Biotechnology Valuation & Investing - Paperback

by Jason Hsu (Author), Dimitrios Iliopoulos (Author)

The selection of biotech stocks for investment is more difficult compared with the selection of other stocks and industries that possess historical data, since biotechnology is a recently new science. In the first edition of this book, we described the crucial parameters for the valuation of an early stage biotech company without a drug in the market. In this edition, we analyze novel financial models that can value stocks of biotech companies with products in the market or products under development (in pre-clinical and clinical studies). All of these parameters should be helpful to potential new investors when creating a stock portfolio that includes highly promising biotech companies. Our strategy of selecting highly promising stocks based on all parameters described in this book and of performing a basic financial modeling analysis with DFC and/or real options valuation models has proven very successful, as this strategy provides returns higher than 100% in most cases. In the first edition of this book, based on our strategy, we suggested that Juno Therapeutics and Kite Pharma were "hot" stocks. At that time, Kite's stock was $50.19, while Juno's stock was $54.21. Since then, Kite's stock reached $179.79, with the company acquired by Gilead for $11.9 billion, while Juno's stock reached $86.96, with the company acquired by Celgene for $9 billion. Furthermore, Moderna Therapeutics, a private company that we valued at $5.5 billion in 2016 based on our real options financial model, today has a $7.5 billion valuation. This newly revised and expanded version was written to help investors in the selection of biotech stocks based on different scientific and financial criteria.