It doesn’t matter how it translates
Besides being known for their fondness for wine and champagne, the French have one of the sexiest languages in the world. The French could tell someone they are a complete idiot and it would sound sexy. (This makes one wonder how Viehbacher felt when Serge told him that he had been beheaded. But we digress.) We make this statement not to flatter our wine drinking friends, as let’s be honest the French are so damn arrogant they wouldn’t understand flattery nor would they care. No we make this statement after reading the IPO documentation for the upcoming CellNovo IPO which will be on the French Stock Exchange.
Diabetic Investor downloaded what would be the equivalent of an S-1 an American company files before they go public. The document the good people at Asante said we didn’t know how to read. Literacy aside Asante still hasn’t gone public and is unlikely to do so anytime soon, but again we digress.
Now since this document was written in French thanks to the miracle of modern technology we had it translated to English. While the document contains that normal BS as an American S-1 has consider this passage;
“The marketing of Cellnovo system started live in the UK in August 2014. At the end 2014, 121 patients have used the Cellnovo system, or tests, either by purchasing. The Users have, delivery system, two patch pumps rechargeable insulin a mobile terminal, all in a lifetime of 4 years, as well as secure access to the tool clinical management online. Marketing will continue in France in 2015 (via a force direct sales) and in other European countries in 2015-2017, and then in the United States and Canada 2017 and in China, India and Japan in 2018, through a network of distributors. A 2020 Cellnovo is a target of 45,000 patients fitted with the pump, corresponding to 75% of the Production installed.”
Now we don’t know the French word for chutzpah but CellNovo certainly has it in abundance. They actually put in writing that they think they can grow from 121 patients in 2015 to 45,000 by 2020. But wait it gets even better as they also say they won’t be in the United States, the largest insulin pump market, until 2017. But wait it gets even better as all this chutzpah comes from a company which began back in 2002.
So let’s see if we’ve got this straight from 2002 to 2015, 13 years, they put 121 patients on their system. We say put on and not sales as many of these units were given away. Now they are saying they will grow from 121 patients in 2015 to 45,000 in 2020, which is just five years away. And they are going to do this without being in the largest market for insulin pumps for another two years. Since we aren’t very good at math we won’t even attempt to calculate what that translates into in terms of annualized growth let’s just say it’s a lot.
Heck Insulet (NASDAQ:PODD) the markers of the only other commercially available tubeless insulin patch pump has been selling OmniPod’s for over 10 years and only recently passed the 45,000 patient threshold. That is if you believe the numbers they stated which as we have found out is not necessarily a good idea, yet again we digress.
There are lots of other juicy tidbits in the document which can best be summarized by saying the system has issues, they aren’t sure they can actually make it and even if they could they don’t have anyone to sell or support it. Yet they actually think they can grow to 45,000 patients in under 5 years.
Quite honestly we wish we were making this up but we aren’t. Seriously is there anyone on this planet who will ever question again why we call this the wacky world of diabetes. What’s even more amazing is there are people who believe the French are stupid enough to buy into this horse manure. Well on second thought this is the home of Sanofi (NYSE:SNY), so let’s take back that last statement as yes the French are that stupid.
As they say in France; Stupide est aussi stupide fait.
