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LOS ANGELES, CA -- (Marketwire) -- 02/11/13 -- Small cap biopharmas that make for good long term investments are hard to find. Most small cap biopharmas burn a ton of cash while developing treatments for a variety of ailments and rare diseases.

Today, we focus on Pozen (NASDAQ: POZN) which we feel may present a good longer term speculative investment as well as a good trade with near term catalysts.

Pozen reminds us of another company we came across in 2011, Antares Pharma Inc., which produced an 80% gain in 14 months.

Antares is not a typical biotech that develops drugs to treat rare diseases such as the ones mentioned above. Rather, the company aims to take existing treatments and make them better via subcutaneous self-injections. When we first covered Antares, the price was around $2.20 a share. Within one year, the stock nearly tripled, hitting a 52 week high of $5.58, before settling back to the high $3 range, where it trades today.

Like Antares, Pozen takes existing drugs and seeks to make them safer and better -- more tolerable. Today, we will look at the management, pipeline, upcoming catalysts, partnership potential, and noteworthy financial items for Pozen.

Management:

One reason Pozen reminds us of Antares is because of the strong management with impressive backgrounds.

John R. Plachetka, Pharm.D., is President, Chief Executive Officer, and Chairman of the Board of Directors of Pozen. Prior to founding the company in 1996, Dr. Plachetka has held many high level positions in the pharmaceutical industry. Most notably, he had a nine-year career at Glaxo Inc. where Dr. Plachetka held various executive positions including Director of Cardiovascular Clinical Research and led the U.S. development program for Imitrex®, Trandate®, and a thromboxane antagonist.

Mr. Plachetka is the firm's biggest shareholder holding finance.yahoo.com%2fq%2fir%3fs%3dPOZN%2bInsider%2bRoster">over two million shares. He is also responsible for bringing Liz Cermak on as the firm's Executive Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer. A former Worldwide Vice President for Johnson & Johnson, Liz has served in a variety of senior leadership roles across the pharmaceutical, consumer products, and health management businesses. She has over 25 years' experience in the healthcare industry.

The CEO's heavy ownership stake is one of the reasons why we believe the management team is extra focused with added incentives to perform well for its investors. The scenario arguably communicates a direct sense of personal accountability towards building shareholder value for investors in the company. The more that CEO is able to create shareholder value, the more he will ensure his own compensation and benefits.

The value of the management's approach has been proven with its success in gaining FDA approval of two self-invented products. One of these products is Treximet, developed with pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline in June 2003 for the acute treatment of migraine attacks in adults.