shareholder briefing review, page-6

Speaking of actual sales, one other thing that both Alan and Ramin stressed was the stability studies approvals and ramp up to production. Alan said that the 2 years could quite often be brought down to 18 months due to the fact of the Unifill being an alreasy approved device, and the drugs being marketed a drug-device combo.

I forget the company, but by way of example Alan mentioned a drug company that bought $70 million of prefills to prepare the drug for launch once approval came through. There were delays in approval due to problems with the drug, so they had to ditch the entire $70 million of prefills. Undaunted they immediately shelled out another $70 million for devices in anticipation of approval on the new timeline.

The point was that pharma do not wait for approval to come through before ordering in product. The buy product and stockpile it so that when approval comes through they can launch the very next day. This is standard industry practice. He also said that they are buying up to a million units to conduct stability studies.

My take on this, which was more or less explicitly stated within the confines of what can and can't be said, is that they expect such stockpiling to commence middle of next year, if not earlier.

Result? I believe the window of opportunity to purchase at current levels is fast appproaching closure. In terms of how long it's taken to get here, 6-9 months is real close. Ramin actually made a comment along that lines that even the 8 years or so that it's taken to get here had been achieved at the speed of light compared to how the bureaucracies of the Bectons operate.

Might not seem like that from our perpsective, but the reality is we've achieved a terrific amount, and all the competition and potential clients are sitting up and taking notice.

My own feeling is that Alan's playing his cards very close to his chest. He has a real issue with the shorters, which he also spoke about at length, and I am convinced he has something big up his sleeve in terms of an SP re-rating forcing them to cover their positions that is going to cause them untold grief and get rid of them once and for all.

And good riddance, too!