Release Today Neuren Valuation Estimate Raised, page-61

Hottod i emailed Joe and asked his thoughts on whether Big Pharma cash repatriation will/is leading to premium deal prices. I also mentioned my interest in NEU and his comments are below for those interested:

Thanks for your note and interest in my presentation.

It’s a bit early to see the true effect of the tax and financial law changes in the US. However, I feel it’s safe to say it will materially increase investment by US-based large pharma companies. They might be willing to up the ante on deal value a bit. But, a more likely (and more immediate) result will be for deal values to continue the steady upward growth we’ve had for years; with pharma doing more deals per year on average. Most larger pharmas know value is value when it comes to external assets; and higher bank account balances don’t usually make them think they have to pay more for the same asset. I don’t think the increased deal volume will have a near-term direct effect of driving up deal values.

As far as Neuren, I’d have to take a closer look to say much definitively. At first blush, I’d say they’re 1) targeting indications of significant partner interest, and 2) are targeting indications with historically high failure rates for drugs in development. These two work against each other in partnering. I’d look more closely at competing drugs in development using the IGF-1 pathway and those with different MOAs. Also, I’d want to compare the Neuren’s PII efficacy data to end points desired by partners. Do partners have better choices out there? Is their data good enough to do a deal now, or would a partner be wise to wait for better data with this asset or watch for a different MOA to generate data?

Hope that helps some……….