JL, I have a great deal of respect for you and your commentary. However, I have to respectfully disagree with your opinion re GIA. As another poster said, it took Pfizer many years to reach peak sales even though they had huge resources and a huge sales force. Amarin’s 400 person sales team is akin to using a fly swatter to kill a pit bull. On a GIA basis it will take AMRN exponentially longer to reach peak sales than a BP. Remember that AMRN is a one product wonder, with no pipeline (yes, a pipeline of potentially new indications, but not products), and subject to a limited exclusivity timeframe due to patent expiry in 2029. Every year, in fact every month, that AMRN doesn’t have the proper sales force reduces their total revenue potential. (I will resist the temptation to harp on the moral obligation of bringing AMRN to the public as quickly as possible to save or improve lives). And every year they waste means less value to a potential acquirer. Even just waiting to build revenue to justify a higher BO is a risk in that, if they fail to ramp quickly, they take time off the peak sales runway and actually injure their position.
Yes, many now-huge companies have started with less or similar resources, but these are mostly apples to oranges comparisons, as these companies had many products or services to sell. AMRN has one. The only way they become a sustainable behemoth (key word: sustainable) is by buying new molecules and building the company through new drugs. I for one have no interest in watching them reinvest in new drug research/candidates and hope they can find or create other viable revenue producers.
One last comment re the posters who were arguing the merits of buying a priority review voucher (from a company who has one to sell ??). The most recent one was sold for $110M. Someone argued that this was a waste of money. I suggest otherwise. While we would all like to believe that everything Vascepa related is a no brainer now that all this positive information has been released, any long term investor, or watcher of the the FDA, knows this is not reliable. So while it is perhaps even likely that the FDA will grant priority review status, why take that chance? Assuming the same $110M spend, this buys guaranteed Priority Review, which expedites the approval process (which we all certainly believe is a no-brainer) which means a much earlier start to significantly higher scripts/sales, which quickly pays back the $110M expenditure and moves up the runway to peak sales. In addition, it ensures that the approval comes well before year-end, which affords plenty of time to negotiate with insurers and PBMs to make their 2019 formularies, which is absolutely critical to 2019 scripts/sales. Therefore I think buying a PR voucher makes good sense.
As always, these are just my humble opinions and I really enjoy the discourse here. Fire away (respectfully) if you disagree.
Jeffkad
