OK Dew..my apologies...
Perhaps I could help by giving my take as a clinician using the stuff...I know your interest is as an investor..so this may help..
Botox companies (will call all the drugs Botox)..sell the drug directly to plastic surgeons in most cases...They do advertise to our patients on the internet, and the patients do form opinions the quality of the different kinds of Botox (Botox,Dysport etc). These opinions are in most cases, loosely held, and if I tell a patient Dysport is better,or acts the same as Botox, most patients will honor my opinion...
Botox is a repeat business. Without being cynical, most clinicians selling Botox do not really care about finding a Botox that lasts longer...in fact for us this is not in our interest..We see the patients less frequently which means less revenue
Individual doctors charge their own decided upon price for Botox...which reflects their own pricing strategy, which depends on a lot of factors...particularly the location of their office...Botox Rx in Manhattan is very expensive..
Botox may be sold by the facial area at a fixed rate, or by the unit..Botox comes as a non constituted powder (the vial looks empty) which is diluted in the office using sterile saline. The amount of saline dilution is not specified by the drug companies and varies from office to office. Doctors may convince patients they are getting more Botox, when they are using the same number of units in a more dilute solution..
What we do care about is the price Botox costs us..Since with repeat patients are used to paying a set amount...say $375 per facial area or $375 for 25 units...we try to keep the price stable...This means if we buy our Botox cheaper we make more money on it...Currently Allergan sells 100units of Botox for the price you can buy 150units of Dysport...I keep Dysport and Botox in the office, but the only patients I treat with Botox are those who insist on it (a very small minority) the rest I use Dysport..Botox and Dysport are identical in clinical effect as far as I can tell...
Getting back to the issue of J&J...J&Js best strategy is clearly to use the generic strategy and undercut the price of Botox and Dysport...This should be fairly easy to do, as I can not believe that once you get your dilutions in order at the drug company, it can not be very expensive to produce in vast quanities...This is what the doctors are going to respond to..There is no equation which relates Botox to expensive cars...Lower Botox costs translate to higher profit margins for clinicians...
Regards...":>) JL
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