Trovagene: The 1 Stock That Could've Saved Steve Jobs' Life [View article]
Hopefully this article can get pulled or cleaned up so potential investors could look at the target company, instead of the author's factual inaccuracies.
1) The entire management team of Trovagene comes from Sequenom (SQNM). Tony Schuh, the CEO of TROV, was the CEO of SQNM. SQNM has a $430 million market cap and uses invasive surgery to diagnose cancers.
Response: These execs left SQNM between 2002-2005. That's many years before SQNM came to market. Schuh looks like he was hired to run their Germany operation in 1996 or only a few years after he left school. His LinkedIn profile suggests he has jumped around quite a bit since he left in 2005 with short stints at Arcturus, AviaraDX, Sorrento and Global Source Ventures. His bio suggests he is still active at Global Source Ventures. Surprised the author doesn't address this. http://bit.ly/LwKKCT
Describing SQNM as an invasive surgery is far from the truth. A blood draw to test fetal DNA in the mothers blood isn't particularly invasive nor does it qualify as a surgical procedure.
2)Trovagene has all the patents on diagnosing cancer through urine as opposed to biopsies or sampling large quantities of blood. Urine is the waste excreted from all your blood cells. A sample of urine sent to a lab (no physician required) is like taking a biopsy of your entire body. It's only in the last year that the technology of next generation genomic sequencing has become possible for this to happen. No other company can do this without licensing the technology from Trovagene. Which is why, my guess is, the management team of Sequenom decided not to use the older technology and, as a group, jumped ship to the newer and cheaper technology.
Response: This statement requires a lot more substance to be believed. How does this author verify the global statement that no one else has patents in this arena?
3) They have patents on prenatal diagnostics. So without the heavily invasive diagnostics required now to definitively determine if a fetus has Downs, the mother can just use urine to see if a fetus has diseases like Down syndrome.
Response: Not per a quick look at their website. The it says: Trovagene has a dominant patent position as it relates to transrenal molecular testing. We have issued U.S. and European patents that cover any and all testing for nucleic acid targets that pass through the kidney. In addition to these core patents we have numerous patent applications pending in the areas of cancer, infectious diseases, transplantation, prenatal and genetic testing. http://bit.ly/MhD1tH
Pretty large leap from a company saying they have patent applications pending to an author's claim that they actually have patents. The author's depiction of Downs as a disease was my final straw. Inaccurate information aside, the lack of basic understanding of this chromosomal disorder should say far more to a reader than anything else.
I'm suspect there are other factual errors here given the tenor of what I've read, but it doesn't appear worth proceeding. GL for investors in TROV. Hopefully the company is a better investment than the writeup provided here.
Sequenom: T21 Prenatal Diagnostic Test Trend [View instapost]
Update note: Verinata announced the early response to their competitive LDT, Verifi. They launched on 3/1/12 and today stated: Caren Mason, CEO of Verinata Health continued, “In addition to the data we will be presenting at ISPD, we are very pleased with the initial market acceptance of the verifi™ prenatal test. Our clinical laboratory has already processed more than 1,100 verifi™ prenatal tests in just the initial weeks of operation and we are seeing an increasing run rate week to week.
It will be interesting to see how this tracks going forward. SQNM launched mid Oct-11 and did over 1000 tests by year-end. Verinata looks like it did roughly the same number of tests and mirrored SQNM statement of test volume increasing weekly.
Always appreciate contrary perspectives. However, your comment appears misleading unless you have specific information about Ariosa that I haven't seen.
Specifically: - what providers have signed up to cover the Harmony test? - Sequenom is a one trick pony vs Ariosa? Sequenom offers LDT's for wet AMD, cycstic fibrosis and RhD. Sounds like T21 is the 4th test they are offering. How many besides Harmony does Ariosa offer? - Sequenom has announced that over 11,000 MaterniT21+ tests have been processed to date. How successful has the Harmony test been? - Lab Corp sealed what deal and how does that relate to coverage? - MultiPlan's network of 900k providers has signed up to provide the MaterniT21+ test. This network provides care to 57m individuals. How many providers have announced they will offer the Harmony test?
Having Lab Corp is certainly beneficial for Ariosa as it provides capacity and more breadth in an attempt to catch up with Sequenom. lab Corp however is a processing and distribution partner. I don't believe they provide coverage as you imply or any guaranteed enrollment of providers.
Anyone looking at company should look into this announcement. Just on wire today with no real context. Looking for more substance from company. http://bit.ly/JTEPr3
Hi Milachka I don't have much information on this test. The Attosense HPV technology was owned by SensiGen. The company has rolled out 2 products with the slightly modified SensiGENE brand so I the brand survives. I believe the trademark "attosense" is dead.so searching for it won't provide anything current. SQNM has referred to additional diagnostic tests that are under development and I think HPV is still one of them. This article in the Journal of Clinical Microbiology is dated last October stated: In conclusion, the MassARRAY assay is a highly sensitive and accurate method for the type-specific detection of 15 high-risk oncogenic HPV in cervical cancer. Its potential capacity to detect HPV even in small quantities and to handle large number of test samples needs to be further explored in the context of cervical cancer screening and posttreatment assessment. http://1.usa.gov/KABVst
SensiGen also had IP focused on Kidneys. Here is a recent announcement with respect to that technology: SAN DIEGO, April 30, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Trovagene, Inc. (Pink Sheets: TROV.PK), a developer of trans-renal molecular diagnostics, announced today that the Company has successfully completed the analytical development of digital PCR assays for the detection of the most prevalent K-RAS mutations, which are, according to recent estimates, observed in more than 90% of pancreatic cancers (1-3), and in 23% of all solid tumors (4). The Company intends to establish and validate the performance of these assays for the detection of K-RAS mutations in the urine of pancreatic cancer patients. In 2011, the Company reacquired ownership of the worldwide rights and control over its patent estate for transrenal technology, including oncology applications, from Sequenom, Inc. (Nasdaq: SQNM).
This was the company's announcement: NEW YORK, Sept 28 (Reuters) - Sequenom Inc (SQNM.O) said it has removed almost its entire top management team as a result of a scandal involving mishandling of research and critical data on its prenatal Down syndrome test.
The genetic analysis products maker's board said it fired president and CEO Harry Stylli and research chief Elizabeth Dragon and obtained the resignation of Chief Financial Officer Paul Hawran and one other unidentified officer.
Three other employees were also dismissed following completion of an independent investigation by a committee of independent directors.
You appear to have an interesting information that they fired these chiefs and left the indians alone. Haven't heard that one in past 3 years rants. I'd enjoy hearing more details, especially considering the company kept extremely quiet about this due to the lawsuit and investigations involved.
I fully agree that it's a very volatile stock and like all early investment stage companies moving into commercialization, they haven't reported profits historically. Investors should certainly understand targets before they invest. Early stage biotech companies are a very high risk/reward type investment and should be considered very speculative.
This post is my working space to accumulate information which may be used in a future more thorough article. Not sure yet but it's a great way to collect information. If I were "cheerleading" as you claim, why would I put up a relatively anonymous blog post that gets negligible traffic? The cutting and pasting of the SQNM releases provides context for the tests. The intent of the article is the summary bottom which I've been attempting to construct for a few weeks. The company doesn't provide data for all the tests and has only provided some billing information. This is my attempt to use what has been produced to estimate the contribution of each of these tests. Knowing financial drivers of performance is part of my due diligence when following a company.
As far as trying to take a position on why their tests may or may not be better than others in the market place, I'll leave that to those with better backgrounds than a retired technology CFO. If the financial results compare favorably, that will speak louder than my words could.
Cramer's Picks - 1 To Buy, 1 To Hold, 1 To Sell [View article]
Old business school reminder....garbage-in, garbage-out. Analysis that relies on bad information will inevitably derive bad decision making. CLF has historic 5yr growth in revenue and income of 29% and 42%, respectively. Yahoo claims a forward 5 yr secular growth rate of 0% and the author uses it without questioning it's veracity. Naturally the result is a strong analytics based sell. Now change the 5yr growth rate to the number used by Zacks Investment Research of 14.98%. Might get a little different outcome.
Introducing The 3rd SandRidge High Yield Trust [View article]
Hi Todd-Nice article. Appreciate reading your thoughts on SD offering. I'm long EVEP and LINE myself. EVEP has had a nice 2 yr period but has been rolling over of late. Not sure if it's due to fracking continual negativity in press or getting caught up in natural gas sell of. Watching the $60 and $62.75 support levels closely in hopes of adding to position. Any thoughts?
Think Facebook May Buy Bing? Yahoo May Have Something To Say About That [View article]
Good catch on the 10k. Not sure why Msft would want to go that route. The future with FB looks quite bright already with adaptive search and the "endorsement" of FB at the expense of Google.
Why Microsoft's Patent Troll Strategy Isn't Viable In The Long Run [View article]
The patent fight has been an growing theme in technology companies for a few years now. Calling this a trolling isn't a reasonable characterization. Just today the codec patent issue was in the news as Motorola Mobility is attempting to stop Msft from shipping in Germany. Why did GOOG buy MM? It's pretty apparent from their interviews, it was to collect patents to go after or respond to competition just like Msft did.
Hard to look at fwd PE's without factoring in projected secular growth rates before concluding any target is overvalued on a relative basis. Comparing QCOM PE of 14 vs growth of 15.6% compares with Dell PE of 7.9 on growth of 5% or HPQ PE of 6 vs growth of 6.5%. On a relative basis, it appears to me that QCOM, MSFT and IBM are undervalued compared with the others.
Refocus Your Microsoft Investment Lens From Growth To Value [View article]
After publication of this article: Rick Sherlund (Nomura Securities) published a report that was bullish on Msft. Primary reasons were valuation and upcoming windows 8 releases including the Apollo Windows phone 8. Believes this windows 8 release will enable touch capabilities in Ultrabooks.
Also worth reading is an NYT article that looked at the windows phone from Nokia http://nyti.ms/zK1RRz
Refocus Your Microsoft Investment Lens From Growth To Value [View article]
Nice to hear from someone with direct product development knowledge. I was a naysayer when they announced they were going after the gaming market but am happy to say I was wrong. The success of Xbox, integrating it as a television platform and adding Kinect gives them a wonderful position to build upon. Now hearing talk of how to migrate the motion interface for other usage so could be just the beginning. Thanks for comments!
Trovagene: The 1 Stock That Could've Saved Steve Jobs' Life [View article]
1) The entire management team of Trovagene comes from Sequenom (SQNM). Tony Schuh, the CEO of TROV, was the CEO of SQNM. SQNM has a $430 million market cap and uses invasive surgery to diagnose cancers.
Response: These execs left SQNM between 2002-2005. That's many years before SQNM came to market. Schuh looks like he was hired to run their Germany operation in 1996 or only a few years after he left school. His LinkedIn profile suggests he has jumped around quite a bit since he left in 2005 with short stints at Arcturus, AviaraDX, Sorrento and Global Source Ventures. His bio suggests he is still active at Global Source Ventures. Surprised the author doesn't address this.
http://bit.ly/LwKKCT
Describing SQNM as an invasive surgery is far from the truth. A blood draw to test fetal DNA in the mothers blood isn't particularly invasive nor does it qualify as a surgical procedure.
2)Trovagene has all the patents on diagnosing cancer through urine as opposed to biopsies or sampling large quantities of blood. Urine is the waste excreted from all your blood cells. A sample of urine sent to a lab (no physician required) is like taking a biopsy of your entire body. It's only in the last year that the technology of next generation genomic sequencing has become possible for this to happen. No other company can do this without licensing the technology from Trovagene. Which is why, my guess is, the management team of Sequenom decided not to use the older technology and, as a group, jumped ship to the newer and cheaper technology.
Response: This statement requires a lot more substance to be believed. How does this author verify the global statement that no one else has patents in this arena?
3) They have patents on prenatal diagnostics. So without the heavily invasive diagnostics required now to definitively determine if a fetus has Downs, the mother can just use urine to see if a fetus has diseases like Down syndrome.
Response: Not per a quick look at their website. The it says:
Trovagene has a dominant patent position as it relates to transrenal molecular testing. We have issued U.S. and European patents that cover any and all testing for nucleic acid targets that pass through the kidney. In addition to these core patents we have numerous patent applications pending in the areas of cancer, infectious diseases, transplantation, prenatal and genetic testing.
http://bit.ly/MhD1tH
Pretty large leap from a company saying they have patent applications pending to an author's claim that they actually have patents. The author's depiction of Downs as a disease was my final straw. Inaccurate information aside, the lack of basic understanding of this chromosomal disorder should say far more to a reader than anything else.
I'm suspect there are other factual errors here given the tenor of what I've read, but it doesn't appear worth proceeding. GL for investors in TROV. Hopefully the company is a better investment than the writeup provided here.
Sequenom: T21 Prenatal Diagnostic Test Trend [View instapost]
It will be interesting to see how this tracks going forward. SQNM launched mid Oct-11 and did over 1000 tests by year-end. Verinata looks like it did roughly the same number of tests and mirrored SQNM statement of test volume increasing weekly.
Sequenom: Diagnostic Testing Drives Investment Thesis [View instapost]
Specifically:
- what providers have signed up to cover the Harmony test?
- Sequenom is a one trick pony vs Ariosa? Sequenom offers LDT's for wet AMD, cycstic fibrosis and RhD. Sounds like T21 is the 4th test they are offering. How many besides Harmony does Ariosa offer?
- Sequenom has announced that over 11,000 MaterniT21+ tests have been processed to date. How successful has the Harmony test been?
- Lab Corp sealed what deal and how does that relate to coverage?
- MultiPlan's network of 900k providers has signed up to provide the MaterniT21+ test. This network provides care to 57m individuals. How many providers have announced they will offer the Harmony test?
Having Lab Corp is certainly beneficial for Ariosa as it provides capacity and more breadth in an attempt to catch up with Sequenom. lab Corp however is a processing and distribution partner. I don't believe they provide coverage as you imply or any guaranteed enrollment of providers.
Sequenom: Diagnostic Testing Drives Investment Thesis [View instapost]
http://bit.ly/JTEPr3
Sequenom: Diagnostic Testing Lineup [View instapost]
In conclusion, the MassARRAY assay is a highly sensitive and accurate method for the type-specific detection of 15 high-risk oncogenic HPV in cervical cancer. Its potential capacity to detect HPV even in small quantities and to handle large number of test samples needs to be further explored in the context of cervical cancer screening and posttreatment assessment.
http://1.usa.gov/KABVst
SensiGen also had IP focused on Kidneys. Here is a recent announcement with respect to that technology: SAN DIEGO, April 30, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Trovagene, Inc. (Pink Sheets: TROV.PK), a developer of trans-renal molecular diagnostics, announced today that the Company has successfully completed the analytical development of digital PCR assays for the detection of the most prevalent K-RAS mutations, which are, according to recent estimates, observed in more than 90% of pancreatic cancers (1-3), and in 23% of all solid tumors (4). The Company intends to establish and validate the performance of these assays for the detection of K-RAS mutations in the urine of pancreatic cancer patients. In 2011, the Company reacquired ownership of the worldwide rights and control over its patent estate for transrenal technology, including oncology applications, from Sequenom, Inc. (Nasdaq: SQNM).
Hope this helps.
Sequenom: Diagnostic Testing Drives Investment Thesis [View instapost]
NEW YORK, Sept 28 (Reuters) - Sequenom Inc (SQNM.O) said it has removed almost its entire top management team as a result of a scandal involving mishandling of research and critical data on its prenatal Down syndrome test.
The genetic analysis products maker's board said it fired president and CEO Harry Stylli and research chief Elizabeth Dragon and obtained the resignation of Chief Financial Officer Paul Hawran and one other unidentified officer.
Three other employees were also dismissed following completion of an independent investigation by a committee of independent directors.
You appear to have an interesting information that they fired these chiefs and left the indians alone. Haven't heard that one in past 3 years rants. I'd enjoy hearing more details, especially considering the company kept extremely quiet about this due to the lawsuit and investigations involved.
I fully agree that it's a very volatile stock and like all early investment stage companies moving into commercialization, they haven't reported profits historically. Investors should certainly understand targets before they invest. Early stage biotech companies are a very high risk/reward type investment and should be considered very speculative.
Sequenom: Diagnostic Testing Lineup [View instapost]
As far as trying to take a position on why their tests may or may not be better than others in the market place, I'll leave that to those with better backgrounds than a retired technology CFO. If the financial results compare favorably, that will speak louder than my words could.
Cramer's Picks - 1 To Buy, 1 To Hold, 1 To Sell [View article]
Introducing The 3rd SandRidge High Yield Trust [View article]
Think Facebook May Buy Bing? Yahoo May Have Something To Say About That [View article]
Why Microsoft's Patent Troll Strategy Isn't Viable In The Long Run [View article]
http://on.wsj.com/IiGowH
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Refocus Your Microsoft Investment Lens From Growth To Value [View article]
Rick Sherlund (Nomura Securities) published a report that was bullish on Msft. Primary reasons were valuation and upcoming windows 8 releases including the Apollo Windows phone 8. Believes this windows 8 release will enable touch capabilities in Ultrabooks.
Also worth reading is an NYT article that looked at the windows phone from Nokia http://nyti.ms/zK1RRz
Refocus Your Microsoft Investment Lens From Growth To Value [View article]
Refocus Your Microsoft Investment Lens From Growth To Value [View article]