Mar

26

Kyle Bass recently opened a new strategy against drug companies: short their stock and then attack their patents, using a law from three years ago that basically opens the door to such things. Even if the challenge results in no action by the PTO [Patent and Trademark Office], it will take a while for that to come to closure. In the meantime, there’s some discounting of the presumed NPV of the portfolio as those wily masters of earnings estimates on the Street (who are never ever wrong) conclude that the company’s earnings will be adversely impacted in this way or that. Stock drops, shorts cover, and PTO denies the claim. If the patent is for a cytokine, the challenge may be upheld based on recent SCOTUS rulings, but that’s about it.

Some patents may seem absurd (and some are!), such as Schering's (now Merck’s) patent on interferon alpha (used for Hep C) dosing—how many times a week, and so. That patent was challenged, and the challenge was denied. That doesn’t stop the perceived value of the company from dropping, though.

For big pharma, this may be more of a pain than a major matter. Sure, they will go to Congress to get the law repealed or at least reformed. And the structure of matter patents key to industry are probably intact so long as they are not straight copies of a naturally occurring molecule (I think that’s been the new SCOTUS standard). After all, if they were at risk, the chemical industry would be at risk, too. And the capitalization of the majors is such that a drop, while unwelcome, can be weathered.

However, for the start-ups, this may be a bigger problem. Not only is there usually tight spending already so that paying attorneys’ fees has a potentially major impact on the budget (could it mean needing to raise more capital, likely with significant dilution??), never mind management’s attention more productively spent on product development.

Then there’s the stock price. Many start-ups look forward to being acquired as an exit strategy for investors in the company. However, they prefer to do so when the company is in Phase 3, when the valuation has considerably risen. (Including product failures and the like, peak valuation of start-ups is midway through Phase 3). However, if the stock drops because of shorts piling on the company, the market cap will drop, potentially enough to attract the attention of a major pharma looking at the company’s assets as priced at a bargain. If this is early enough in development, the market cap isn’t going to be that great to begin with. Consider, InterMune’s valuation about a decade ago was 100 mil. Pirfenidone, the stuff it’s marketing now (whether it’s worth using is a different matter), was in Phase 1 / 2. Early development. Go ahead 9 years, and Roche bought the company for 8.5 bil. (Roche is a conservative company; someday, I want to get the BD fellow responsible for the deal off to a quiet corner of a bar and ply him/her with enough cognac to understand the thinking behind the purchase—but that’s just my view of it).

So while the biotech frenzy continues (there may be a bubble, except there are real products generating real earnings (and lots in the pipeline from acquisitions) that’s supporting much of the valuations. And while you can say that Celgene is a bit stretched, but Gilead sure isn’t. Take a look at its PE, its revenues, its products and therapeutic areas and then its pipeline. Not stretched at all. So, is there a bubble? If you look at Valeant, you might be pardoned for thinking so. At some point, Valeant is going to be big enough that the M&A isn’t going to support the company’s valuation anymore. Kind of like what happened to PDL before the Facet spin-off. At that point, Valeant has to start functioning like a pharma (and not an PE enterprise) and generating some increases in earnings to support its market cap. Either that or watch the air come out of its balloon (guess where I stand on that assessment).

So back to the patents. I think Congress will do something at some point, just not the current Congress, which could barely pass a bill mandating that Reagan National should remain open. In the meantime, there will be some raids by the shorts until everyone else starts to discount rumors of invalid patents. At that point, it’s Game Over. Until then, though, while the big pharmas aren’t going to be bothered much, there may be some significant damage on the start-up front. And before you pooh-pooh that sector of health care, it’s worth remembering that the amount of productive research in big pharma labs is pretty poor these day. Innovation is taking place in the start-up world (not for big pharma, which may get some bargains, but for the investors in those start-ups, who may decide not to invest as much in the area, or in any given company, citing this “play” as a major risk and lowering RoI as a result. in VC [Venture Capital] terms, that RoI has to be high enough to cover the costs of the all-too-prevalent product failures).


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