New York, NY -- (SBWIRE) -- 09/06/2013 -- Ray Dirks and his team of Money Managers and Securities Analysts at RAYDIRKS Research are pleased to be writing their First Article on Unilife, an exciting company with a large upside potential – and especially so after Forbes Magazine featured Unilife in its September 23, 2013 issue – which is distributed by Bloomberg both as an e-Magazine and on newsstands.
Forbes has an unsavory reputation for beating up on some small companies and their managements, and the magazine seems to assign articles to writers who are predisposed to try to ridicule the managements they are interviewing. Sadly, that is what’s happening with Unilife and its Chief Executive Officer, Alan Shortall, the 59-year-old Irishman who founded Unilife and still manages the company.
A person named Abram Brown, a member of Forbes Staff, was assigned to interview Mr. Shortall, and then write a story, which appears in the September23, 2013 issue of Forbes, which is hard to find – even in New York City (of course, it’s only September 5th). Abram Brown writes about himself at the top of the article, “I write about businesses that merit attention, for better or for worse.” Clearly – this one is “for worse”.The headline on the article, just below Abram Brown’s self-pumping-up, is as follows:
HOW IS A $329M SYRINGE COMPANY STILL UNPROFITABLE AFTER 11 YEARS?
Then on the Internet, Forbes, the e-Magazine, asks its readers for comments.
The article’s first paragraph starts off with a visual put-down of Mr. Shortall – “On a recent morning in rural Pennsylvania Alan Shortall, Unilife Corp.’s 59-year-old founder and chief, is doing what he does best: talking up his company. Seated at a massive, wrench- shaped desk-cum-conference table, he spends 90 minutes on the phone with a potential overseas investor, making Unilife’s retractable syringe technology sound like the greatest delivery system since … FedEx. “I believe we can do a dozen contracts this year, which should tell you about what we’ve got in the pipeline,” says Shortall, a tall, bald Dubliner with a brogue and soft blue eyes who could pass for the younger brother of Dennis Kozlowski, Tyco’s convicted felon.
The article blatantly parades numerous misrepresentations of fact, misleading statements, and deplorable inaccuracies concerning Unilife and Mr. Shortall. These falsehoods and slurs could easily have been checked for the truth by Forbes with diligent fact-verification and a well-balanced editorial viewpoint.
In the second paragraph of the article, Forbes wryly observes, “It’s a good story – embellished or otherwise – one he has sold to institutions like Frontier Capital Management, JPMorgan, Chase, BlackRock, Vanguard and Fidelity, all major shareholders (none of which would comment for this story). Five of the six analysts following the firm recommend the stock.
And while the stock is down to $3.45, a 60% plunge since Shortall listed it on Nasdaq in February 2010, Unilife has a market capitalization of $329 million, 120 times sales. With cow-eyed optimism the average Wall Street forecaster predicts Unilife’s first profits in 2015 – 13 years after its birth, an eternity even for a biomedical startup.”
To a man – and that phrase includes women as well – the securities analysts at RAYDIRKS Research strongly object to the article’s characterization of securities analysts as “cow-eyed optimists”.
The third paragraph starts off, “Punctured by facts, the hype collapses. In the fiscal year ended June 30 Unilife lost $63.2 million on revenue of $2.7 million, selling syringes in different devices that deliver medications. The income from the one big contract it ever scored – a multiyear, $40 million deal with Sanofi, the French pharma – has all but ended.
The brightest prospect Shortall shares with investors is with a development-stage drug maker that’s never earned a nickel. Yet Shortall is indefatigable. “The wearable injector alone,” he says referring to a line of syringes, “is a billion – dollar franchise.”
Ray Dirks of RAYDIRKS Research and his team thinks that while there have been delays, Mr. Shortall and his management team shouldn’t make any apologies for their high level of enthusiasm or excitement as expressed in their meetings with the public. As a matter of fact, there is a quarterly report call scheduled within the next week. And RAY DIRKS Research wouldn’t be surprised if some new contracts were announced during that call with shareholders.
Further into this long-winded Forbes article, writer Abram Brown implies that Mr. Shortall’s realized compensation adds up to $8.1 million and that Unilife’s COO’s compensation totals $8 million. Forbes and Abram made these fallacious and misleading statements, Ray Dirks and his team believe, despite clear evidence from public documents that is contrary to what they write.
Mr. Shortall’s base salary is $420,000 per year with a large cash bonus opportunity of 50% of that salary. This has stayed the same since 2004 and is at or below the 50th percentile for his position in his peer group for 2012. Forbes and Abram Brown have carelessly, but perhaps also carefully, combined the cash and equity compensation reported for the past three years without bothering to report that the vast majority of the amounts are stock and option awards that haven’t been realized.
In Summary, RAY DIRKS Research thinks Unilife under Alan Shortall will continue to successfully build Unilife’s Market Capitalization by developing and consolidating long-term partnerships with its pharmaceutical company associates and also with its pharmaceutical customers, thereby generating substantial long-term growth.
RAYDIRKS Research suggests that our readers and other investors, both Institutional and Individual, visit the Web Site of Unilife – http://www.Unilife.com for additional information and also visit the Web Site of its Investor Relations and Public Relations firm – Pro-Active Corporation – www.Pro-ActiveCorp.com for a wealth of information about Unilife.
Ray Dirks also suggests that, after doing due diligence, Readers and Investors consider buying the common stock of Unilife (UNIS) at its current price for its potential long-term upside of $5.00 to $7.00.
And Ray Dirks suggests that our Readers and other Investors share provide any comments that they might have with Pro-Active Capital through their Web Site or by Telephone.
RAYDIRKS Research advises the Readers of this Article to place no more than 1 % of the money that they devote to Common Stocks in any one Company’s securities. It’s best to Diversify!
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