biota goes shopping, page-19

It's interesting to see where Biota see themselves adding value, it's actually in the early stage of development i.e. doing the early research and licensing the compounds or programs early. In this way they have managed for example to generate revenue through the RSV program even though it was handed back to them... their research costs were refunded along the way, they made some milestone payments and ended up owning all the IP. Not a bad outcome for what was a failed trial... they can now come up with a better lead candidate and attempt to re-license.

LANI is an exception, however they managed to do another great deal with DS who funded the expensive phase II and phase III trials, they also secured some funding from health organisations to fund early trials.

I see Biota having a very clear vision of where they see themselves adding value. They are certainly not "empire builders", they have formulated a strategy which could be very sustainable over the long term and very rewarding. No point being greedy and wanting to take a product through very expensive phase II/III trials only to have it fail... there are many examples on the ASX and NASDAQ where small biotechs try to take on areas outside their expertise.

Buying "platforms" is in my opinion much better than buying just one lead candidate, and it looks like they have bought two prospective platforms.

Check out Gilead's progression over the years, steady successful steps can be rewarding: http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=GILD#chart1:symbol=gild;range=my;indicator=volume;charttype=line;crosshair=on;ohlcvalues=0;logscale=on;source=undefined