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

To: Greg22 who wrote (18666)	2/11/1999 2:09:00 PM
From: John M. Gelnieau	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 23519

My experience has been that reverse splits are the KOD! All VVUS needs to understand is that word of mouth will not create enough of a market. They need partner and marketing programs to position MUSE into the market. That will impact more improvement on the balance sheet and operating statements than any other strategy I know of. This one is so simple. Made money last quarter. Have substantial incremental manufacturing capacity which means MUSE fixed cost to high. Every incremental unit lowers per unit fixed cost which increases profit. To a point we know that this increased volume can be supported with previously written off raw materials. IMHO, VVUS needs scripts plain and simple.

To: Greg22 who wrote (18666)	2/11/1999 3:05:00 PM
From: VLAD	Respond to of 23519

Gregg, A reverse split IMO is a very bad idea. The bottom line is that Vivus needs more product sales. We know that this will happen on a more gradual basis as Astra launches MUSE in the EU countries next month. If Astra's ability to get MUSE product sales back up to preViagra levels in only 3 months then I believe that with proper marketing MUSE sales should do relatively good in Europe. I think Astra will have an excellent opportunity to market and advertise MUSE as a safer alternative to Viagra and will be able to pick up a lot of Viagra failures which is something that Vivus failed to do domestically since they basically lost their marketing arm at the most opportune time to execute such a strategy. Bottom line is product sales and like it or not, MUSE is still a relatively obscure product in the United states. It doesn't have to be popular in order to dramatically increase domestic sales. It needs marketing and exposure at that PCP level. Until this happens we will be stuck with flat scripts and flat domestic product sales. We all know that a domestic partner is what will make all the difference for MUSE to get the needed exposure to pick up product sales. We have looked at the numbers often. There are over 250,000 PCPs out there and although many have heard of MUSE, most are not all that familiar with it and are reluctant to offer their patients a product that they have not been prescribing. If only 1/2 of the PCPs in the United States decided to offer MUSE to their Viagra failures and cardiovascular diseased patients and only wrote one new prescription for MUSE a month (that's means only introducing MUSE to 12 patients a year which IMO is not an unrealistic goal) we would be getting over 10,000 new weekly scripts written from PCPs alone.