What I see in retrospect is that more than any other company in the defense business, General Dynamics has looked to the numbers to decide how it should deploy its capital, evenwhen that meant adopting a strategy completely contrary to what competitors and analysts were recommending.
The argument goes that even though Vertex is going to sell a ton of telaprevir over the next few years, sales could crater wheneven newer drugs hit the market and completely change things again--hence the excitement about both Zymogenetics and Idenix.