Amylin v. Icahn Slideshow Battle: Tear Up Lilly-Byetta Agreement!
Carl Icahn’s shareholder presentation in the fight for control of Amylin’s board of directors says that the company’s joint venture with Eli Lilly on diabetes drug Byetta should be torn up and renegotiated.
Yesterday, BNET looked at the duelling shareholder presentations of Amylin and Eastbourne Capital; today we’ll compare Amylin and Carl Icahn’s arguments.
Amylin, Eastbourne and Icahn have made their cases to investors using the most lethal weapon that investment bankers can possibly wield — vicious PowerPoint slideshows.
Amylin’s basic case is that Amylin “is Poised for Growth,” a positioning that unfortunately telegraphs how little profitable growth the company has achieved over the last five years. Beyond that, Amylin wants you to know that Carl Icahn will destroy Amylin’s stock price if he gets control. Here’s the company’s analysis of the shares of companies after Icahn got his own people on their boards of directors (click to enlarge):
Icahn, naturally, disagrees. His slideshow is by far the most aggressive and personal of the three. Its message is that the Amylin board has sunk the stock, cannot be trusted, and that the joint venture agreement with Eli Lilly should be thrown out and redone:
The Amylin board has destroyed value and has put their interests before shareholder interests.
Weak sales and excessive costs prevent positive cash flow … Ridiculous that Amylin unprofitable
And Icahn names names, casting Eli Lilly as the enemy within. There’s a slide titled:
Former Lilly employees pervasive throughout the company
It names six ecxecutives or directors at Amylin who were former Lilly people (chairman Joe Cook, director Ginger Graham, ex-director Vaughn Bryson, SVP HR Roger Marchetti, SVP sales Vincent Mihalik and ex-EVP Julia Brown).
And then there’s a look at how Cook has sold his stock before the price tumbled. That slide is titled “Joe Cook has been an aggressive seller.”
Finally, Icahn calls for the Lilly agreement to be renegotiated. The “Lilly partnership was value destructive,” a slide says, it “needs restructuring” and and Amylin must “Revisit agreement.”
This will come as a cause of some concern to Lilly, who as we noted recently is happy with the way things are.
Of the three, Amylin’s is by far the best-designed. Clearly, the company has spent money on art directors, whereas Icahn and Eastbourne just kinda did the best they could. They had to, half their case is about reducing excessive SG&A costs at Amylin.
You can read a little more BNET analysis on the Amylin and Eastbourne presentations here.
- See previous coverage of Amylin:
- Amylin v. Eastbourne Slideshow Battle; It’s All About the Stock Price
- In U-Turn, Amylin Lays Off 200; Move Validates Icahn’s Arguments
- Amylin Trial Testimony: Debt Not Structured With Interest or Principal Payments in Mind
- The War for Amylin: Lilly Not Interested; Icahn Calls the Company a “Dictatorship”
- Amylin CEO Got 11% Pay Rise Despite Losses; Company Paid $355K for Lawyer to Move House
- Amylin Q1: “Icahn Doesn’t Know Who Our CEO Is”
- In War for Amylin, Icahn and Eastbourne Win a Battle: “Poison Pill” Revoked
- Amylin Founder Resigns, Suggests Chairman Follow; Icahn and Eastbourne Likely Delighted
- Inside Amylin’s Anti-Icahn Suicide Pact
- Amylin Battle Heats Up as Eastbourne Capital Touts Rival Directors’ Slate to Icahn’s
- Icahn Moves on Amylin; Will Lilly Step Up?
- Behind the Byetta Crisis: Is This Drug Really All That and a Bag of (Fat-Free) Chips?
Jim Edwards, a former managing editor of Adweek, has covered drug marketing at Brandweek for four years, and is a former Knight-Bagehot fellow at Columbia University's business and journalism schools. Follow him on Twitter or send him an email.
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