Replies to post #146720 on Biotech Values

[rkrw]

Yes. I had thought Elan ran up to $35 because of Tysabri not Bapi and crashed to $6 because of Tysabri not Bapi. They had also acquired Tysabri in the Athena acquisition, which wasn't mentioned.

One thing is clear though, he makes a good case for a management change.

[iandy]

>ELN

If Tysabri hadn't run into a totally unforeseeable safety problem, the company would have looked very different indeed.

Tysabri has been a miracle drug for many MS patients.
If it wasn't for the PML, it might have been the top selling MS and Chron's drugs of all time.

Elan made some huge errors and wasted a lot of cash but the company also brought some very effacious products to maket and reinvented the drug delivery business.

[DewDiligence]

These AD compounds were decent shots on goal and I am happy someone took them…

Agreed on this narrow point, which I’ve been making on Twitter in reply to the myriad tweets from respected and heavily-followed individuals saying that the phase-3 Bapi trials had no chance and were a misuse of resources. To the contrary, I figure that the phase-3 Bapi trials were a worthwhile business proposition even with as low as a 3-4% chance of success.

On the main point of the article, however, David Maris is correct: all told, ELN is the probably worst large-cap biotech company of all time by almost any reasonable metric.

[masterlongevity]

actually, i would give the article a B too, but for totally different reasons. I think it lists about 1/10 of the mgmt blunders. THis is the only company i have ever invested in where i knew upfront that the Mgmt team was the absolute worst in biopharma. however, when i got in at 6 and 7 bucks in 2008 and 2009, i knew it was undervalued on tysbri alone and that some valuation would eventually get put in for the chance of bapi. I made a lot of money on this, but it had nothing to do with mgmt.

the runup in 2008 was almost entirely bapi, not tysabri. Elan announced ph 3 for bapi in mid 2007, 1 yr before a very small ph 2 was finished, so of course expectations were high. In addition, in the 1st half of 2008, Elan continued to talked about subpart E filing based on ph 2 data, which was all hype and totally irresponsible. their topline PR 2 months before the actual data release was also a bit disengenuine.

There is no longer any possibility for significant gains. they are a 1 trick pony, overbloated, spent like drunkedn sailors, and have ZERO in the pipeline. anyone staying in now needs theri head examined. There are still some stragne folks out there that believe tysabri si worth $20B, but that is completely insane. I can't see Elan's value above $10, with Tysabri + research + any remained value in AIP