This is one way to erode confidence in your game plan. At the end of a meeting with analysts Friday, in which Par Pharmaceutical execs offered a gloomy outlook for the year, the management team “made an immediate exit and did not stick around for any one-on-one discussions with investors,” Robert Uhl, an analyst at Friedman Billings Ramsey, wrote in an investor note this morning. “This inaccessibility seemed to upset a number of shareholders at the meeting.” He used the word ‘curious’ to describe the hasty departure.

Small wonder Par stock dropped as much as it did - about 14 percent. Elsewhere in his note, Uhl refers to Par’s predicament as a “dramatic slowdown,” as the little drugmaker that could struggles with financial restatements and a generic strategy that doesn’t seem to offer many distinguishing features. “Par’s future generic business will contain a mix of higher margin exclusive generics along with the authorized products that will lead to no better than average generic industry margins in the future, in our view,” Uhl writes.

As to speculation that Par will be snatched up among the ongoing global generic consolidation, Uhl is skeptical. “We believe that it is unlikely that a strategic buyer would be interested in the entire company. If the (brand-drug) division were larger with greater profitability, it could hold more attraction for a specialty pharmaceutical company with therapeutic overlap…”

“…The generic division is about to enter a period of declining profitability of sales and remains dependent on low margin products. The division also does not possess any highly developed capabilities in terms of unique formulation or manufacturing expertise beyond tablets and capsules…We believe this diminishes its attractiveness to a strategic buyer. A non-US company may still find the business attractive for its footprint and distribution capability in the US market, but we believe other US companies with special formulation or manufacturing expertise should be more attractive.”