Q4 2011 Earnings Conference Call

February 8, 2012 12:00 PM ET

Executives

Vijay Samant – President and Chief Executive Officer

Alan Engbring – Executive Director IR

Analysts

Stephen Willey – Stifel Nicolaus

Jason Kantor – RBC Capital Markets

Eric Schmidt – Cowen and Company

Ren Benjamin – Rodman & Renshaw

George Farmer – Canaccord Capital

Adam Cutler – Credit Suisse

Howard Liang – Leerink Swann

Presentation

Operator

Please standby, we’re about to begin. Good day, and welcome ladies and gentlemen to the Vical Incorporated Financial Results Conference Call. At this time, I’d like to inform you that this conference is being recorded and that all participants are in a listen-only mode. At the request of the company, we will open the conference up for questions and answers from invited participants after the presentation.

I’ll now turn the conference over to Mr. Alan Engbring, Executive director of investor

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Q4 2011 Earnings Call

February 08, 2012 10:30 am ET

Executives

Patrique Richards –

David A. Wentz – Chief Executive Officer

Kevin G. Guest – President of North America

G. Douglas Hekking – Chief Financial Officer

Analysts

Scott Van Winkle – Canaccord Genuity, Research Division

Timothy S. Ramey – D.A. Davidson & Co., Research Division

John P. San Marco – Janney Montgomery Scott LLC, Research Division

Frank A. Camma – Sidoti & Company, LLC

Rommel T. Dionisio – Wedbush Securities Inc., Research Division

Presentation

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the USANA Health Sciences Fourth Quarter Earnings Conference Call on the 8th of February, 2012. [Operator Instructions] I will now hand the conference over to Mr. Patrique Richards. Please go ahead, sir.

Patrique Richards

Good morning, everyone. We appreciate you joining us this morning to review our fourth quarter results. Today’s conference call is being broadcast

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Q4 2011 Earnings Call

February 08, 2012 10:30 am ET

Executives

Patrique Richards –

David A. Wentz – Chief Executive Officer

Kevin G. Guest – President of North America

G. Douglas Hekking – Chief Financial Officer

Analysts

Scott Van Winkle – Canaccord Genuity, Research Division

Timothy S. Ramey – D.A. Davidson & Co., Research Division

John P. San Marco – Janney Montgomery Scott LLC, Research Division

Frank A. Camma – Sidoti & Company, LLC

Rommel T. Dionisio – Wedbush Securities Inc., Research Division

Presentation

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the USANA Health Sciences Fourth Quarter Earnings Conference Call on the 8th of February, 2012. [Operator Instructions] I will now hand the conference over to Mr. Patrique Richards. Please go ahead, sir.

Patrique Richards

Good morning, everyone. We appreciate you joining us this morning to review our fourth quarter results. Today’s conference call is being broadcast

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There is a new frontier in the fight against cancer, and it is an exciting time for biotech firms as they wend their way through the clinical trial process in the hopes of finding a cure for cancer. It is widely acknowledged that the most powerful mechanism for fighting disease and illness is our own biologically activated immune system. Our immune system does a commendable job of fighting disease and it is the first and best line of defense before advanced medicines are used on those illnesses that breach these defenses. Harnessing this immune system to fight off disease is called immunotherapy and it is thought to be perhaps the best chance in treating various forms of cancer.

The logic makes sense: Instead of poisoning our body with toxins in chemotherapy perhaps we could use this most potent of all defense mechanisms in the fight against cancer. Market participants are

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Q4 2011 Earnings Call

February 08, 2012 8:30 am ET

Executives

Doug Guarino – Director of Corporate Communications & Corporate Relations

Ron Zwanziger – Chairman of the Board, Chief Executive Officer and President

David A. Teitel – Chief Financial Officer, Principal Accounting Officer, Vice President and Treasurer

Analysts

Ashim Anand – Natixis Bleichroeder LLC, Research Division

John M. Putnam – Capstone Investments, Research Division

Peter Lawson – Mizuho Securities USA Inc., Research Division

Zarak Khurshid – Wedbush Securities Inc., Research Division

Gregory J. Simpson – Wunderlich Securities Inc., Research Division

Isaac Ro – Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Research Division

Jonathan P. Groberg – Macquarie Research

Bill Bonello – RBC Capital Markets, LLC, Research Division

Jeffrey Frelick – Canaccord Genuity, Research Division

Nicholas Jansen – Raymond James & Associates, Inc., Research Division

Presentation

Operator

Good morning, and welcome to the Alere Inc. conference call to discuss fourth quarter 2011

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Q4 2011 Earnings Call

February 08, 2012 8:30 am ET

Executives

Drew Asher – Senior Vice President of Corporate Finance

Allen F. Wise – Executive Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Randy Giles – Chief Financial Officer, Executive Vice President and Treasurer

Michael D. Bahr – Executive Vice President of Commercial Business

Analysts

Doug Simpson – Morgan Stanley, Research Division

Thomas A. Carroll – Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., Inc., Research Division

Carl R. McDonald – Citigroup Inc, Research Division

Joshua R. Raskin – Barclays Capital, Research Division

Charles Andrew Boorady – Crédit Suisse AG, Research Division

Kevin M. Fischbeck – BofA Merrill Lynch, Research Division

Matthew Borsch – Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Research Division

Presentation

Operator

Good morning, and welcome to the Coventry Health Care’s Fourth Quarter 2011 Earnings Conference Call. Today’s conference is being recorded [Operator Instructions] Today’s call will begin with an opening remarks by

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Medgenics (AMEX:MDGN) has, what I believe to be, the most disruptive biotechnologies of the last 20 years. This company is poised to own the 90 billion plus protein therapy market. We are talking about an enormous indication. Nomura (the big investment bank) calls this one of the top 10 biotech companies to watch over the next 5 years.

Currently the only form of treatment for Anemia is Epogen. Epogen is a synthetic version of the Erythropoietin that increases your red blood cell production. It is a $12B a year product monopolized by Amgen (AMGN) and affects nearly 1-2 billion worldwide.

When you are diagnosed with anemia, you go to your doctor. Your doctor is going to tell you that you have an abnormally low hemoglobin count and he will prescribe an epogen shot to get your hemoglobin into check and into a 10-12 count range which is considered healthy.

These

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As someone once said to me, ‘You see the world differently!’ so it’s no wonder I see the 2012 value of Antares Pharma (AIS) differently. Because what I see is 2012, not two years from now, not three years from now. I see Antares in the here and now.

Misplaced Focus

Right now, Antares isn’t about VIBEX Methotrexate. It isn’t about educated guesses on a product still in clinical development. And here’s why I step out of line with fellow writers: Because VIBEX Methotrexate is a good two years or more away from being approved by the FDA for market sales.

My point? Right now, VIBEX Methotrexate is as far away as every other biotech pipe dream that has made the Market skeptical of investing in penny-land biotechs. VIBEX Methotrexate is still in clinical studies. So all these projections are nothing more than wishful thinking.

And like it or not,

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I was somewhat alarmed to see a press release entitled “Cadence Pharmaceuticals Announces Voluntary Recall of One Lot of OFIRMEV® (Acetaminophen) Injection“. Cadence (CADX) is one of the stocks that I am recommending and my experience is that quality control issues can be very messy and disruptive. I wanted to follow-up with management to try to understand the issue.

The recall involved one vial in one lot. To provide perspective, the company has shipped about 1.2 million vials since the launch began. One bottle from the lot was taken for routine stability testing and a visual inspection discovered particulate matter. I asked management a series of questions.

Q. Could it be the case that there are other vials with particulate matter that have been shipped and used?

A. Instructions for usage are that each vial should be visually inspected before being used. If there were a widespread problem, this would

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I’m a sucker for a good gadget, but investors considering putting their money into Luminex (LMNX) may want to take a closer look at the business model and the current expectations. While Luminex does indeed have an interesting story to tell and growth potential in molecular diagnostics, valuation leaves little room for error.

A Quarter That Came In As Expected

For better or worse, there weren’t a lot of surprises in Luminex’s final quarter of the year. Overall revenue growth was as expected at 16%, though there was a little less in the consumables (down 16%) and royalties (up 17%) than investors may have wished. Although the company made up for that with strong assay sales (up 28% organically) and stable system revenue (up 1%), these are generally lower-margin businesses for the company.

Not surprisingly, then, gross margin did drop about a point and a half from last year. That

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