alere selling 25% of bbi, page-29

To me, all this equity stake deal making stuff is crazy talk. I for one don't want to open that door. Do it for BBI, then you'll have POC1, iVD partner, and so on and so on. Every time we branch into a new area, giving up a bit more. Half the business will be gone before you know it.

No thank you.

Big corporates are not nimble. No matter how good your solution is, there is lots of backside covering to be done, manoeuvring for personal maximum benefit to completed, processes to follow, boxes to tick, layers of management to satisfy, and practical constraints such as expiry of existing contracts. A bit cynical perhaps, but a few decades experience tells me this view is more right than wrong. GC used the word "conservative", IMO this is much of the subtext behind that. But eventually it gets to the pointy end and a decision gets made. From our perspective, we want to hook whales so you've just got to be patient and let the process play out. One very important reason for having a healthy cash balance.

It seems to me that much of the debate comes down to either you have a ground-breaking product or you don't. Either you are solving a problem for a customer or you're not. If you are, then guess what? We're not giving it away for free.

The beautiful thing about disruption is that at the end of the day the market can't afford not to get on board with you. The cost is greater than what they will have to pay you because they will get left behind otherwise. The big players may not like it, but they don't have a choice. The only way you can dismiss this is if you disagree the tech is disruptive. If all the company announcements aren't enough, I'm not going to try and convince you otherwise.

It then comes down to contract terms. So you don't like the idea of royalties (% of sales)? That's ok, we'll just charge you a fixed cost per litre. But you will pay one way or another. And you will smile while doing it because we've just cut your costs by the truckload, cemented your market share, opened up the possibility of new product categories and huge revenue growth, or whatever other business outcome it happens to be.

It is what it is, and for me the announcements and research all point to a far-reaching revolutionary platform technology. We already have many irons in the fire. I'm happy to sit back and watch it all unfold, everything I've seen so far on the commercial side says maximum value is going to be captured, and dilution won't be a necessary deal element.