Some random items
With the diabetes world descending on Madrid for the next toy fair otherwise known as ATTD, a few random items.
1. This morning Senseonics announced a positive coverage decision from Cigna, noting that it will add 17 million covered lives. And not to get off track but we just love it when companies mentioned covered lives that is NOT 17 million patients with diabetes, but 17 people covered by Cigna, some of whom will have diabetes.
Of course the stock is up on this news as naturally everyone assumes this will generate more patients for Senseonics when in reality it just means they are more possible patients most of whom that will choose Dexcom or Libre over the Eversense. Nothing against Senseonics but this is just the way it is and quite frankly there isn’t much they can do to change how it really is.
2. File this under poetic justice but Tandem is now trading near $90 and has a market cap approaching $5.5 BILLION. It seems hard to believe now but there was a time not that long ago when this company could have been bought for less than $500 MILLION. Think about that just for a moment.
Today the company has the coolest toy in the toy chest and is taking particular joy in watching Medtronic slowly sink into the abyss. Seriously try as we might we cannot make this stuff up.
3. This really isn’t surprising but over the past year shares of Dexcom are up almost 95%, Tandem slightly over 76% while Insulet is killing it up over 142%. Medtronic meanwhile is up just over 22% – do we need to say more?
4. Since we decided not to attend ATTD wonder what the over/under is on how many Tyler’s are being shown.
5. Given that the ATTD is basically a toy fair we wonder what the we want it yesterday people are thinking now that the Control IQ is here and is just kicking ass and taking names. Seriously as we noted earlier today the results are quite frankly astonishing. Medtronic liked to brag about keeping patients in range 70% of the time, well and yes, we know its still early, patients are seeing Time in Range of greater than 90% with the Control IQ and no we are not kidding. This is amazing and transformational.
6. And the Libre2 is where?
7. Is it just us but isn’t about time all the Dexcom and OmniPod wannabes actually do something other than say they are going to be just as good only cheaper? Isn’t about time they do something other than talk the talk? Just saying.
8. Hey, guess what another digital diabetes company just announced they are expanding beyond diabetes and into other chronic diseases. If we’ve said it once we’ve said it a thousand times you can steal more money with a good PowerPoint presentation than you can with a gun. We can’t wait for OneDrop to join Livongo as a publicly traded company proving conclusively that the greater fool theory is alive and well.
9. Does anyone seriously think the former management team of Medtronic Diabetes is all that upset they got canned?
10. Finally and remember death is not an option but which is worse being a member of the current Medtronic Diabetes management team or being part of the Sanofi diabetes management team?
