As governments, both federal and municipal, have geared up post Sept. 11, many have turned to Columbia’s Meridian Medical Technologies for their popular auto-injectors. James H. Miller, Meridian’s chairman, president and CEO, recently discussed the firm’s products and its plans for the future.
Can you put what Meridian does in a nutshell? You have gotten some press since Sept. 11 for your government contracts, but that’s not all you do.
That’s right. Meridian is really a specialty pharmaceutical company. We have a commercial division ? the primary product there is called EpiPen, that’s a product that people carry who are allergic to bee stings and insect bites. There’s obviously the government segment, which is both military and now homeland security. And we have a third division, which is offshore; it?s the cardiopulmonary division where we manufacture a product called Prime, which is a new device for early detection of heart attacks in the hospital. We not only sell, we also manufacture these products.
You have done very well recently. You announced $6 million in new orders in November and your stock price has doubled in the past year. How will President Bush’s budget proposals affect you?
It can be helpful, certainly. There are many needs within the military as well as in homeland security. Whenever you hear of “chemical or biological threats,” we are the injector answer to the chemical threats.
While we don’t anticipate the budget being a large windfall to the company — we’ve never projected that — it will certainly put the government in a better position to purchase products that they think they need. Hopefully, one of those is going to be ours.
Do you have any projections on sales increases?
We really don’t. There is a report out on the Internet, and we don’t disagree with those numbers, but we ourselves don’t forecast our revenues.
With the increased demand do you expect to be doing any hiring?
We have already. The majority of that was in St. Louis. Our manufacturing facility is in St. Louis. We’ve hired about 80 people or so there and that was on a base of about 250, so it’s been significant in terms of ramping up our production.
How many people do you employ overall?
We employ about 370 people in the States. We have about 50 people in Ireland. We have 45 employees here [in Columbia.] There’s no manufacturing [in Maryland.] It’s headquarters functions and some product development.
Last month the FDA approved the pen-size injector you produce to protect troops from nerve gas. What effect will that have?
A very positive one. It’s a product we have been developing with the army now for three or four years. The army actually has approval, but it’s our device and we have the patents on it. It will be the next generation product. While, in itself, it doesn’t respond to a new market, it does give a much better answer to an existing market. If this market were to progress into first responders and so forth, it will give them an easier mode to administer both drugs [that treat nerve gas exposure] through a single injection rather than having to use two different injectors.
How does your business break down in terms of the civilian versus military markets?
It’s about 60-40. About 60 percent commercial and 40 percent what we call government, which also includes homeland security.
Are you happy with that level of diversity or would you like to see even less reliance on the government?
This company originally was 100 percent government, just a few years ago it was 80 percent, so we have diversified. We expect our commercial growth to accelerate at a greater rate than our government growth long term. I think, merely by our business plan, that ratio will change but right now we’re quite happy with that.
In terms of homeland security, one of the government programs you participate in is the Metropolitan Medical Response System that funds cities in order to better prepare them for disasters. Have sales to that stepped up even further since Sept. 11?
They have. We announced the $6 million in orders and we said we would receive more orders, and we have. We will be releasing our earnings on March 6, so it will become much clearer then. It has increased and we expect that to continue.
What’s next, are their new devices or new markets that you are looking at?
There are two major initiatives. One is a specialty pharmaceutical initiative. That is the development of new commercial products that use our devices or our delivery systems. The first one will be a product that we have announced called DiaJect. It is diazepam and it is for emergency intervention with people who suffer epileptic seizures. We have filed that product with the FDA and we are awaiting approval. We don’t think that will come till 2003, but we fully expect to get it.
The second major breakthrough is in our cardiopulmonary group, and it’s a product called Prime. Prime is electrocardiogram. Very much like 12 lead except this is 80 leads (electrode inputs.) It is much quicker and far more accurate in identifying heart attacks in the emergency room. We filed that with the FDA last July and are expecting approval anytime now.
Your November sales announcement indicated a bump after the terror attacks. Was that a one-time thing or do you expect that level of growth to continue?
We were profiled during Desert Storm and that was a one-time event. Unfortunately, this is not a one-time event. This is something, not only for this country but also overseas, that as they begin to protect their citizens against the terrorist threat, this is going to be an important business for us for some time to come.
