Biotechnology Valuation & Investing

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.