While I think their resistant bacteria drugs are a waste of time and money, I am holding for a number of reasons:
I bought BTA for the medium to long term.
Their antiviral pipeline is excellent and investors have yet to realise that the annual flu market is now a $ billion/year market. Big pharmas now realise this and must be running the ruler over BTA. GSK will certainly have an idea of the value of BTA based on projected sales.
BTA will be generating lots of cash over at least the next 12 months.
Upfront payments for ROW LANI will be significant. They probably have offers to help with their 3rd generation antiviral.
Restocking of stockpiles will be required and relenza will get at least 50%.
There have been poorly reported outbreaks of bird flu in Kalamantan, Sumatra, Java and possibly Bali.
The 3rd wave is probably on the way brought about by the very cold northern winter and the less than 50% vaccination coverage.
Resistance to tamiflu
European countries seem to have over bought vaccines to cover far more than their population. The reasons are a bit unclear. Perhaps they thought that everyone needed two shots to make it work, if so they should have reduced orders when the studies confirmed one was enough.
Since the outbreak started there have been headlines that the flu outbreak has been oversold. However you cannot second guess a flu virus. The start of the outbreak all you know is that it is new, very contagious, few if anyone has any immunity, it kills (as the very high mortality rate in Mexico and Ukraine show) and it will mutate further, possibly into something more deadly. We are already seeing the death of tamiflu as a treatment.
It is ironic that the successful use of both the vaccine and antivirals has lead to a far reduced death rate and it is this far reduced death rate that people are saying is the reason why the flu is overstated.
M
BTA Price at posting:
$2.06 Sentiment: Buy Disclosure: Held
