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Biotech / Medical : Sepracor-Looks very promising -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: John Bloxom who wrote (2780)	5/15/1999 8:22:00 AM
From: BMcV	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10280

Sheesh. I go away for the day and you guys let everything go to pieces! When I first saw the news, my initial reaction was to sell half my shares Monday. But after a restless night, I don't believe I will. I bought SEPR to hold until either they become a mature company or something fundamental changes in their story. SEPR won't become the next Merck, but they could easily be bigger than Forest Labs, or even Biogen. Immunex has a $10 billion market cap based on one big drug and a good marketing agreement. So all we ever needed was one home run, or a string of base hits. There was hope Nori would be a home run: it was supposed to be fast-acting, potent, and long-lasting, the first once-a-day nonsedating antihistamine. If it had all those atributes, JNJ could probably market it effectively against Claritin, which, is swiftly becoming the asprin (small "a") of the allergy market, a $2.7 billion drug growing 30% annually. But as far as look-alikes go, Allegra is already on the market with reasonably strong acceptance. And Zyrtec, I believe, is a non-factor, despite possibly being a better drug. Remember, Claritin revolutionized the catagory by advertising heavily, the first prescription drug to be sold directly to the consumer. So any launch will incur huge upfront expenses in TV and print advertising. With clear advantages, JNJ thought it would be worth a shot. My guess is that the data won't show significant difference from Claritin (that was the baseline for the trials, if memory serves). So I'm not expecting good news on this front Monday. I'm not expecting bad news either. Given that the drug is an active metabolite, like Allegra, there should be no toxicity issues. But simply not getting great news on speed of action, efficacy, duration, is bad-enough news, since it means that against Claritin, Nori doesn't stand a chance. As to why the release was split between two days, there was some speculation in the Yahoo Club (definitely worth a visit, by the way) that Volpe somehow caught wind of troubles brewing in one of the collaborations and issued or was about to issue the news to their clients. So the Friday announcement was forced on the company, if that's true. Well, the home run won't be Nori, which means it won't come as soon as hoped, since that drug was furthest along in trials. But maybe it will be Prozac 2, or Claritin 2, or the other JNJ drug, Norcisapride. Tea, excuse me, Ptea22, asked whether anyone could think of an analyst on any stock comparable to Maris on SEPR. He pointed out how the guy shows up like a hyena anytime there's dead meat; he gets quoted in the media then vanishes back into the brush. The only person who comes to mind is Tom Kurlak on Intel, who was right a lot, but turned bearish and stayed bearish even as the stock recovered. He eventually lost his job, despite his high profile. SEPR is not widely owned enough to make it dangerous for Maris's reputation as an analyst, though we, of course, know the truth.