentioned on this thread before ? " Ligand and Marathon Biopharmaceuticals, LLC, the organization which has a service contract with Seragen for manufacturing and development services, are parties to an agreement entered into simultaneously with the merger agreement providing for Ligand's acquisition of substantially all of Marathon's assets for $5 million, and an additional $3 million to be paid if and when Ligand pays the $37 million payment in connection with the FDA clearance to market ONTAK for CTCL. "Ligand may purchase the assets of Marathon at any time before Dec. 24, 1998 or on Jan. 31, 1999, at Ligand's option. "The payments to Marathon may be paid in cash or Ligand Common Stock, at Ligand's option." ---------------------- BTW, did you read the fairly long "Letter to our [Seragen] Shareholders" that Bob Barry posted a while back ?//http:www.tiac.net/userid/newway/index3.htm/ It wasn't dated, but felt like it must have been written in late 1997, by the new management that took over SRGN in November 1996. The letter reads almost like an advance obituary .... Lilly seems not to have helped them much. They PLANNED to "TRANSFORM" the company from one with "some 150 employees to 15 employees" -- "a difficult but imperative step," to quote the letter. "Difficult" is a nice clean way to phrase it! I DO expect two positive announcements from Ligand -- Ontak NDA shortly, and the Panretin for CTCL either 4Q or early next 1Q. Does anyone have any idea of the $VALUE of the milestone payments for these achievements? Henry..... Where ARE you ??? Cheryl