Isaac's First Stockholder Meeting

and mine too!

When I was in school, a local biopharmaceutical company, Myriad Genetics, spoke about their latest research that tied into an upper division microbiology class I was taking.  I was impressed with their presentation and ideas so I followed the company over the years.  A couple of years ago I decided to buy some shares.  Jonathan and I rarely buy individual shares of stock, favoring index funds instead because of the risk factor.  However, we do have a small fraction of our portfolio devoted to exceptional companies that we like.  

The company recently held a shareholder meeting in SLC.  I originally had no intentions of going, but Jonathan encouraged me to go because it would be educational, and besides when would I get the chance to attend a shareholder's meeting again?  We don't live near the big cities that headquarter most of the companies in which we've invested.  He was right on both points.  

When I walked into the meeting, it was clear that I was the youngest in attendance (aside from Isaac) by several decades.  The meeting got underway, and the presenter reviewed the company information for the first little bit.  During this time Isaac ate and fell asleep.  He was quiet the entire time.  After the first speaker it got very interesting, the president of the company spoke about their various genetic tests, one of which I was unaware about.  He then described the cancer drugs and antiviral HIV drugs in their various stages of development.  2009 should be an exciting year for Myriad.  Very cool!  

I asked about their plans to expand their target audience to family physicians, advanced nurse practitioners, and midwives.  Currently they send out information to oncologists, OB/GYNs, and have done a limited direct ad campaign in the East and Texas about their BRAC analysis.  They target oncologists for obvious reasons, and more recently OBs since many women use them as primary doctors.  He responded that they are exploring doing that down the road, but currently don't have the enough employees to do that yet.  They are still a fairly small company.  He was very animated though discussing future plans.  

My inner geek is satiated.  Happy sigh.