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Biotech / Medical : Sepracor-Looks very promising -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: RCMac who wrote (1313)	10/21/1998 7:21:00 AM
From: BMcV	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10280

RCMac, a premature takeover also seems to me to be a serious threat to our investment in SEPR reaching full potential. Even a 50% premium would be only $3 billion, which is nothing to a Merck or J&J (MRK's 3Q earnings out last Friday were $1.4 billion and their market cap is around $150 billion). What might block a takeover is that SEPR has its fingers in so many pies. Who wants to become the next "drug pirate"? Not Merck, for sure. Maybe J&J. But taking over all those patents involving so many big products would be such an aggressive move I doubt anyone with a standing in the industry would risk it. The fact that SEPR's strategy is just not cricket might let us get through this vulnerable premarket stage as an independent company.

To: RCMac who wrote (1313)	10/25/1998 8:26:00 PM
From: Ed Ajootian	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 10280

RCM, Here's the low-down on Wednesday's broker's meeting. Sorry for delay in getting this out. Just going to mention some things that _I had not known or heard about before; may be old hat for some SEPR hawks here: 1) Claritin is a _full _year ahead of schedule. Look for possible approval as early as late '00. 2) SEPR purposely has cornered the antihistimine market by getting a compound on all the current drugs dominating that market. This was critical in order to avoid any one of the drugs going generic. If just one of the big drugs had gone generic, even if SEPR had an interest in all the other drugs, they would have been in tough shape. Now they're in fat city. 3) Southwell thinks Nori can be a billion $$ drug by '03. This would mean $250 mm gross margin to SEPR (assuming a 50% GM %). That's about $7 per fully-diluted share, for the mathematically challenged. Southwell thinks the analysts are undervaluing SEPR since they are only going out to '02 in their models and then discounting back ---- whereas the real fireworks aren't until '03. 4) Labeling negotiations have been completed with the FDA on levalbuterol, at least as far as SEPR is concerned. When FDA gets off their duffs and actually issues the approval is anybody's guess. They've got about 65 salespeople now. Expect to price xopenex at the same price as currently branded albuterol. 5) Oxy results should come out in 2 -- 3 weeks. They have the data in-house and are crunching it as we speak. 6) We should expect one more licensing deal by year end, with more to come in '99. Should expect more up-front cash on future deals 7) I only got 1 question in and it was yours, re: possible takeover. Southwell says they realistically aren't worried about one happening until '00 at the earliest, since before that time it would be too dilutive to the earnings of the acquirer. He seemed unconcerned. Sense seemed to be, "let's see where the stock closes out '99 and then play it out from there". My feeling is that a hostile takeover indeed is not a realistic possibility until 2000. Insitutions own the majority of this stock and it is unlikely that they would jump at a tender offer anywhere near the current quote.