Subject: Re: FKA: MED
"Analyst consensus" for 2025 is EPS of $1.56. The current price is 12.6 times that. In fact, if that future earnings figure is correct, current prices do not look unreasonably low. To be bullish, you have to think earnings will stabilize at a level than these folks expect.

Jim
(no position, just enjoying watching the chart unfold)


Sounds like a safe distance from which to watch the show, but as for myself, I wouldn't get much closer. Weight Watchers is also down, from about $40 5 years ago to $1.14 today, with their operating income falling like a stone. I have been skeptical about how much the GLP-1 inhibitors like semaglutide (or the double agonists like tirzepatide, or the triple agonists that are coming, like retatrutide) would disrupt fast food franchises, but it's hard to argue with the observed plunge in interest for traditional weight loss techniques, now that there is something that is easier and more effective (as long as you keep taking the injections, of course.)

I guess at a price that is low enough, WW or Medifast might make sense, on the off chance that something terrible comes up that destroys the GLP-1 inhibitors sales, like the fen-phen story 30 years ago or so - sort of a call on lightning striking the competitor that has ruined their businesses. Fen-phen drugs were all the rage between about 1990 and 1997, when their approval was withdrawn after they were shown to cause heart valve damage. It took a while, and it is not impossible that the same sort of calamity might befall the new wonder drugs, after we get some experience with millions of people using them for a few years.

dtb