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Post by sportsrancho on Sept 12, 2019 20:32:12 GMT -5
Great post Bill appreciate your honesty and being straightforward about the situation.
When we sat with David and Courtney you knew how sad it made me and you heard me thank them and tell them that we appreciated them trying everything possible and not giving up on Afrezza. But clearly it’s been a real struggle and there’s a better way. Endo’s are not going to get it done for us unless they’re hired and trained by Vdex. And held to the Vdex protocols and standards. Which lead to retention, results and revenue.
I’d like to see Mannkind stop spinning their wheels and spend their money on TS.
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Post by sellhighdrinklow on Sept 12, 2019 20:35:49 GMT -5
And if you think the UTHR deal is insignificant, that's funny.
Castagna made the UTHR deal happen. He isn't going anywhere !
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Post by morfu on Sept 12, 2019 20:43:42 GMT -5
Great post Bill appreciate your honesty and being straightforward about the situation. When we sat with David and Courtney you knew how sad it made me and you heard me thank them and tell them that we appreciated them trying everything possible and not giving up on Afrezza. But clearly it’s been a real struggle and there’s a better way. Endo’s are not going to get it done for us unless they’re hired and trained by Vdex. And held to the Vdex protocols and standards. Which lead to retention, results and revenue. I’d like to see Mannkind stop spinning their wheels and spend their money on TS. Sorry to be critical once more, Sports..  I dont know this Bill, but I think that post is anything but honest! Some else pointed out, that while Vdex might have some high relative success, the absolute Afrezza sales numbers are a joke! If we need to rely on that path to become green we are quite lost! And I think that these benefactor claims are dishonest! They will sell any medicine for profit, if it benefits them, they will drop Afrezza likea hot potato! Mannkind did not show interest to give a special treatment to a company who tried to badmouth blackmail them and now he has the audacity to complain at this forum..
this is qtuie laughable if it wouldnt potentially hurt our business! So go away Bill-troll!
Make your company big and meaningful and then come back offering your advice!
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Post by lifebreath on Sept 12, 2019 21:23:00 GMT -5
And if you think the UTHR deal is insignificant, that's funny. Castagna made the UTHR deal happen. He isn't going anywhere ! castagna did not make that deal happen you are misinformed UTHR recognized that our delivery system would work with their PAH medicine and approached MNKD |
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Post by lifebreath on Sept 12, 2019 21:34:47 GMT -5
One one side of the Coin, Bill believes teaching patients how to use Afrezza and then be available for refinement of method is the best way. On the other side you have Castagna who believes tv commercials costing millions of dollars aired on Fox News is the best way to grow Afrezza. Not sure what your point is. Advertising makes the consumer aware of the product. Without the advertising the consumer has no idea the product exists. In fact without the advertising of Afrezza , how many customers does VDex have? Castagna isn't going anywhere. The CEO of VDex on the other hand might be ..jmho The point you missed is making Afrezza available to as many diabetics as possible. Please review the scripts Sanofi had without commercials. Afrezza usage will grow based on its efficacy if you don’t focus on efficacy and invest in proper usage scripts will become stagnant as they have. I agree advertising is important but you must recognize what proper and effective advertising is. |
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Post by babaoriley on Sept 12, 2019 23:21:52 GMT -5
Great post Bill appreciate your honesty and being straightforward about the situation. When we sat with David and Courtney you knew how sad it made me and you heard me thank them and tell them that we appreciated them trying everything possible and not giving up on Afrezza. But clearly it’s been a real struggle and there’s a better way. Endo’s are not going to get it done for us unless they’re hired and trained by Vdex. And held to the Vdex protocols and standards. Which lead to retention, results and revenue. I’d like to see Mannkind stop spinning their wheels and spend their money on TS. Sorry to be critical once more, Sports.. I dont know this Bill, but I think that post is anything but honest! Some else pointed out, that while Vdex might have some high relative success, the absolute Afrezza sales numbers are a joke! If we need to rely on that path to become green we are quite lost! And I think that these benefactor claims are dishonest! They will sell any medicine for profit, if it benefits them, they will drop Afrezza likea hot potato! Mannkind did not show interest to give a special treatment to a company who tried to badmouth blackmail them and now he has the audacity to complain at this forum..
this is qtuie laughable if it wouldnt potentially hurt our business! So go away Bill-troll!
Make your company big and meaningful and then come back offering your advice!
Good luck looking for truth and accuracy, Morfu. And once you think you found it, think again, you probably only will have found "facts" with which you already agreed. |
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Post by mango on Sept 13, 2019 0:54:47 GMT -5
And if you think the UTHR deal is insignificant, that's funny. Castagna made the UTHR deal happen. He isn't going anywhere ! castagna did not make that deal happen you are misinformed UTHR recognized that our delivery system would work with their PAH medicine and approached MNKD The decision to advance TreT into Phase 1 over any other candidates was Mike’s call—and it was a huge risk. The company was at stake here because if TreT results had been poor or even mediocre then we would be in an even worse situation or maybe even turned to dust. It was the first time MannKind has taken Technosphere into clinical trials beyond Afrezza, and it was a huge success. To insinuate that Mike didn’t make the deal with UT happen is just simply false. It takes two to make a deal go down. |
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Post by boytroy88 on Sept 13, 2019 1:22:23 GMT -5
Not sure what your point is. Advertising makes the consumer aware of the product. Without the advertising the consumer has no idea the product exists. In fact without the advertising of Afrezza , how many customers does VDex have? Castagna isn't going anywhere. The CEO of VDex on the other hand might be ..jmho The point you missed is making Afrezza available to as many diabetics as possible. Please review the scripts Sanofi had without commercials. Afrezza usage will grow based on its efficacy if you don’t focus on efficacy and invest in proper usage scripts will become stagnant as they have. I agree advertising is important but you must recognize what proper and effective advertising is. I believe it's been mentioned somewhere that the scripts from SNY days isn't comparable to today's scripts (ie - different volume per script). I think it was said that you need to look at revenues instead. |
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Post by akemp3000 on Sept 13, 2019 4:39:48 GMT -5
Bill's passion is outstanding and appreciated but to date, VDex has provided no documented success regarding management of a company. While it's easy to criticize Mike as a Monday morning quarterback, an important fact is that Mannkind has made excellent year-over-year progress since Mike has been at the helm for 2.5 years. Six months ago, this message board was filled with posts arguing that BK loomed and further dilution was inevitable. Sure Mike has made mistakes, such as having high expectations for the TV ad, but he adjusted and moved on. The company's future now looks bright and Mike accomplished this turnaround on a very, very thin shoestring budget. Even Spencer Osborne is beginning to open up to the company's potential.
There's now every reason to believe the pipeline will continue to grow and Afrezza scripts will increase. Nothing would help more than improved financials to help Mannkind push this. There's no reason to date to believe that VDex management or HFM is on a comparable corporate level or playing field as Mannkind management. It seems the more they communicate the less credibility comes across. The criticism and noise needs to cease until there's tangible facts presented to support an argument. I know. I know. It's coming. Fine. Until then, listening to the crickets would be greatly appreciated. One final thought is that HFM and MK seem to be hinting their position relies on a forthcoming activist investor. If so, that investor needs to be huge with name recognition and credibility and more than just another loud mouth.
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Post by sportsrancho on Sept 13, 2019 6:24:29 GMT -5
Even Spencer thinks and I’m pretty sure always has that Afrezza should be sold or leased out and Mannkind should concentrate on the pipeline.
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Post by theebavarian on Sept 13, 2019 7:04:29 GMT -5
I want to make a few comments about the Castagna rejoinder article posted by Spencer Osborn. I really don’t have the time to engage in an extensive back and forth with Mike, so I won’t be posting often. Mikes posts/comments are littered with inaccuracies, many of them intentional. He wants to discredit Vdex and me, and I understand that. We’ve been critical. It’s natural to be hostile one’s critics. Unfortunately, Mike is undermined by his own lack of success in promoting Afrezza. What Vdex has proven is that there is a strategy to make Afrezza the multi-billion-dollar annual drug that it should be. As I posted in another thread, we at Vdex will be sharing more information about that soon. Mike, for all his vaunted successes, hasn’t figured out how to do it. I honestly believe he doesn’t want to see Vdex/HFM succeed because of ego: he didn’t come up with the solution. That’s cynical, but it’s what I believe. But the most important thing people on this board or otherwise should know is that Afrezza really is, as Al Mann said, one the most significant pharmaceutical advancements ever. Let me give some detail here: diabetes is medicine’s great failure. There’s no truer way to say it. Medicine has failed to control this disease. Billions have been spent and billions more will be, but none of the pharmaceutical agents does the job. Even if one gets a patient’s HbA1c down to the ADA-recommended 7%, that’s still not doing the job. Microvascular damage is still occurring at that level. Amputations, blindness, dialysis, etc. are still in the picture. Afrezza changes all that. With Afrezza we can bring BG levels, in many cases, to normal: below 5.7%. With Afrezza we can finally control the disease. And, Afrezza is the ONLY way to do it. Afrezza really is the magic bullet. Imagine the gain to humanity as this product is properly rolled out. Therefore, it is critical to protect this product. We must see this succeed. We need to protect it from the incompetent and the venal. We need to guard it as the crown jewel that it is. Profligate spending by MNKD doesn’t just hurt our stock price; it endangers Afrezza. Better to do nothing than spend wastefully. Everything I see in the Castagna strategy falls into the latter category. Sorry if that offends, but put aside the emotions and examine the situation objectively, and you’re likely to come to the same conclusion. In your other post you say "I know how to make Afrezza a success." I ask why haven't you? You continue by saying in that post "That’s easy to say and much harder to do." But Mike Castagna is the idiot? "Profligate spending by MNKD doesn’t just hurt our stock price; it endangers Afrezza" - Spending continues to fall off. Sales and revenue are increases every quarter... costs decreasing. I'll stick with Mike Castagna. |
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Post by compound26 on Sept 13, 2019 7:11:25 GMT -5
Even Spencer thinks and I’m pretty sure always has that Afrezza should be sold or leased out and Mannkind should concentrate on the pipeline. Sell or lease out Afrezza? To whom and for how much? I think this is easier said than done. Going back three years to the time right after Sanofi handed back Afrezza to Mannkind, Afrezza's week sales dropped to about $150,000 per week at around mid 2016. Annualized, it is about $7.8 million annual total prescription in dollars (based on Symphony numbers), which translates to an annual net revenue of about $3.5 million. Given such a small sale number and the fact that Sannofi spent several million dollars promoting Afrezza (we know their efforts were probably not the most effective ones, but nevertheless they did spent millions of dollars promoting Afrezza) and had been unsuccessful in marketing Afrezza and had reached an conclusion that Afrezza can't be successfully marked in the U.S., were there any other major pharma interested at buying or leasing Afrezza? I would doubt that. Even if there were some major pharma interested in buying or leasing Afrezza, how much will it pay? Based on the situation described above, probably a pittance (i.e., Mannkind probably won't get much out of such a sale or lease). Even if some other major pharma actually bought or leased Afrezza, how much success would they have? I think the chance for it to be more successful than Sanofi or Mannkind have achieved is not very high. One can not deny that Sanofi had the infrastructure and Mannkind had the passion (one could not argue that Mannkind had that. After all, Afrezza is its own baby). Thinking through this, if Mannkind had sold or leased out Afrezza, the most likely result would be: (a) Mannkind did not get much cash from such sale or lease; and (b) the buyer would not achieve much success in marketing Afrezza. Since Afrezza is an adopted child of such buyer, it probably would make a decision like Sanofi made -- pulling out from marketing of Afrezza after one or two years of unsuccessful marketing efforts. At that point of time, Afrezza probably would be pulled out of market completely. If that had happened, it would have been the biggest regret to Al Mann and his successors. |
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Post by apidistra on Sept 13, 2019 7:21:13 GMT -5
I am sure there are many out there who would just love to see diabetics never get their hands on Afrezza. This company has been stymied and attacked like few others. Because we have a giant killer.
And now they've decided to make it personal, these attackers, by going after MC, whose removal would be at least a terrible disruption and perhaps devastating, after all he's accomplished in only, what, two years.
Don't lose focus with these distractions! Remember what we're up against. Keep the resolve and soon we will see this great product working its wonders in the lives of millions.
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Post by wgreystone on Sept 13, 2019 7:37:01 GMT -5
And if you think the UTHR deal is insignificant, that's funny. Castagna made the UTHR deal happen. He isn't going anywhere ! castagna did not make that deal happen you are misinformed UTHR recognized that our delivery system would work with their PAH medicine and approached MNKD In addition, from any perspective, the deal is modest, so nothing special and anyone can pull it off. |
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Post by wgreystone on Sept 13, 2019 7:42:37 GMT -5
Bill's passion is outstanding and appreciated but to date, VDex has provided no documented success regarding management of a company. While it's easy to criticize Mike as a Monday morning quarterback, an important fact is that Mannkind has made excellent year-over-year progress since Mike has been at the helm for 2.5 years. Six months ago, this message board was filled with posts arguing that BK loomed and further dilution was inevitable. Sure Mike has made mistakes, such as having high expectations for the TV ad, but he adjusted and moved on. The company's future now looks bright and Mike accomplished this turnaround on a very, very thin shoestring budget. Even Spencer Osborne is beginning to open up to the company's potential. There's now every reason to believe the pipeline will continue to grow and Afrezza scripts will increase. Nothing would help more than improved financials to help Mannkind push this. There's no reason to date to believe that VDex management or HFM is on a comparable corporate level or playing field as Mannkind management. It seems the more they communicate the less credibility comes across. The criticism and noise needs to cease until there's tangible facts presented to support an argument. I know. I know. It's coming. Fine. Until then, listening to the crickets would be greatly appreciated. One final thought is that HFM and MK seem to be hinting their position relies on a forthcoming activist investor. If so, that investor needs to be huge with name recognition and credibility and more than just another loud mouth. If MC can not sell Afrezza, why not let someone else give it a try. Maybe MC can focus on developing TS plateform. |
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