BUY BIODEFENSE STOCK: Emergent attractive to carpetbaggers
Emergent, the company fomerly known as Bioport, and responsible for making the country's supply of anthrax vaccine, has been touted as an attractive stock to invest in for speculating carpetbaggers looking to share some biodefense industry profits.
The company's stock is not quite worthless, but it's close, and a columnist at the Motley Fool boosted it in an on-line article aimed at speculators looking to pick up some possible future value on the cheap.
"[Savvy] investors have a chance to 'get greedy' and snap up some bargains from these fearful sellers -- if bargains they truly be," it is said. "Investors aren't seeing a whole lot of bargains this week, but one stock they do like is Emergent BioSolutions ... Emergent's stock lost nearly half its value after reporting a steep earnings decline earlier this month. Yet, as unusual as it is for a micro-cap biotech, the company does (and did) earn a profit from its business manufacturing biological-warfare vaccines for the government."
Known as BioPort back in the day, that company bought an old Michigan firm that produced the country's supply of anthrax and rabies vaccine. The anthrax vaccine had formerly been produced by the state of Michigan and was an old product, certified around 1970 for use in people most likely to be exposed to anthrax: veterinarians, wool-sorters, and livestock handlers.
Admiral William Crowe, a former head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was the chairman of the board of BioPort and the company quickly aquired a reputation as a crappy, problem-plagued firm with quality control problems in its product line. But because it was the only producer of the anthrax vaccine at a time when the threat of catastrophic biological attack was being mightily oversold [during the Clinton administration], it was propped up by Uncle Sam.
"[The Pentagon announced] it has agreed to more than double what it pays nation's only licensed manufacturer of vaccine against deadly biological agent anthrax, fearing it will run out of vaccine," wrote the New York Times, back in 1999. "[The Pentagon] is committed to vaccinate all 2.4 million active-duty troops and reservists, but company, Bioport Corp, has financial trouble and warns it could fail if Pentagon does not pay more ... [the] company's directors include William J. Crowe Jr, retired Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff ..."
In a side note, Crowe died recently.
Because of BioPort's reputation, the company was essentially renamed and restructured as Emergent Biosolutions in an evasive and complicated set of business maneuvers.
The Motley Fool columnist makes the "bull case" for BioPort/Emergent by calling on the wisdom of stock-picking blogs.
"New outfit, in the DC Beltway, high Federal exposure," writes one prognosticator, somewhat ignorantly. "Revenue extremely [erratic] quarter to quarter. Large [bioterror] exposure in its vaccines. My main fundamental statistic is Return on Invested Capital and it is terrific at 26%."
"Whatever political party takes over the White House in 2009, I doubt that the new occupant will relish the prospect of being the person whose failure to prepare allowed the U.S. to suffer its first bioterror disaster," writes the Fool's columnist.
The idea, of course, is to recognize that cheap biodefense stock must, by nature, be bullish because fear of biological attack is never allowed to die in this country.
While the potential for a catastrophic attack by anthrax is very low and in such a surprise attack a vaccine would be of no immediate value, the arguments are too complicated for politicians and the average citizen who tends to lean toward the default position of funding everything that has biodefense attached to it.
The anthrax vaccine has a valuable purpose -- the one established when it was first certified in the early Seventies. The standard treatment for anthrax exposure is administration of the antibiotic, Cipro. The nation maintains a reservoir of Cipro in the national emergency stockpile.
The other mandated use for Emergent's vaccine is the fighting man. Our soldiers have to take it. This ensures a regular market for it although it has now become obvious that there is about a zero chance of being attacked by an anthrax weapon in the war we are now fighting in Iraq.
This link at ProMed shows the weekly reporting on anthrax worldwide. A small number of cutaneous infections, exposures and observations of anthrax in animals occur in the US per year.
"No anthrax was found in the rooms where a anthrax-positive research rabbit lived at the University of New Mexico, the State Department of Health said this morning [22 Nov 2007]," reads one e-mail report.
"Swabs taken Friday [16 Nov 2007] from rooms exposed to the laboratory rabbit, exposed to a wild strain of anthrax, showed no traces of the bacteria, said department spokeswoman Deborah Busemeyer ... Still, 2 employees who had contact with the rabbit were given antibiotics that are used to treat infections caused by exposure to anthrax, which can be passed from animal to human."
The Texas Veterinary Medical Diagnostic Laboratory has confirmed [today - 13 Jul 2007 - Mod. MHJ] a positive anthrax culture on an animal necropsy specimen that was submitted from Tom Green County due to a cattle and deer die off that was reported by a private veterinarian on [6 Jul 2007] to the Texas Department of State Health Services," reads another e-mail from this year.
"[At] today's low valuation [$5.51 with a frowny face -- DD] investing in a single-digit-P/E Emergent BioSolutions looks like a smart bet on that prediction," concludes the Motley Fool business writer.
Emergent, the company fomerly known as Bioport, and responsible for making the country's supply of anthrax vaccine, has been touted as an attractive stock to invest in for speculating carpetbaggers looking to share some biodefense industry profits.
The company's stock is not quite worthless, but it's close, and a columnist at the Motley Fool boosted it in an on-line article aimed at speculators looking to pick up some possible future value on the cheap.
"[Savvy] investors have a chance to 'get greedy' and snap up some bargains from these fearful sellers -- if bargains they truly be," it is said. "Investors aren't seeing a whole lot of bargains this week, but one stock they do like is Emergent BioSolutions ... Emergent's stock lost nearly half its value after reporting a steep earnings decline earlier this month. Yet, as unusual as it is for a micro-cap biotech, the company does (and did) earn a profit from its business manufacturing biological-warfare vaccines for the government."
Known as BioPort back in the day, that company bought an old Michigan firm that produced the country's supply of anthrax and rabies vaccine. The anthrax vaccine had formerly been produced by the state of Michigan and was an old product, certified around 1970 for use in people most likely to be exposed to anthrax: veterinarians, wool-sorters, and livestock handlers.
Admiral William Crowe, a former head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was the chairman of the board of BioPort and the company quickly aquired a reputation as a crappy, problem-plagued firm with quality control problems in its product line. But because it was the only producer of the anthrax vaccine at a time when the threat of catastrophic biological attack was being mightily oversold [during the Clinton administration], it was propped up by Uncle Sam.
"[The Pentagon announced] it has agreed to more than double what it pays nation's only licensed manufacturer of vaccine against deadly biological agent anthrax, fearing it will run out of vaccine," wrote the New York Times, back in 1999. "[The Pentagon] is committed to vaccinate all 2.4 million active-duty troops and reservists, but company, Bioport Corp, has financial trouble and warns it could fail if Pentagon does not pay more ... [the] company's directors include William J. Crowe Jr, retired Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff ..."
In a side note, Crowe died recently.
Because of BioPort's reputation, the company was essentially renamed and restructured as Emergent Biosolutions in an evasive and complicated set of business maneuvers.
The Motley Fool columnist makes the "bull case" for BioPort/Emergent by calling on the wisdom of stock-picking blogs.
"New outfit, in the DC Beltway, high Federal exposure," writes one prognosticator, somewhat ignorantly. "Revenue extremely [erratic] quarter to quarter. Large [bioterror] exposure in its vaccines. My main fundamental statistic is Return on Invested Capital and it is terrific at 26%."
"Whatever political party takes over the White House in 2009, I doubt that the new occupant will relish the prospect of being the person whose failure to prepare allowed the U.S. to suffer its first bioterror disaster," writes the Fool's columnist.
The idea, of course, is to recognize that cheap biodefense stock must, by nature, be bullish because fear of biological attack is never allowed to die in this country.
While the potential for a catastrophic attack by anthrax is very low and in such a surprise attack a vaccine would be of no immediate value, the arguments are too complicated for politicians and the average citizen who tends to lean toward the default position of funding everything that has biodefense attached to it.
The anthrax vaccine has a valuable purpose -- the one established when it was first certified in the early Seventies. The standard treatment for anthrax exposure is administration of the antibiotic, Cipro. The nation maintains a reservoir of Cipro in the national emergency stockpile.
The other mandated use for Emergent's vaccine is the fighting man. Our soldiers have to take it. This ensures a regular market for it although it has now become obvious that there is about a zero chance of being attacked by an anthrax weapon in the war we are now fighting in Iraq.
This link at ProMed shows the weekly reporting on anthrax worldwide. A small number of cutaneous infections, exposures and observations of anthrax in animals occur in the US per year.
"No anthrax was found in the rooms where a anthrax-positive research rabbit lived at the University of New Mexico, the State Department of Health said this morning [22 Nov 2007]," reads one e-mail report.
"Swabs taken Friday [16 Nov 2007] from rooms exposed to the laboratory rabbit, exposed to a wild strain of anthrax, showed no traces of the bacteria, said department spokeswoman Deborah Busemeyer ... Still, 2 employees who had contact with the rabbit were given antibiotics that are used to treat infections caused by exposure to anthrax, which can be passed from animal to human."
The Texas Veterinary Medical Diagnostic Laboratory has confirmed [today - 13 Jul 2007 - Mod. MHJ] a positive anthrax culture on an animal necropsy specimen that was submitted from Tom Green County due to a cattle and deer die off that was reported by a private veterinarian on [6 Jul 2007] to the Texas Department of State Health Services," reads another e-mail from this year.
"[At] today's low valuation [$5.51 with a frowny face -- DD] investing in a single-digit-P/E Emergent BioSolutions looks like a smart bet on that prediction," concludes the Motley Fool business writer.
posted by George Smith at 1:37 PM
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