Opinion 1: I'm with BelizeMe on AGM. I don't think anything major will come of it, especially pertaining to PPS. I don't view it as pessimism, just a need for patience. I'm an 88K long who picked up a good chunk of it at $0.44 so... yup, I'm long.
As for a partner for Titan... I looked briefly at prospects, top 12 med companies, and here's my 20,000 foot overview.
1. J&J - Been ruled out already.
2. GE - Mostly imaging, no irons in surgical fire and no hint of interest.
3. Medtronic - has Mazor already.
4. Siemens- lab and imaging foci; wrong market and no major leads into surgery market. Not interested.
5. Baxter - Only med/surg inte3rests are anesthesia.
6. Fresenius - Dialysis market only.
7. Philips - Foci on imaging and cardio; wrong millieu.
8. Cardinal Health - All Pharm until they bought Cordis from J&J, but Cordis to robotic surgery is quite a jump. Not a leading candidate on this list but not as far off as most of the list.
9. Novartis - Pharm only.
10. Covidien - To compete with the mother ship, Medtronic? Unlikely. But maybe about as likely as Cardinal health. I'll give them both 3 out of 10 at best.
12. Becton-Dickinson - changed order to save room for the last one. BD is pharm, lab, and supplies (needle and syringes, etc.)
11. Stryker. Not just joints any more. Surgical equipment and surgical navigation systems; endoscopic and communications systems; patient handling and emergency medical equipment; neurosurgical, neurovascular and spinal devices... (yeah, Wiki info but not inaccurate). To continue... Among their recent acquisitions in this direction, Haifa/Sightline for flexible endoscopy; Boston Scientific''s Neurovascular division for minimally invasive treatment of hemorrhagic and ischemic stroke followed by Concentric; the big news here, MAKO Surgical, who manufactures and markets surgical robotic arm assistance platforms, most notably the RIO (Robotic Arm Interactive Orthopedic System). And Berchtold too. Looking at the direction they are heading, especially with the MAKO acquisition, I could easily see Titan being an M&A target, with maybe some resource sharing going on to help ensure their success before dropping big coin to go to the next logical step in their expansion.
All this is pure conjecture based on very limited research on my part. Just a not-ready-for-prime-time shot in the dark based on research which took longer to type up than to do the research - maybe honesty is a weakness with me.
Would be interested to hear from anyone else in the know to see if this theory holds water. I'm not banking on anything in particular but among the top 12, this looked to me like a reasonable candidate. I'd give them a 7 out of 10, but much better odds at involvement than anything else on the list. And I may have been looking at the wrong list. MDDI is good but maybe they use a different set of criteria when they built their list.
