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Biotech / Medical : XOMA. Bull or Bear? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?


To: Bluegreen who wrote (8759)2/17/1999 1:44:00 PM
From: Robert K.  Read Replies (2) | Respond to of 17367
 
Bluegreen>IMO (thats IMO) you ought to either chill out or lighten up.
I understand you dont like how things are being presented. If so then
get to the level thats appropriate for you (IMO).
BTW>
FAQs are overdue (in legal review)
Year end looks like next week.
Endotoxin paper will be on the net.
(all as told to me)
Consider nothing as factual, all disclaimers apply always (of course).



To: Bluegreen who wrote (8759)2/17/1999 4:40:00 PM
From: opalapril  Read Replies (2) | Respond to of 17367
 
My read? It shouldn't matter to you or anyone else, but here it is for what it's worth.

I do not pretend to have any special insights into the science so I leave that to others. I've also come to believe that for some time, now, the value Wall Street assigns to a company need have little to do with reality or facts.

Xoma's volume and share price have been anemic for a very long time for a variety of factors, good and perhaps not so good. It has been dead money, as they say, at best since before this year's business school majors were in diapers. The company never really regained credibility with Wall Street after the sepsis debacle. Even at today's depressed prices the stock price must look ridiculously expensive by traditional valuations and very expensive even in comparison with other biotechs.

Xoma seriously gambled by putting virtually all of its eggs in the bpi basket. Wall Street doesn't like gambles. It prefers sure things. No one can be sure if Neuprex will be determined efficacious, and even if it is no one can be sure how this may translate into profitability or income from a pharmaceutical partner. I imagine to chartists with a technical viewpoint the stock price looks like sh*t. I am quite sure the relatively low investment levels of major biotech mutual funds is another negative -- most funds tend to react like flys to flypaper and jump aboard only when they see their brothers in it. From where the flys are buzzing Xoma looks too uninhabited to be attractive.

Add to all this the repeated -- and now, continuing -- dilutions with private placements, and the general view of the investment community that matters, Wall Street, probably ranges from utter indifference at best to outright disgust. Something like that must explain why last year's road show fell flat. There simply are too many other places, including solid biotechs with proven track records, to put one's money.

None of this should trouble investors who walked into Xoma with their eyes wide open. As Tharos, I think it is, has said on several occasions Xoma should not constitute a major part of anyone's portfolio. It's play money. Certainly, that's the way Xoma execs themselves seem to see it. They own an embarrassingly small fraction of their own company.

The only thing that really bothers me down deep is that it seems McCamant and Murphy in the past have enjoyed special treatment which may or may not involve inside information -- or something very close to it. How else explain Murphy's sudden bail out last year after years of holding? There is no reason to suppose whatever back channels they enjoy have closed up. If one of them bails or turns negative again -- as perhaps was hinted in a post earlier this week -- I would take it as a sign that the P-3 failed and Xoma is toast.

For Xoma the company, everything now rides on the Neuprex P-3. All the talk about other applications for bpi and other trials is mildly interesting but only in the same way one might speculate about how the world would look if DeLorian hadn't been caught in a drug deal and his automobile company had succeeded.

I used to say on this board that I was in Xoma for the long haul. In my humble opinion for all of us that now could be a matter of only a few months.