Theratechnologies Inc T.TH

Yesterday's Press Release

[SPCEO1]

Did younotice that in Paul's quote regarding the IV Push mode that he only suggested it would increase compliance? He made no mention of it improving the competitive position of the drug or leading to increased sales. And compliance is already well above normal for Trogarzo if what the company has said in the past about that is still true, which I would suspect it is. 

So Taimed's stock has been limit up for the last two days on this news but it is hard to see why. Trogarzo is facing competition now and that will make any market share gains tougher to come by. Had Taimed been able to deliver a better form of Trogarzo in one year, as we were originally told it would, rather than 3-4 years, then Trogarzo would have been able to capture more patients before the competition arrived. And once you are on a HIV med, you tend to stay with it until it stops working. But you may recall there was some debating apparently of whether to go for IV Push or Intramuscular back then and that seemed to delay the initiation of testing. Then TAimed must have had some real issues with the actual test as it took forever to get going. I am sure there is a lot more to that story than we are aware of.  

If IV Push is approved, I believe TH will pay Taimed $3 million as a milestone payment. I think perhaps they should have originally negotitated a payment value that declined over time as the value of the new version is not as great as it would have been earlier.

I saw something that suggested the IV Push study cost Taimed about $3 million. TH is now going to embark on an Intramuscular study for Trogarzo, which I presume a $3 million cost is again a good guess. I have to assume the desire to have both these new and easier forms of administration available is for playing defense and hoping to slow any erosion of Trogarzo sales from competitors. If you can save more than $3 million in sales in present value terms, it is worth it and they probably can.

[palinc2000]

The biggest issue with Trogarzo is not how it is administered but still IV Push makes it an improvement for those on Trogarzo, The biggest issue is messaging and lack of understanding by physicians of the added benefits of controlling viral loads ,,,So the increased sales will come from providing physicians with more info on the benefits and Paul and his team are spending a lot of time in trying

[Bucknelly21]

they need to spend more time developmenting r&d that's what they are now right? It's confusing to the market imo   

[Wino115]

The other issue is that new and better ARTs have been developed and tweaking the ART regime has been all it takes to keep viral loads down.  Maybe at some point years down the road, the tweaking for a patient has only gone so far and they may add in Trogarzo.  But viral loads are being controlled other ways.  And now you have Rukobia and Biktarvy advertising on TV that they do that.

[SPCEO1]

The biggest issue is competition from pills that work pretty well.

[qwerty22]

Did you follow what Rukobia sales have looked like since approval?  

[SPCEO1]

According to the always questionable Bloomberg database Rukobia's sales have been rising at a consistent pace since it was introduced and amounted to $6.8 million in August. Trogarzo was $2.4 million in August. It really helps to have a big company behind your product. 

[SPCEO1]

Corretion - those numbers were for July, not August