Enanta Pharmaceuticals Inc (ENTA)

[willyw]

I guess I should have addressed this to Dew;

In your evaluations in the past you referred to the bolus; the number of patients that can be treated per year.

I'm wondering if this agreement has changed that aspect of the formula?

First, IF the cost of treating patients is less.... then perhaps more patients can be treated. (conversely, if the cost remained high, there might be adequate numbers of doctors or clinics, but not enough money set aside annually to finance the treatments)

Two.... IF (since we don't know the discounted pricing) and depending on how much Gilead lowered their price, we could see the flood gates crack open further as the two companies compete for patients with lower prices. (until we get a sense of Abbvie pricing and Gilead reaction it will be hard to know how many patients prescriptions per year)

3) Due to the exclusive nature of the Abbvie ESRX agreement I think they will get a higher percentage of naives and genotype 1a's than was originally thought. (more than I expected, that is)

4) If other similar agreements are forged with other health care providers, then a much larger pool of patients (in the US? in EU?; uncertain) may be approved than was originally anticipated. The warehousing and treating preference to the sickest might not be how this is going to play out. If curing all fibrosis scores becomes the norm the treatment tail may change, and the number of annual patients may be greater than was expected by analysts.

5).... I had not seen this before, but this answers what I have wondered; since the treatments are shorter, easier, just how many other doctors might get in on this; treating HCV patients, thus broadening the bolus?

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/22/business/pharmacy-deal-heralds-changed-landscape-for-hepatitis-drugs.html?smid=tw-share

(last paragraph)
"In addition to giving AbbVie exclusivity and agreeing to treat all patients, Express Scripts also said it would allow doctors other than liver specialists and infectious disease specialists to prescribe Viekira, further widening the market."
====================

Many of these point towards a larger number of patients being treated, perhaps a more compressed treatment pool than was thought.
So far as it pertains to ENTA royalty tiers, they may hit the higher tiers sooner. I wonder when we will be able...if and when to ascertain the shape of the agreement, at what numbers of prescriptions/dollars certain tiers kick in.

These are just my ruminations. I've no idea how things will shake out, but note that even paid analysts haven't gotten it quite right either in the past year. Generally though, many of these points seem bullish for ENTA.