MSB 0_o, page-48

Sorry, messed up first post. Anyone else out there think that Dolce and Adam are actually the same person?

Here's some stuff I know: Teva: we should of course recall that the deal was not done with Teva but with Cephalon. This was driven hard by the CEO of that company, who "got religion" about the technology, to use the exact words of a very senior MSB exec to whom I spoke at a biotech networking function. The CEO then sadly died, probably taking a lot of the corporate enthusiasm for the project with him to the grave. The price paid was down to the fact that MSB had a bunch of European investors lined up, so could afford to indulge in some brinkmanship. so, a good deal? Absolutely. A watertight deal? Almost certainly not. Notwithstanding the price paid, I would be astonished if it proved expensive for Teva to can the project. I've cut many deals in life sciences from both sides, and penalty clauses - especially from a big player to a smaller one - are vanishingly rare. MSB will likely get the rights returned... and that's it. So I agree with an earlier poster, that Teva will undertake their contractual obligations up to the interim look and then, unless the results blow them away, they'll drop it. It's not part of their core business, and whilst any company would move away from the core given a solid gold blockbuster, they won't if the results are mediocre or inconclusive.

Shorting, valuation etc: seems to me that the market pretty much gets the price right, whether you're talking about Mars Bars, Mercedes or Mesoblast. And if you look at the comparator companies, MSB had been a massive outlier. Maybe it's now drifting back into the pack. Maybe shorting has an effect at the margins, but I'd be surprised if it could be responsible for a drop of 50-60% in living memory. I don't know this, but seems logical. As for analysts in general, Adam (I think) made a reasonable point - why would you base your buying decisions on anything they say? There job is to churn stock, and so earn fees, whether they have a buy or a sell on the stock. Nonetheless, the "Otago GP" makes a fair point about paucity of data. And the Bell Potter guy (I know he's moved on - don't recall where) says he "never met a biotech he didn't like". Which is not to say that he doesn't know his stuff - absolutely he does. But he comes at it with a particular perspective.

Finally, folks on this board hold up the absence of negative announcements as a sign of MSBs excellence. For me, with decades in life sciences, it's a big red flag. Stuff goes wrong. Whether you're Roche, or Novartis or MSB, stuff goes wrong. Because you're dealing with biology, which has a habit of throwing out an unexpected result. So either (a) MSB has done everything right all the time, and no experiments have ever failed, or (b) MSB are not being as candid as they should be. Just some thoughts from someone who follows the space and who felt compelled to chip in. Now back to Adam v Dolce round 538. For what it's worth, I think Adam has made some good points, but I think he's just having a bit of sport with Dolce now. And he/she just keeps biting!