Replies to post #127461 on Avid Bioservices Inc (CDMO)

[investingdog]

Looking at the latest hiring one may draw a conclusion that they intent to do it alone. The management may not be satisfied with about 50 to 100 millions upfront money from BP, and I think that's all they will get at this point without having BLA or some sort of accelerated approval path in the pocket.

[north40000]

Stockharvest, you have just described an international conglomerate of individual companies---each with the usual organization chart of CEO/president;HR;lawyers with patent, FDA, contract, etc. experience; scientists and engineers with design, manufacturing, research and development skills; vice presidents in charge of managing the above and anything I have forgotten to include, including regulatory in general---all with autonomy to operate separately yet closely linked financially and operationally with a corporate headquarters that has employees in all the above categories and more.

I do not pretend to know the business structures of all U.S. and foreign corporations. I do know one that fits your description very well. We shall see.

[north40000]

Stockharvest, my post should be read in context with your post to which I responded. You said:

.....investingdog, it's my view that the company will still need to manage and run its trials. The issue I was addressing is how I feel about management, and, in the context of trial management, they will have the resources of one of the elite global pharm companies with which to coordinate.

PPHM has been hiring many categories of additional personnel it did not already have. In above, I thought your concern was management of PPHM, and I understood you to say that could be mitigated/assisted/solved by the bolded part of the quotation above---the resources of an elite global BP with which to coordinate the financing and operations of an otherwise more complete, but not totally complete, corporate PPHM structure---one which remains and operates largely on its own as a separate entity under a much larger corporate umbrella.

I was remiss in not expressing my views on the 2nd paragraph of your post. I disagree with you that an acquisition by a BP is not "remotely likely." To be sure, PPHM is setting itself up.IMO,in a way that it could merely partner or collaborate with BP, the latter providing funding and additional collaborative personnel in the manner you mention. MEDX collaborated with BMY in clinical trials of MDX-010, for example.

But BP does not invariably need PPHM [for example, or some other company] to have "real products approved" or "more in the pipeline[than Bavi]" before outright acquisition is tenable. GILD's acquisition of VRUS, discussed earlier in the last day, is exemplary. DEW maintains a table on BTValue of mergers and acquisitions which may help discussion. Don Drakeman, former CEO of MEDX, used to call MDX-010[now Yervoy] "a pipeline in a molecule" years before it ever was approved by FDA, and before MEDX was acquired by BMY.

So, IMO, PPHM is setting itself up:

1) to go it alone, with financing from ?????

2) to partner or collaborate with ?????

3) to be acquired by ??????

Nothing really new as expressed above. There is, however, no "pretty standard approach," as you put it.

And I remain of the view that I know at least one major international conglomerate that is already composed of numerous separate companies operating individually under that corporate umbrella. PPHM could be acquired to become yet another of those companies.