You are correct Beachbum. This is not uncommon at all in Biopharma. I work in the industry and we in license and out license regularly.
1.Developing a product through approval and commercializing it on their own.
2. Develop a product through approval and license it out for royalties to an existing pharma sales organization...big pharma or distributor
3. Develop patent portfolio that can be out licensed
4. Develop product based on milestone payments with the anticipation of future royalties.
I think the question on most of us long term shareholders is when will we be able to recognize value for our investments we made almost a decade ago. Ligand's history sounds a lot like VTs. I hope we have the same kind of turn around story. LGND has a market cap of 1.6 billion. The comparisons and numbers being thrown around by Grant and others are more in the 5-9 Billion range. I certainly hope the latter is closer to true. But until the public market or a major institution affords us such a valuation, its just ink on paper.
Ligand Pharmaceuticals is a biopharmaceutical company located in San Diego, California.[4] Founded in 1987 as Progenx Inc., the company went public in 1992. Initially focused on developing its own drugs, a period of turbulence in the early 2000s culminated in its CEO being ejected by the shareholders and provoked a change in focus to the acquisition of existing drugs and forming partnerships to develop them further.
Since 2005, the company has twice had to restate its financial accounts, and it has been subject to class action lawsuits. Fortune ranked Ligand as among the top 100 fastest growing companies for 2014-2016, and in 2018 its CEO was listed among the top five highest paid CEOs in San Diego.
