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Biotech / Medical : VVUS: VIVUS INC. (NASDAQ) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jman who wrote (18246)	1/28/1999 4:53:00 PM
From: Joe Reich	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 23519

Conf call a typical Leland worthless performance. Only 3 questions. Call ended quickly for lack of interest...

To: Jman who wrote (18246)	1/28/1999 5:36:00 PM
From: VLAD	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 23519

I think that the most important thing regarding the conference call other than blowing away the estimates by 7 cents a share is that Astra has proved that with good marketing skills, MUSE can compete effectively against Viagra. This IMO has been a large uncertainty in my mind ie with good marketing how will MUSE sell side by side with Viagra. 3 months after Viagra was released, MUSE sales in Sweden are back to the same levels as they were before Viagra's release and MUSE has over 1/3 of the ED market and Astra is just now starting to target the PCPs in Sweden. I might also note that Sweden's national health plan does cover Viagra. I like the fact that we now are retaining the CFO on a permanent basis. We know that international sales(6.2M) will probably not improve much over the next few quarters unless countries like Germany and France get launched fairly soon. Now the most promising forward looking aspect is that Vivus IMO will soon be signing Astra/Zeneca on as its domestic partner. Based on my sources, I am expecting to hear an announcement some time within this current quarter and optimistically I think we may see this transpire within the next month. I also like that we now see that Vivus is able to run operations keeping SG&A below 2M and R&D just slightly over 2M with percentage wise is a nice improvement over last quarter. On the negative side.... Without a domestic partner signing this quarter, it looks that profitability will be under pressure this quarter as domestic sales will definately not be as high in Q1 '99 as Q4 '98 since there was a lot of warehouse filling last Q on flat domestic scripts. I wish Vivus could provide more thorough info on some of the other international markets. All we hear about is Europe and Canada. What's going on in Australia? How about Mexico and South America? No mention about China which should gain approval soon. It looks to me like along with the $8M in milestones soon coming in, Vivus can be able to squeek out a profit in Q1 and Q2 if they can continue to maintain costs and if international sales perhaps show some inprovement over Q4 which they can do if sales improve in some of the other countries launched over the past months. I think Vivus will move up in share price to about the $6.00 range over the next few weeks and it will really take off come a domestic partner announcement. Of course this is just my opinion. Those of you who have not called in your certificates now need to do so ASAP.