Michelin, the tire company, makes tires. There is no Wall Street talk of the company's tangential markets, optionality, or subscription-based platforms. It just sells tires. And it sells them for every kind of vehicle, from bicycles to earth movers to airplanes.
Exelixis (NASDAQ: EXEL), despite being a drug company, is a lot more like Michelin than you might expect at first glance. The company's generic drug cabozantinib, which is marketed under the name Cometriq, was first approved in 2012 as a treatment for thyroid cancer. After a key clinical-trial failure that could have been a catastrophe, management chose instead to see how the drug performs against many different types of cancers, partnering with several other drugmakers in the process. In fact, cabozantinib is part of more than 100 ongoing or planned clinical trials against 15 different types of cancer.
The question for investors is what all those studies mean. Is cabozantinib a superdrug, effective against many different types of cancer? Or is Exelixis just desperate -- a company with only one product that is trying nearly anything it can to stay in business?
Source Fool.com