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Biotech / Medical : Pharmos (PARS) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: yosi s who wrote (163)	11/9/1998 8:18:00 PM
From: David Israel-Rosen	Respond to of 1386

Yosi's Description is on the money . This is what Agis and Pharmos can do Jointly.

To: yosi s who wrote (163)	11/9/1998 9:57:00 PM
From: wolfdog2	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1386

Yosi, there are plenty of investors who buy solely for investment purposes whose holdings exceed 5%. Lots of reason may have induced Agis to exceed 5%. Two that jump immediately to mind: 1. Agis may intend on buying, say, 10%. You can't get there without passing 5% on the way. 2. Agis may, indeed, not intend to accumulate any more shares. It may have bought just over 5% so that the world would know about its investment, in the hopes that it's filing would attract more interest in the stock. Thereby increasing the value of its shares.

To: yosi s who wrote (163)	11/10/1998 10:53:00 AM
From: Omer Shvili	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1386

Yosi, Once again you chose to ignore several facts when you speculate. When speculating, you should always take the FACTS under consideration, otherwise your speculation will always be far from what actually happens. You say that if Agis wanted to invest in PARS they would buy less than 5%, WRONG !!! If Agis will have such a small stake, the investment will mean absolutely nothing to them and their bottom line. I believe (after speaking with people who are involved and know what's going on) that AGIS wants a bigger stake. They still view it as an investment. If you buy more than 5% of some company, it doesn't mean you want to take it over. I think Agis will try to increase its stake to 10%-13%, which it still views as an investment. Yosi, you must remember that PARS' market cap is just a bit higher than an advanced biotech start-up. For example, CLAL just bought a 10% stake in D-Pharm, a young biotech here in Israel, at a value of $40 million, not much lower than PARS, yet these guys haven't even begun PI work on their most advanced project. Just shows you, how undervalued PARS realy is. As a big pharmaceutical company, Agis likes to have investments in small biotechs. They bought a smal stake in Peptor, and now decided to buy a stake in PARS. The fact that they bought more than 5% doesn't mean they will take PARS over, but it DOES mean that they plan on increasing their position (otherwise they would have left the position at 4.9%). I don't think AGIS will try to take PARS over, and unlike you, this is not a wild speculation. I came to this conclusion after speaking to people who are close to the matter and also since I know who AGIS is and what kind of a businessman Moshe Arkin is. It's very unlikely that he'll set off into an adventure like taking over PARS. BTW, Arkin and Haim Aviv go back a while. Haim Aviv didn't talk to Arkin for the first time this week, because Arkin bought shares. Israel is a small country, and the pharmaceutical industry isn't that large, everyone in the industry knows eachother. You understand Agis is a generic company, and so they can't bring much experise to PARS like you're saying. PARS can teach them a great deal about drug discovery and not the other way around. AGIS can sure help with contacts in the financial sector and wall-street. A note to David. When Teva entered the ethical market with their Copaxone, they were a much larger company than Agis is today. Even though they were much larger, they moved along very slowly and were very cautious (these kind of companies are very conservative). Even today, Teva's R&D budget for novell drugs is only 2X larger than PARS, while they have $1 billion in revenues. Teva even took a few steps back after they saw Copaxone isn't the major success analysts thought it would be. They are even more cautious than they were before, and you can tell that by the fact that they say nothing about their pipeline, which includes at least 1 drug in PIII and two in PII, including more in earlier stages. Teva understood that its much easier focusing on one business - generics - which is very different from ethical drug development. The two businesses are different in many ways, that's why Teva is a huge generics player and the big companies (like Novartis and Merck) were never able to become a major player and compete with Teva. Teva is good in generics, and so it focuses on that. It also has some ethical projects on the side, as a bonus. Agis is much smaller than Teva and still isn't a major generics player. Before taking a step like Teva, they would like to become a much larger player, with higher revenues and earnings. Because they still want to have some part in ethical drugs, they decided to buy stake in promising young biotechs. They started with Peptor, and decided that PARS also meets their criteria. We should view this as a great positive, because they take their investments seriously and wouldn't have bought a stake unless they thought PARS has great potential. And, BTW, you can be sure these guys wouldn't waste their time on a measly 100% - 200% return, if they bought shares at 2 they must think they will be able to sell them at 20 in 3-4 years. Omer