Can Theranos Make It Through 2017?

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published
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Can Theranos Make It Through 2017?

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[cnxvideo id=”655235″ placement=”ros”]Troubled drug test start-up Theranos announced it had “re-engineered” its operations, another way to say it cut 40% of its workers and would have 221 left. The company’s last capital raise was in March 2015, for $349 million. Nearly two years later, the balance sheet cash line has to have dwindled significantly, and legal fees may be the largest portion of the cash attrition.

Theranos barely has a business left. Management says it continues to work on a product called miniLab. However, after all the company’s trouble, what are the odds that any distributors or medical industry partners would take a partnership seriously? Zero.

Theranos has to overcome the shuttering of lab facilities, the ban of its founder Elizabeth Holmes from some of its most critical businesses and a torrent of suits, led by former supporter and investor Walgreens, which put in $50 million in September 2013.

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Theranos has moved quickly into the column its venture capital investments keep for companies in which they will invest no more money, almost certainly. No other source of capital will put money into something so risky. The company’s woes are a nearly perfect storm of loss of faith in its products, loss of faith in management, soured partnerships, angry investors and lawsuits.

There is no reason for Theranos to be in business any longer. It lacks a single element of its business that will allow it to become a viable company, even if it does create a product. There will be no buyers, just as there are no investors.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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