Replies to post #44406 on NorthWest Biotherapeutics Inc (NWBO)

[beachlifeisfun]

If you think that the first prototype Toyota Prius cost as little to build as the 100,000th one, then you really do not understand economy of scale or R&D.

The first CPU...HDD...SSD...you name it. R&D and scale-up costs are notoriously more expensive than O&M costs.

8-10X the expected cost of the drug once on the market for R&D + scale-up is a real bargain.

[notbrad]

Let's do an apples-to-apples comparison:

Provenge was approved on 4/29/2010. So I chose their 10K as of 12/31/2010, because it took them more than 6 months to complete manufacturing facilities and reach commercialization.

Dendreon accumulated losses: ($1,222,934,000). Add to this the change in their plant and equipment (since they built their own manuf. facilities) in 2010, which is about $150,000,000. This gives us a total spend of $1,372,934,000.

NWBO's accumulated losses as of 6/30/2015: ($633,799,000). Plant and equipment not relevant since we are paying Cognate to do this.

Bottom-line, NWBO is under-spending Dendreon by $739,135,000. Even if you impute that NWBO is about a year from commercialization, that's still a huge under-spend.

Also, remember Dendreon was (1) a one-trick-pony; it was Provenge or bust, and (2) they had no ex-US activities. NWBO is also doing Direct and heavily invested in Europe.