It Appears To Me That Sanofi Is Playing Like A Hurt Animal

[centralcoastinvestor]

Sanofi is one of the most powerful pharmaceutical companies in the world. It partnered with Mannkind for Afrezza to the tune of a billion dollars in upfront and milestone payments. With Afrezza, they have only done very light advertising and approached a very limited number of physicians. They almost sounded whiny and lost about their whole diabetes program yesterday. All along it seems like their approach makes them look like a hurt and scared animal not knowing what to do next. I think it's a ploy. What is the best thing you can do in a battle. Make enemy believe you are weak. That way the enemy doesn't prepare well and they become over confident. Then, you choose the time to attack. Sanofi is choosing the time in my opinion to attack, I don't know when they will, but I believe they have had a master plan all along and pretending to be weak was part of that plan.

[jefferson]

I'll ride with this narrative!

[Deleted]

lol..let the theories run wild.

[kbrion77]

Oct 30, 2015 12:49:39 GMT -5 centralcoastinvestor said:

Sanofi is one of the most powerful pharmaceutical companies in the world. It partnered with Mannkind for Afrezza to the tune of a billion dollars in upfront and milestone payments. With Afrezza, they have only done very light advertising and approached a very limited number of physicians. They almost sounded whiny and lost about their whole diabetes program yesterday. All along it seems like their approach makes them look like a hurt and scared animal not knowing what to do next. I think it's a ploy. What is the best thing you can do in a battle. Make enemy believe you are weak. That way the enemy doesn't prepare well and they become over confident. Then, you choose the time to attack. Sanofi is choosing the time in my opinion to attack, I don't know when they will, but I believe they have had a master plan all along and pretending to be weak was part of that plan.

Nothing wrong with sandbagging, has won me a lot of money in golf.

[curiousdoc]

Not to rain on anyone's parade, but I just don't buy this at this point. What other RAA are they trying to get a deceptive head start on in the market (Hint, there are none)? Can you cite an example of a company that had such a meager roll out "according to plan." I am new to this field, so maybe this is actually a tactic and you can enlighten me.

There are clear barriers here that have been discussed ad nausea. No where in the "back channels" or mentioned on this board have I seen any hard evidence of Sanofi actually working to address these (most important being improved labeling/insurance coverage). I fully believe they have no intention of walking away based on currently pending trials and other available information. But the further out we get from launch, the less I put any substance in these "they are doing it on purpose" theories. I see this post as little more than hopeful Ra-Ra.

And from a physician stand point, new paradigm shifting drugs like this will take a long time to gain meaningful acceptance, no help necessary from a purposely deceptive plan.

Every passing month feels more like a race between the remarkable science behind Afrezza and the clock.

[stevil]

Ya, I'm not buying either. What's the point in deceiving? SNY's stock price goes down, confidence in their diabetes plan goes down... You want to hype up a new drug as much as you can to maximize exposure. It's counterintuitive for them to sandbag. I'm not sure why so many people are in love with these kinds of theories. How does it give SNY an upper-hand in competition? It's not like the other companies aren't aware that Afrezza exists...

[irrationalexubera]

let the paranoid theories begin, with no offense directed at those who would proffer them, as they alternate between comforting and amusing, and in the dark days of a gut-wrenching $3/sp, they are perhaps the remaining salvation for investors before the seeds of shareholder revolt ensue. in recent weeks the theoretical grappling on these boards for answers of any kind has become ever more desperate, and with good reason. along with the rest of you, i'm heavily underwater and never imagined i'd see such a sea of red in my portfolio.

in the informational vacuum created by a near-total lack of transparency on the part of MNKD (and now SNY, ignoring afrezza on the Q2 call and throwing it under the bus on the Q3), there can be only wild theory and hopeful musing, bracketed by the occasional wholly unexpected announcement (TASE listing? what? ((in hindsight, why did anyone really think that would bolster sp? if it was a tactic, it was a feeble one. MNKD was already dual listed in Frankfurt and how much has that helped, if at all?))

management being tight-lipped is a result of previous shareholder lawsuits, so i understand their position and commend their desire not to repeat that, ever. but it means that as current long-term investors (i don't trade anything but covered calls on my IRA shares and sell puts), we are NEVER going to hear anything until it comes out of left field, like the TASE announcement. we will only wake up one day to a higher sp due to a new TS partnership, a buy-in by SNY, EU/Japan approval, whatever it turns out to be.

i love this company, and i love this drug and i believe their technology is primed to be the future of medicine if the short interests don't snuff it out first, but Al has kept her going for 10+ years so i'm not worried about the newest FUD of "cash burn" being a problem. they've burned more than $2B to get where we are today (that's an insane tax credit they can bank on) and aren't stopping anytime soon. SNY isn't going to exit in January either -- i called that as the next on-deck FUD about 4 months ago, long before AF stumbled into it. the shorts are running out of ammo and they know it, as evidenced by that desperate and powerful short attack at the end of trading yesterday when the sp shed 70 cents out of nowhere before rebounding (wish i had dry powder for that one!)

i've long thought the famed short squeeze was just going to be a myth, but with each passing day it gets harder for me to see just how 126M shares plan to exit in an orderly fashion. that's like the entirety of the american populace east of the mississippi trying to file through a single turnstile in the span of a few minutes. will it happen? i get the tiniest bit more confident each day that it just might.

my money backs the science & technology of MNKD, which proves out (and even if it's later proven that SNY stumbled out of the gate, we're still gonna win the race.) and historically, the best science/tech always takes over: Nikola Tesla's AC current v. Thomas Edison's DC current, Penicillin as the first anti-biotic to treat bacteria, etc.

stay strong everyone, and add down here. you'll be glad you did.

[centralcoastinvestor]

One could argue that the theory I put forth here was an attempt to make myself feel better about Sanofi.  Trust me, I want to believe that there is a bigger game plan.  Could that cloud my judgement?  Perhaps.  That said, something just doesn't add up with what we can see versus what must actually be happening behind the scenes.  Sanofi knew long before they partnered with Mannkind that Lantus was going to lose massive market share.  It is why they developed its replacement.  Sanofi stated that the launch of Afrezza would be gradual.  So they knew that sales would not ramp up quickly.  I'm sure they could not predict exactly how sales would turn out, but they had an idea.  So in the most recent quarterly report they state that Lantus is losing market share more quickly and gee everything else is bad too in their whole diabetes unit.  The way the CEO talked about their whole diabetes program made it appear like they did not have any plan.  That's what I am not buying.  You would need to believe that Sanofi is incompetent.  That is a theory that many bashers are floating right now.  I have an attorney friend who told me once that one of the best court room strategies he used was to feign that he was fearful of the opposing council.  He laughed when he told me how as he showed fear and incompetence, how overconfident the other side would get.  He won most of his cases.  Could I be wrong, absolutely.  I just don't buy that Sanofi is just going to lay down and let their diabetes program along with Afrezza just die a slow death.  I believe they have a plan.  

[dme306]

Irationalexubera - Thanks for a well thought out-methodical and logical post rooted in "common sense".  I'm not sure how this can be a 'ploy'...it would take enormous cooperation and complicity from MNKD, as well as the 'green light' to allow this to happen, as an intentionally deceptive strategy?  That's an enormous risk!

I simply believe that this is a new product that will take some time to grab 'universal acceptance' in the diabetes market.  Not only is this a laborious arrangement to strategically execute over a long period of time, they are still competing with external forces and other market conditions that will remain as headwinds, to boot.  Best regards-squeezeplay306

[nylefty]

Isn't the recent jump in insurance coverage evidence that the slow rollout strategy is working?

I can see a TV advertising blitz once the total percentage of people in the Preferred and Covered columns at FormularyLookup hits 51 percent, and that may well happen by the one year anniversary of the Afrezza launch.

[rrtzmd]

Oct 31, 2015 9:36:17 GMT -5 centralcoastinvestor said:

One could argue that the theory I put forth here was an attempt to make myself feel better about Sanofi.  Trust me, I want to believe that there is a bigger game plan.  Could that cloud my judgement?  Perhaps.  That said, something just doesn't add up with what we can see versus what must actually be happening behind the scenes.  Sanofi knew long before they partnered with Mannkind that Lantus was going to lose massive market share.  It is why they developed its replacement.  Sanofi stated that the launch of Afrezza would be gradual.  So they knew that sales would not ramp up quickly.  I'm sure they could not predict exactly how sales would turn out, but they had an idea.  So in the most recent quarterly report they state that Lantus is losing market share more quickly and gee everything else is bad too in their whole diabetes unit.  The way the CEO talked about their whole diabetes program made it appear like they did not have any plan.  That's what I am not buying.  You would need to believe that Sanofi is incompetent.  That is a theory that many bashers are floating right now.  I have an attorney friend who told me once that one of the best court room strategies he used was to feign that he was fearful of the opposing council.  He laughed when he told me how as he showed fear and incompetence, how overconfident the other side would get.  He won most of his cases.  Could I be wrong, absolutely.  I just don't buy that Sanofi is just going to lay down and let their diabetes program along with Afrezza just die a slow death.  I believe they have a plan.  

"I believe they have a plan." The only "plan" afrezza needs from Sanofi is a one to do a trial to attempt to demonstrate something better than "non-inferiority."  Without something analogous to the "real life" toujeo trial for afrezza, I can imagine no other plan that could make a significant difference. 

[robsacher]

Just spoke with a pharmacist who works at Wal Mart. I spoke with him a couple of months back and he had never heard of Afrezza back then. Today, he said that he was now familiar with Afrezza but that he had not filled a prescription yet. He smiled at me as if he knows of the debate or of the story behind Afrezza. For what it's worth...

[southd44]

I am a pharmacist for a mail order /specialty pharmacy and I not only agree with Rob, but can reinforce the general consensus that Afrezza has not even touched the surface of its potential audience. Afrezza is still for the vast majority of people (both diabetics and health professionals) completely unkown. We do between 5,000 to 7,000 prescriptions per day and I ran a product search for dispensed Afrezza a few weeks back and only got two 90-day dispenses ($30 copay after simple PA approval), both of which were to the same patient. Out of the 25 pharmacists I work with, I was the only one that knew anything about Afrezza. While that may seem discouraging, I believe it is anything but that. Once insurance coverage gets T2, DTC will further ramp up and the common diabetic patients that don't follow all the latest and greatest medicinal news and blogs will then finally get to see the product for the first time. Once exposure via televised commercials begin the floodgates will open. Meanwhile, I will keep dumping money into more shares during these blue-light special dips from over reacting bears and shorts. Cheers!

[centralcoastinvestor]

Nov 1, 2015 14:14:44 GMT -5 southd44 said:

I am a pharmacist for a mail order /specialty pharmacy and I not only agree with Rob, but can reinforce the general consensus that Afrezza has not even touched the surface of its potential audience. Afrezza is still for the vast majority of people (both diabetics and health professionals) completely unkown. We do between 5,000 to 7,000 prescriptions per day and I ran a product search for dispensed Afrezza a few weeks back and only got two 90-day dispenses ($30 copay after simple PA approval), both of which were to the same patient. Out of the 25 pharmacists I work with, I was the only one that knew anything about Afrezza. While that may seem discouraging, I believe it is anything but that. Once insurance coverage gets T2, DTC will further ramp up and the common diabetic patients that don't follow all the latest and greatest medicinal news and blogs will then finally get to see the product for the first time. Once exposure via televised commercials begin the floodgates will open. Meanwhile, I will keep dumping money into more shares during these blue-light special dips from over reacting bears and shorts. Cheers!

Thanks so much for posting.  Your post confirms what I am observing.  Sanofi hasn't really even begun to launch in a significant way.  I don't have a clue as to what Sanofi's overall plan is, but they are not going to abandon Afreza without at least attempting a major launch.  IMHO

[seanismorris]

If the 'launch' hadn't started yet, we should have see more trials to strength their position.  I only see one for pediatric...

Non inferior isn't good, especially if it costs more and with the cancer scare on the label.  I have no idea what Sanofi is doing.

MannKind seems to be setting up contingency plans.

Sanofi is acting like someone cut off their head when they fired their CEO.