Grasshopper, the path to mediocrity for Lifescan was sowed in 2011 when they withdrew, under pressure, their 510K application for a product code named (OneTouch) Ultima. On the day of withdrawal Lifescan had 5.8 million users worldwide in a world market that was growing at 20% year to year.
Lifescan's slight of hand Byzantine product and market pricing mechanisms and scorched earth litigation strategies tweeked their product lifecycle curves (in lieu of new product technologies) until late 2015, but these strategies (which by the way were brilliant, in that they were able to dupe the world for 6+ years making it look like they were growing, even as their base of users declined) ran their course.
At this point there is really nothing Platinum, even with new ideas, can do. I suppose they can inject huge amounts of money to create a product that, for example, emulates the processes of DECN's GenPrecis! where they could do something J&J was never known for, top notch clinically accurate and precise glucose results, but who at Lifescan is going to do that? J&J acquired companies and products for Lifescan who assimilated them and then fired the development crew. So, if Platinum wants to begin development anew they would have to do this development outside of the Lifescan umbrella. It would be a dog bites man event if Lifescan hired the Koreans or Taiwanese to do this type of development under the tutelage of a world renowned program manager, known for rallying the troops with a laser beam-like focus. This could, but just won't happen.
Platinum's plan, I think, is to gain control of Lifescan and then sell off the OneTouch Ultra brand and manufacturing capacity to a competitive company like Roche or Bayer/Panasonic, who would be looking to exploit the Ultra base (a good strategy) to help their own newer more innovative products. Platinum would then sell the under-performing OneTouch Verio product line and the existing R&D (such as it is) to another company, probably Chinese, who could exploit it.
My gut tells me that once Platinum gains control of Lifescan, for I believe a revised $1.85 billion (after haircut), they could get about $2.7 billion by flipping the pieces.
Did I get anything wrong here Discernable? I was even able to use the word flip in my analysis. That should put a smile on your face.
Lifescan's slight of hand Byzantine product and market pricing mechanisms and scorched earth litigation strategies tweeked their product lifecycle curves (in lieu of new product technologies) until late 2015, but these strategies (which by the way were brilliant, in that they were able to dupe the world for 6+ years making it look like they were growing, even as their base of users declined) ran their course.
At this point there is really nothing Platinum, even with new ideas, can do. I suppose they can inject huge amounts of money to create a product that, for example, emulates the processes of DECN's GenPrecis! where they could do something J&J was never known for, top notch clinically accurate and precise glucose results, but who at Lifescan is going to do that? J&J acquired companies and products for Lifescan who assimilated them and then fired the development crew. So, if Platinum wants to begin development anew they would have to do this development outside of the Lifescan umbrella. It would be a dog bites man event if Lifescan hired the Koreans or Taiwanese to do this type of development under the tutelage of a world renowned program manager, known for rallying the troops with a laser beam-like focus. This could, but just won't happen.
Platinum's plan, I think, is to gain control of Lifescan and then sell off the OneTouch Ultra brand and manufacturing capacity to a competitive company like Roche or Bayer/Panasonic, who would be looking to exploit the Ultra base (a good strategy) to help their own newer more innovative products. Platinum would then sell the under-performing OneTouch Verio product line and the existing R&D (such as it is) to another company, probably Chinese, who could exploit it.
My gut tells me that once Platinum gains control of Lifescan, for I believe a revised $1.85 billion (after haircut), they could get about $2.7 billion by flipping the pieces.
Did I get anything wrong here Discernable? I was even able to use the word flip in my analysis. That should put a smile on your face.
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