Antares Pharma, Inc. (ATRS)

[jab91252]

Cato:

Here's some brainstorming I've been doing and it's a tie into my April 5 post on this board. I'll post a portion of that post in a moment.

Braindump questions:

1) What if they gain approval of increasing the 'authorized' shares from 150M to 200M AND then they actually issue a portion of the additional 50M shares sooner[url][/url][tag]insert-text-here[/tag] rather than later. (In another post I mentioned my thought was that they are just trying to be prudent and to have the authority 'in place' as a contingency plan for future / potential use if the need arises.

2) Why would they pull the trigger sooner and bring some of the newly authorized shares to market? What good reason could be behind that?

Let's review Wotton's business model - here's his latest statement from the March Earning Call and we have been hearing this alot:

"However, the bigger picture is the progress we've made on our internal pipeline as we shift this company towards a specialty pharmaceutical company that controls its own development destiny with products such as OTREXUP and QS T." He has also put it this way - to paraphrase him: 'a shift from a royalty driven company to a revenue driven specialty pharma company.'

With that, on to my April 5th post which highlights some comments from an Antares employee who seems to be able to fly under the radar - Bob Apple.

A subject worth revisiting from the 4th Q yr end CC (from SA transcripts) read just how TEVA is talked about.

Aaron Hartley
If you don't mind, we have another one for you. Could you give us a little more detail on the new sumatriptan agreement?



Apple:
Yes, I think sumatriptan was originally VIBEX 2. And what -- Teva came to us and realized that we've been doing much more on our owninsert-text-here And so what the agreement is currently is that Teva will make the sumatriptan in a prefilled syringe and send that to our manufacturers where we will make the device, assemble the device with the prefilled syringe and do the final packaging, all on our equipment. And so it's truly taking us all the way down to the commercial supply of the product, which is very different than our other agreements with Teva where we typically just supply them with the devices and then they do everything after that. So we felt that was a real positive step in our relationship in providing them the flexibility to have us complete the product development for them

Then Paul chimes in:
"Yes. I think it's also a reflection of how far we've come as a company because as a result of our taking charge of our own destinyinsert-text-here


The only good reason to issue newly authorized shares sooner rather than later would be as reflected in the above highlighted sections from Apple and Wotton focused on TEVA. We know TEVA has made big changes to their business model - particular in how they are looking at acquisitions and steering away from the "big" pharma M & A and looking at smaller acquisitions with companies that will make up their new order (or more accurately, new "Constellation") per new CEO Jeremy Levin. But acquisitions aside, I think TEVA may rely on, need and want exactly what a company like Antares can deliver. Right now, they are using third party manufacturing for perhaps both the epi-pen and Vibex for Sumtriptan and I suspect TEVA is paying / funding this directly or perhaps is just a pass-through from the manufacturers - to Antares-to TEVA.

There are other TEVA / Antares pen programs in the pipeline. How is Antares going to handle these programs? How much more control does Wotton want on Antares destiny and revenue generating side of the business model in bringing to market TEVA's programs and needs? Why not control, not only Antares own pen programs, but also TEVA's from the manufacturing side or as Apple said, 'more of the development work downstream.'

You guys follow me? Does it make any sense?