Elite Pharmaceuticals Inc (ELTP)

[WeeZuhl]

DrugCo's expend great effort to get to my eyeballs.

While manufacturing is not an issue, there is nothing in their current skill set that suggests they have the ability to market & sell ADFs into the opioid pain med market.

I have many thoughts on this issue, most of them too long-winded for a lunchtime post. I can expound later. But, in brief, getting 30 seconds in front of a prescriber is a skill, and not blowing that 30 seconds is an even bigger skill. Drug reps get paid lots of money, especially the good ones. To get in the back door requires knowing who to call, persistence, etc. Probably less than half who make it that far get my eyeballs, and those that do get them for less than a minute.

I previously wrote about a drug rep visit for Contrave.

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=112188009

Contrave is the sole product of Orexigen, and their North American partner is Takeda. So the guy I talked to about Contrave was the Takeda rep and had previously talked to me about Brintellix and Uloric, and the day we talked about Contrave he also threw in a plug for their new formulation of Colcrys.

Most drug rep visits are wasted on me, because I almost exclusively prescribe generic drugs (98% as of my most recent audit) and because I was trained not to use newly-approved drugs for at least 2 years. As for Contrave, I already knew of it because I follow the bariatric drugs. But he told me about their special marketing program "scale down" and gave me some fancy brochures, which I subsequently passed on to a patient. I can honestly say it was the only time I've been influenced by a drug rep in years, and that is only because I was willing to use it, since it is a combination of two older drugs. I have written 1 prescription for it, and it was only because he informed me it was being heavily subsidized and would be less than $70 for the foreseeable future. So 1 drug rep visit = 1 script. Tally 1 for Contrave, as I guarantee it will be included in their next annual report.

You can have the greatest product ever, but if it is not presented as such to the people who write the scripts, then the warehouse is going to stay full. I suspect we'll see a marketing partner for ELI-200 with heavy targeting of E.D. docs and PCPs. Whoever that partner is, it might just be the first clue as to who has an edge in the buyout discussion.