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Post by compound26 on Apr 30, 2015 17:11:00 GMT -5
See this coverage of Shkreli from Forbes: Gadfly Pharma Investor Shkreli Starts Anew After Ousting From Retrophin www.forbes.com/sites/arleneweintraub/2015/02/27/gadfly-pharma-investor-shkreli-starts-anew-after-ousting-from-retrophin/Experts from the coverage: Shkreli may have sold off his shares of Retrophin and walked off with a few of its assets, but his departure from the company was far from amicable. On February 19, Retrophin alleged in an 8-K filing to the SEC that Shkreli—who prior to founding the company had become infamous for short-selling stocks in the life sciences industry—had Retrophin pass off legal settlements with former investors of funds he managed as “consulting agreements.”Retrophin also disclosed that it received a subpoena in a criminal investigation by the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, asking for information related to the company’s association with Shkreli.
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Post by compound26 on Apr 30, 2015 12:46:58 GMT -5
What if the longs take back their shares that they have lent out at the same time? Is it possible for the longs on this board to take back their shares for some period of time? Say a few days or weeks?
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Post by compound26 on Apr 1, 2015 21:48:32 GMT -5
PK, excellent point. On Afrezza's ultimate sales and market, there have been all kinds of projections. Daniel Kahneman, in his book "Thinking, Fast and Slow", observed that in forecasting, people tend to overestimate benefits and underestimate costs (and time). Hopefully, Afrezza, being a "zero to one" product, will indeed cause a paradigm shift in diabetes control as Al Mann and others have envisioned. In that case, it will turn out that most of the projections actually underestimate Afrezza's sales and market.
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Post by compound26 on Apr 1, 2015 17:47:57 GMT -5
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Post by compound26 on Apr 1, 2015 17:35:15 GMT -5
Just a few random thoughts for your consideration:
1. "creative monopoly" and "zero to one"
Wonder if any of your guys have read Peter Thiel's book "Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future". In it he basically says he likes companies that create a monopoly on a market (like Google to search engine and Apple to tablet market). What he likes is "Creative Monopoly", i.e., you create a new product that is at least 10 times better than the existing completing product and therefore creates a dominant market position. For example, IPAD is at least 10 times better than the other existing tablets (there were some attempts at that time). Google's search engine and Apple's Iphone were similarly at least 10 times better than the other existing products. The same was true for Paypal (for which Peter Thiel was a co-founder).
This is what Peter Thiel called "Creative Monopoly" and "Zero to One" (you create something totally new or vastly better).
Looking at Afrezza from that angle and thinking about the advantages of Afrezza that Al Mann has envisioned, and Sam and other people at TD have summarized:
Convenience; Less hypo; Fast action; More "time-in-the-zone". Life style change (more freedom and live like a non-diabetic);
[quote" Afrezza seems to act in a way more conducive to normal living." and "That's the biggest plus in all of this for diabetics."]
[quote "But with Afrezza I have the same degree of control (while early in the learning process) essentially zero fear of hypoglycemia, and diabetes management takes up about 2% of my thought process instead of 50%".]
One would wonder whether Afrezza is at least 10 times better (to other RAAs) and therefore is comparable to Iphone (to other early smart phones) and IPAD (to other early tablets). Maybe Afrezza is in that sense a "creative monopoly" and "zero to one" product just like Iphone and IPAD.
2. Afrezza - from Patient to Doctors
Wonder if any of your guys have read Eric Topol M.D.'s book "The Patient Will See You Now: The Future of Medicine is in Your Hands".
To quote the introduction of the book on Amazon:
"With smartphones in hand, we [the patient] are no longer beholden to an impersonal and paternalistic system in which "doctor knows best." Medicine has been digitized, Topol argues; now it will be democratized. Computers will replace physicians for many diagnostic tasks, citizen science will give rise to citizen medicine, and enormous data sets will give us new means to attack conditions that have long been incurable. Massive, open, online medicine, where diagnostics are done by Facebook-like comparisons of medical profiles, will enable real-time, real-world research on massive populations."
I believe this is what is happening with users of Afrezza. The users who post blogs and threads on TD and Twitter in my mind definitely know Afrezza and the best ways to use it than their doctors (at least in most cases).
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Post by compound26 on Mar 26, 2015 14:30:50 GMT -5
Support TC's proposal above. Since Afrezza is now in the market, management needs to make sure that there is minimum dilution going forward.
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Post by compound26 on Mar 25, 2015 13:55:59 GMT -5
The time the two sold their shares:
"Feb 27, 2015" vs "After the product launched (launched on Feb. 3, 2015)".
The position size the two hold:
"A small part of my portfolio" vs "I didn't have enough invested to make a significant difference in my financial position even if the company had lived up to investor dreams".
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Post by compound26 on Mar 25, 2015 13:37:59 GMT -5
Below is PA's comment on Seeking Alpha on Feb 27, 2015.
"As a result, I sold my modest holdings in MNKD today.....Though it was only a small part of my portfolio, it was taking too much of my time and attention. "
Below is Jenny's comment on Tudiabetes.org on March 14, 2015.
"Correction: I was an investor in Afrezza, but I sold my shares after the product launched, because my observations of how biased the investor community was made me doubt that it was possible to stay objective and have a stake in the company....I didn't have enough invested to make a significant difference in my financial position even if the company had lived up to investor dreams, so I sold all my shares."
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Post by compound26 on Mar 25, 2015 12:33:27 GMT -5
Below is PA's comment on Seeking Alpha on March 5.
"I don't see where you get that the debt will be reduced to 100M at year end. The 10K points out that the company just added another $3M of debt last quarter, borrowing under the Sanofi financing facility to cover the losses attributable to Afrezza that quarter. This loan is paid for at an interest rate over 8%."
Below is Jenny's comment on Tudiabetes.org on March 25.
"MannKind does NOT have plenty of cash. If they did, they wouldn't have already had to borrow $3M from Sanofi's line of credit by the end of 2014--borrowing it at an interest rate over 8% to cover their share of expenses run up by then, which was disclosed in a footnote of their Annual Report."
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Post by compound26 on Mar 23, 2015 17:44:37 GMT -5
Not sure whether the information in the site referenced below is useful or reliable, but decided to just post the link here for your reference: www.ukmi.nhs.uk/applications/ndo/record_view_open.asp?newDrugID=4631Per the above-referenced website, the status in UK is as follows: UK launch Plans: Available only to registered users Actual UK launch date: [Blank]
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