Scopia

Acorda agrees to enter agreement with Scopia that includes bringing two from Scopia capital to the board this week! Don’t forget this is the letter from Scopia last August:
We are writing this letter to communicate our desire for management and the Board of Directors (the “Board”) to pursue an immediate review of all strategic alternatives, including a sale of the Company.We admire the business that you have built since founding the Company over 20 years ago. The Company raised $850M in capital to develop Ampyra, add commercial infrastructure and acquire pipeline assets. Unfortunately, today the Company is only valued at $1.2B by the public markets.While we have been supportive of the Company’s strategy to this point, we believe it is now time to sell the Company. Had the Company prevailed in the Ampyra litigation, Acorda would have been a unique company with a path to $1B in revenues and significant standalone value. Unfortunately, the Company was unsuccessful, and it has now crossed the Rubicon. In 2018 the business will revert to burning cash with a levered balance sheet and no clear timeline to return to profitability. These are treacherous waters. At the same time, recent acquisitions of both Cynapsus ($624M) and NeuroDerm ($1.1B) speak to the strategic value of late stage assets in Parkinson’s disease. Acorda is a more valuable acquisition candidate than either of these companies.

 

Who ever posted this is working agin Leadership and should be ashamed. We love our CEO and his Team !! There is NO - repeat NO - repeat NO - plans to sell out this great company !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

The only one who should be ashamed is the one on here posting propaganda and BS in order to prop up a one trick pony company and it’s mediocre management (Glassdoor manipulation aside).

I’ve got news for you PRincess, you couldn’t be more for sale if there was a Remax sign in front of the building. It’s the only corrective course left for shareholders.

 

Some of us live in the world of logic. The info above is simply facts and when investment firm who bought in over 16% of the company makes that statement last August followed by this move with an agreement of placing two of theirs on our board—it doesn’t take a genius to make the connection. Good luck on feeding your unicorn tonight.

 

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And the other 84% is owned by many hedge funds, a world class Leadership Team, rank & file employees, and small mom and pop investors. They will block any pre-emptive shark feeding by the other 16%. Yes it is our duty to resist a shark feeding frenzy on a ACOR carcass that would occur with a sale. Fortunately that scenario is extremely remote as ACOR is well situated to prosper.

Those are the facts. Suspect you might be one of the 16%, but you certainly are a PITA !!
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I hope you are right. I’m part of the 84% but somehow do not own a big enough portion or entered a contractual agreement with C Suite that allows for starts two seats on the board. Appreciate your positivity but reality has to start setting in a maybe the issue with C Suite. Me—just a rank & file employee.

 

Scopia is a major shareholder of Acorda with an over 15% stake in the company.
They deserve a strong voice at the Boardroom.
Glad they are on-board - is good to have smart people around that table that will look at all options to maximize shareholder's value.

 

Fire Sale

 

I wish I had 2 Billions to buy ACOR.
This is an amazing company sitting on a gold mine with the inhaled levodopa product. It is going to sell like hot-cakes.

 

Agree 100%. We have an incredible pipeline and the sky is the limit. The only 'fire sale' will be the losers who drop out and leave. Good riddance to those a-holes.

 

Why would you pay $2B for a product with peak revenue forecast at $300M? Doesn’t sound very bright.

 

FYI - that comment was posted by an intern, need I say more?

 

yeap

This is going to be a blockbuster - close, if not over, ONE BILLION
That's why Scopia has skin on the game

ACOR will rise like the Phoenix !!!

 

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Peak revenue from the new blockbusters will easily exceed $925 mil. So a hypothetical $2 bil pricetag is a bargain.
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Easy there my little propagandist friend. To imply Scopia is in this solely because of the value of inhaled LD is a bit disingenuous. They are trying to recover an investment from a different ACOR. You remember the one that had a few more molecules in the pipeline and some patent protection on their only revenue generating asset?

Of course they want buyers to view this asset as a blockbuster to get money from a naive BD team that needs a deal. If they were confident of $1 billion, it would make more sense for ACOR to keep it.

Here’s the problem, there has never been a modified release neurology product that has done close to what you are claiming inhaled LD will do. It has barely happened in more primary care conditions, especially in the last five years.

Quite the quandary: sell it for a reasonable price and only do $225-$275M peak or raise the price (limiting uptake), gouge the patient and insurer,pay higher rebates to post anything > $350M. Kind of flies in the face of the patient centric ideology. One more little issue, all those rebate costs come off the bottom line, so it really isn’t much of a gain other than on paper.

Enjoy the sale

 

Wow! Logic is still alive!

 

Interesting read. There is some circular rhetorical 'dot connecting' here which, at first blush, looks logical to the uninformed. Upon further analysis, however, there are some issues you apparently are unaware of or, more ominously, chose to ignore. First, that $225-$275 M is pure fantasy. Expect to see double that without 'gouging the patient'. Indeed with a healthy 1 or 2 year term price spike we will reach the $750 M annual yardstick. That may cause the insurers some grief but as they say T-S ! We need to 'think outside the box' and price it to meet our long term needs. Fortunately our Leadership knows this and will take care of us.

You imply we are not patient centric. Nothing further from the truth. We must first ensure an economically strong company before we become more altruistic and give the insurers more breaks..

 

well said!!!!!
Acorda Rocks

 

Talk about circular dot connecting... show me an analogue that backs up your forecast before spouting of your “yardstick” rhetoric. I’ll save you some time, there isn’t one.

As for patient centric, you fell into the typical cult of personality CEO response. “I’ve got to be doing good before I can do good”.

 

In macro economics theory this yardstick is referred to as an 'independent variable'. We require $750M. to meet our financial needs. That is fixed and drives us to set the price point to meet this with a 3 sigma probability (99.95%). We also have a very favorable inelastic supply- demand profile for our product. This is straight economics 101. There are some excellent textbooks on this topic. We will do fine. BTW have an MBA in marketing/finance to support this.