I'm going to sell this guy, thought Tom, as Martz looked on. He sat next to Chen on the table. "Okay, what I have here is a document that reports on the effectiveness of Good Pharma's new synthetic skin program. This is legitimate." He paused to let the translator catch up. "It shows that the skin has proved viable in extreme burn cases, and increasingly effective in geriatric patients. As you know, everybody in the developed countries of the world is getting old, fast, and we feel this product will find ready acceptance."
Chen said something to the translator, who then turned to Tom. "He says his earlier information showed that this product did not work. Early trials showed it was a failure. He says he will be asked about this."
Tom nodded. "That's smart, that makes a lot of sense. Those early trials suffered from methodology problems, not product failure. We were applying the synthetic skin to patients on blood thinners and in keloid scar areas. Both of those issues were resolved and our success rates shot up."
The translator relayed this.
Chen nodded his understanding.
Tom pushed on. "In approximately one hour, a leak of this positive information about our synthetic skin product is going to occur in a website chat room given over to the care of nursing patients. It's not an investors' site. But the site content is syndicated to a number of other websites for nursing patients and their families. From experience we know that an embedded nugget like this will be noticed by investment bloggers and the like, soon creating a viral rumor that Good Pharma has something hot in the pipeline."
Chen nodded. He was a quick study, after all.
"I need to say big numbers," he explained.
Martz interjected, "Yes, let's give him those."
"With fast-track approval by the Food and Drug Administration, we will have product in the pipeline in eighteen months. We figure the first-year sales at eight hundred million dollars, second year one-point-nine billion, and so on. Remember the target consumer population is getting larger rapidly. Those numbers are domestic only, by the way, so they at least double internationally. With rapid market penetration and what we expect will be eighty percent market-share domination, plus per-unit margins rising on falling unit-production costs, we see pure net profit streams in excess of two billion dollars five years from now-"
"Wait, please," said the translator, "too fast."
"No," said Chen, "no, not too fast. I got it. I understand. My friends in China, they will like this."