Ever since Elan
Unfortunately our hopes that the company would offer up a hint on its first-quarter conference call were dashed by CEO Kelly Martin: "We have nothing new to report on that strategic review process on this call." Bah humbug.
The quarter itself wasn't stellar, but it wasn't all that bad, either. Sales of Elan and Biogen Idec's
On the flip side, Elan continues to make progress with lowering expenses. Selling, general, and administrative expenses were lower year over year despite the increase in revenue. The company is still unprofitable, but that's mainly due to interest charges and research and development expenses -- a large part of which is its large phase 3 trials for Alzheimer's treatment bapineuzumab, produced in partnership with Wyeth
The interest charges from over $1.7 billion of long-term debt are the reason that Elan needs to figure out some kind of "strategic alternative." The most obvious choices are partnering the rights to its earlier-stage Alzheimer's drugs or selling off its drug technology business, which it unsuccessfully tried to pawn off last year. Unfortunately investors are going to have to wait a little while longer to see what the future of Elan might look like.
You can see this Foolishness right now, though: