Seeking Alpha: LipoScience Rescues Some Value For Shareholders In A Sale To LabCorp

When I last wrote about LipoScience (NASDAQ:LPDX) in May, I pointed out that there was a reasonable chance that LabCorp (NYSE:LH) could acquire the company. LipoScience has struggled mightily as a public company, but the struggles have been related more to the company's limited resources and not the value or quality of the LipoProfile test. That prediction has come home to roost now, as LabCorp announced that it will in fact be acquiring LipoScience.

This deal by no means rescues the call I made on LipoScience back in my first piece on the company for Seeking Alpha, as the premium paid by LabCorp only makes it an incrementally less-lousy call. For LabCorp, though, this is a solid (albeit small) tuck-in deal and the sort of acquisition that could produce some worthwhile value down the road.

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LipoScience Rescues Some Value For Shareholders In A Sale To LabCorp

Seeking Alpha: LipoScience Nearly Back To Square One

LipoScience (LPDX) has developed a blood test (NMR LipoProfile) that has the potential to meaningfully improve outcomes for patients at risk of cholesterol-related cardiovascular problems, but it takes more than an FDA-approved test to make a business work. LipoScience is perilously close to becoming a company with a great future in its past, as the company continues to struggle to generate commercial interest in its test. A journal article based upon a retrospective analysis of LDL-P measurement could help spur interest and a takeover is a credible potential outcome, but LipoScience's current circumstances make this a highly speculative stock.

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LipoScience Nearly Back To Square One

Seeking Alpha: The LipoScience Holding Pattern Continues

The reimbursement environment for diagnostics company LipoScience (LPDX) is not going to change in a quarter's time and with that, neither will the commercial/financial situation change all that much. LipoScience remains what it has been for some time - a company with a very interesting cholesterol test, one that measures the actual number of cholesterol particles and not just the overall amount of cholesterol in the blood, but a company that definitely needs to sell payers and clinicians on the importance of this test and its role in health care management.

If LipoScience can accumulate and present the data necessary to sway insurance companies and doctors, $100 million in annual revenue in five years' time and $200 million in 10 years' time should be sufficient to justify a stock price closer to $8 today. Unfortunately, it's quite difficult to get institutions excited about a small-cap med-tech stock reporting contracting revenue and that has seen recent executive turnover. Readers thinking about LipoScience as an investment need to realize that this is both an above-average risk situation and one where patience will be required.

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The LipoScience Holding Pattern Continues

Seeking Alpha: LipoScience Facing A Long, Hard Slog

Writing anything positive about LipoScience (LPDX) was a losing move in 2013, as the stock moved steadily down throughout the year. Making matters worse, it wasn't just a "the market doesn't get it" phenomenon as the company logged three straight quarters with revenue year-on-year revenue declines - something nobody wants to see from a company that is supposed to be in the early days of a major product launch.

I continue to believe there's still hope here, even if that hope has been pushed out a few years. Clinical studies are backing up the validity and utility of the LDL particle assessment approach and I believe that there is a strong argument to make here for LipoScience's NMR LipoProfile test being a valuable behavior-changing test. The problem is that it's going to take time for the company to sell payers and doctors on that value. The potential value in the shares is great, but so too is the risk and there are no guarantees that LipoScience will make it to that critical inflection point where revenues and profits begin to flow into the company.

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LipoScience Facing A Long, Hard Slog

Seeking Alpha: LipoScience Gives Its Shareholders Chest Pains

There's a good reason that I always include the warning that small-cap med-techs carry above average risks, and LipoScience (LPDX) dutifully provided an example last week. Due in part to system placement delays and delays in ramping up new sales reps, this emerging diagnostics company missed expectations for the first quarter and lowered guidance for the rest of the year.

Retribution was swift and severe - the shares tanked 25% in a single day. Now the question for investors is whether there is still an opportunity here and where it's worth the risks to buy shares in the hopes of realizing that opportunity.

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LipoScience Gives Its Shareholders Chest Pains

Investopedia: Another Negative Fish Oil Study Adds To Amarin's Marketing Challenges

Nothing has come easy for Amarin (Nasdaq: AMRN).

This manufacturer of the ultra-pure fish oil (EPA in particular) treatment Vascepa has garnered a devoted following of investors who believe that this is not just the next Lovaza (the purified fish oil treatment that Glaxo (NYSE:GSK) acquired in 2007 for $1.7 billion by buying Reliant Pharmaceuticals), but even more. Unfortunately for the bulls, Amarin has not yet garnered the new chemical entity (NCE) status from the FDA that would better shield it from competition, and interest in partnering or acquiring the company has been lackluster enough that the company has gone forward with its own marketing program.

Perhaps even worse, though, is the accumulation of data suggesting that fish oil may not be effective in reducing the risk of death from cardiovascular disease. On Wednesday, the New England Journal of Medicine reported results from the largest done to date on the efficacy of fish oil, and the results were not positive. The real questions for Amarin investors now are whether this trial is relevant to Vascepa and/or what impact it will have on real-world doctors.

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Seeking Alpha: LipoScience - A Small Company Targeting A Large Market

Healthcare is arguably defined by a continual push for better mousetraps, and LipoScience (LPDX) may have a better mousetrap for diagnosing and characterizing heart disease. Not only does LipoScience provide information to doctors that other systems currently on the market do not, it does so with a platform that offers meaningful potential value for the hospital or lab using it. Diagnostics is a very crowded market and it is absolutely essential that LipoScience broaden its array of assays, but this looks like a small med-tech well worth keeping an eye on today.

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LipoScience - A Small Company Targeting A Large Market