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Biotech / Medical : Cistron Biotechnology(CIST)$.30 -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: John Metcalf who wrote (1921)	2/23/1999 11:26:00 PM
From: John Metcalf	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 2742

Curiously, the story about sale of the reagents business to Techne is still not indexed on Yahoo under either CIST or TECH. Techne did have a release on PRNewswire. Cistron's annual meeting was this morning in New York, so perhaps everyone was too busy --

To: John Metcalf who wrote (1921)	2/24/1999 12:44:00 PM
From: Walter Morton	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 2742

That's interesting John. But aren't most stock prices based on expected earnings? I have never bought a stock based on it's cash balance. Have you? I hope you and Rudy are correct. But it seem like they did it backwards. A company could have bought CIST for less based on its losses and then sold the part of the company that created the losses after the acquisition. A reduction in sales is a reflection of poor marketing or inferior products. Those reduced sales may still have been profitable had R & D been controlled. At the very least, R & D has contributed to the losses. This brings me back to my point: CIST does not want to manage a business. They want to do research... ONLY! If I am correct, then an acquisition or merger will greatly depend upon some other company believing that CIST has something special to offer as a result of CIST's research. Many people own the stock in hope that CIST will come up with something that PMC wants. Many of us were taking a gamble by buying CIST. I think business take less risk than we do. So, if a business is going to take less risk, is it going to pay less than book value for CIST?