Memorandum
Today, MannKind announced that as of Friday, Al Mann had retired from his role as the company’s CEO. Mr. Mann will now transition to Executive Chairman and remain engaged with MannKind, especially related to MannKind's future pipeline. The Board of Directors appointed Hakan Edstrom, current President of MannKind, as the new CEO. [As an aside, this is a very close parallel to Terry Gregg’s recent role shift at Dexcom and the appointment of President Kevin Sayer at CEO.] Per today’s press release Afrezza is still slated for a 1Q15 launch with commercial partner Sanofi. However, today’s update also alludes to post-Afrezza products several times, suggesting MannKind R&D is not satisfied yet! Indeed, we hope the company’s inhaled GLP-1 shows promise and moves into later stage development (Sanofi has first rights on this compound). We cannot give kudos enough to Al Mann for persevering through so much to bring Afrezza to market, capping off a tremendous career of founding 14 companies (!), nine of which were acquired at an overall total of almost $8 billion. Boy, are those some big shoes to fill.