The biopharma and healthcare presentations at the J.P. Morgan Healthcare conference tend to be fairly buttoned down. After all, neither CEOs nor their shareholders care for drama. Typically, the breakout sessions might get a little exuberant at times, but no more than that.
That rulebook went straight out the metaphorical window in a breakout session on Wednesday by MiMedx Group, a wound care product company that’s evolved into a biopharma company, when short seller Marc Cohodes confronted CEO Parker “Pete” Petit about the company’s business practices. First, Cohodes asked why the company had allegedly fired whistleblowers and then he referred to the company as a “channel-stuffing fraud” —a term associated with counting distributors as customers to inflate sales. Cohodes even approached the table where Petit sat and offered to shake hands before security requested that he return to his seat. Soon thereafter, it got nasty with Cohodes and Petit firing accusations at each other.
Behavioral Health, Interoperability and eConsent: Meeting the Demands of CMS Final Rule Compliance
In a webinar on April 16 at 1pm ET, Aneesh Chopra will moderate a discussion with executives from DocuSign, Velatura, and behavioral health providers on eConsent, health information exchange and compliance with the CMS Final Rule on interoperability.
Adam Feuerstein, a senior writer at STAT News, captured the exchange on Periscope.
Petit has made a mission of trying to uncover anonymous bloggers from the website Aurelius Value who are critical of the company. Last year MiMedx filed a lawsuit against short sellers to find out the identity of the anonymous bloggers, accusing them of libel, slander, defamation, false light, and tortious interference with business relations. But MiMedix’s critics aren’t all anonymous. UBS claimed that the company’s products aren’t as effective as the company says and face serious competition that investors aren’t yet considering, according to Business Insider. On MiMedx’s website, a section on short selling claims that the company has no issues with investors who short stocks, but that “illegal short selling must be confronted and stopped.” So how does the company define illegal short selling?
One of the ways short selling turns ILLEGAL is for there to be false data maliciously dropped into the marketplace for the purpose of manipulating a stock’s price
A couple of weeks before the conference, J.P. Morgan had said it would end the practice of giving reporters access to the breakout sessions. Thankfully it reversed that decision in the wake of criticism both from media organizations and from supporters. Critics might argue that this video is a good reason why these sessions should be off-limits to the press. But others would argue the opposite. Although the video is a bit theatrical, it does serve to highlight the interaction between short sellers and companies and to be frank, it’s hard not to feel a little sympathy for a company’s management team when faced with an aggressive critic in a public setting.
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
Photo: Thanatham Piriyakarnjanakul, EyeEm
