Comments from MackenzieGuys.. here's an excerpt from some recent correspondence. Its a good summary on Prometic from the portfolio manager at Mackenzie Growth Fund. This was from Friday of last week.
They are still one of the largest institutional holders... I think this is a very reasonable assessment and are similar to my take on the situation.
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Prometic is one of the companies in our basket of our high-potential, high-risk emerging life-sciences ideas.
The reason Prometic hit our radar screen it because it has an ingenious platform technology for making synthetic ligands - chemical entities that attach to biological molecules. The applications for this are literally endless, which is one reason why the company has floundered around in the past - it was pursuing too many applications at once. It has now focused on several key applications, and had recently won the support of several partners with monetizing license agreements. For example, it makes unique filter components for the American Red Cross to extract valuable therapeutic proteins from plasma, as well as removing pathogens from blood. It has recently received the CE mark for a Prion filter in Europe (removing Mad-cow disease proteins from blood). Recent deals MacoPharma, Nozazyme Delta, Pfizer, Nabi and Novartis will enable this side of the business to become cash-flow positive next year.
The other part of the business has more blue-sky potential: an oral anemia drug that has had positive phase 1 results, and is currently undergoing Phase 2 studies for several indications including cancer-related anemia. An oral anemia drug is highly sought after - there are dozens of pharmaceutical companies in advanced discussions with Prometic to partner this drug. It is likely that a deal could happen after or during Phase 2 results. The trials are not expensive to run, and the company is not dependant on this as it once was, given the success in its filter and bio-seperation business. Given the multi-billion dollar success of Amgen's anemia drug Epogen, an injectable biologic, the upside potential for this orally active drug is huge.
While the company was beleaguered last year with many delays, and the ongoing restructuring of its partner Hemasol, it now appears to be turning the corner with a recent bout of signed deals. Although the stock has been under pressure in the second half of the year, it looks to us that if they can make it to next year, they can start generating real profits, and the stock price should multiply several-fold.