It could only happen today
According to internal documents reviewed by Diabetic Investor and several non-attributable conversations, Diabetic Investor has learned that Medtronic (NYSE:MDT) has stopped the development of their much hyped and much delayed patch pump. Although Medtronic officials will neither confirm nor deny the existence of these documents, Diabetic Investor is also in possession of taped conversations of company meetings.
The story begins a few weeks back during an internal Medtronic meeting which seemed innocent enough at the time. What was supposed to be a normal meeting reviewing projects in the pipeline turned into a raucous free for all with security eventually stepping in prevent the meeting participants form resorting to fisticuffs. Please note that Diabetic Investor cannot quote directly what was said during the meeting as the language used would make even a hard drinking sailor or Charlie Sheen blush.
As we noted the meeting started well until the subject of the progress or lake thereof of the patch pump was discussed. One officially innocently asked why it was taking so long to move this project along. The answer was a stunner, not because it was the normal corporate speak, rather because another official had a rare moment of honesty when he said “The damn thing doesn’t work, we can’t make it and frankly we started this whole project with a lousy design.”
To wit another chimed in and stated; “What you mean to tell me that we’ve spent millions developing this thing, had at least four different project managers and we’re no closer today to getting this thing on the market than we were when this project started.”
This is when all hell broke loose, all of sudden everyone in the room offered their two cents as to why this project was doomed from the start and why it continues to languish. One official tried to restore order when she noted “Hey it really doesn’t matter if this thing ever reaches the market as the only reason we decided to move forward was Insulet (NASDAQ:PODD) was too dumb to accept our buyout offer and the mere fact we have a patch pump under development is only to prevent Insulet from gaining more market share.” She continued and stated “Guys this is no time to get your undies in a ball we own the g-d damn pump market anyway and we really have no credible competition – for heaven’s sake Animas has been trying to compete with us for years and they still haven’t made a profit.”
This attempt to calm things down seemed to be working until another official noted “ You mean we’re wasting millions of dollars because of a flawed design, we’re embarrassing ourselves at every investor meeting announcing yet another delay and this f—king thing won’t help us gain any share or make more money. Just who the hell is accountable here?”
Well needless to say at this point just when clam appeared to be setting in, the fire was reignited and security was called in to restore order and send the children back to their rooms with no supper. Rumor has it that while order has been restored the children are still not playing well with others. Apparently several of the officials are still not speak to each other and some have even gone as far as not attending any meetings if certain other parties are also scheduled to attend. This is not your normal corporate backstabbing or infighting between warring factions, the situation has reached a tipping point as the true higher ups might actually have to do something about it.
The only problem is these upper level executives are still working on more pressing issues as they still have not decided what color toilet paper should be in the executive restrooms or whether or not executives should actually have to do some real work rather than sit around collecting their very fat paychecks and bonuses. Diabetic Investor realizes how tough it is for these out of touch Ivory Tower types to actually work and completely understands that their needs always trump the needs of real people who actually buy the products their company happens to make.
Diabetic Investor is watching the situation closely but given the impasse at the company we’re not quite sure when or even if the company will make this decision public. Heck we’re not even quite sure any of this really happened.
Happy April’s Fools Day!!!!!
