Biotech ex­ecs pre­dict big M&A deals ahead as mood shifts in wake of a 2018 hang­over — End­points 100

It’s time once again to feel the pulse of the biotech in­dus­try. 

In our lat­est sur­vey of the End­points 100 — a col­lec­tion of biotech ex­ecs dom­i­nat­ed by CEOs of large­ly small and medi­um-sized com­pa­nies — we gath­ered 80 re­spons­es. And they re­flect­ed a com­mon sense of be­lief in the in­dus­try’s fi­nan­cial strengths at the start of 2019, the need for drug pric­ing re­form, a gen­er­al ac­cep­tance — with some big caveats — for the need to at­tend #JPM20 and a reeval­u­a­tion of the way biotech as­sets will be val­ued and sold in the year ahead.

We de­tect­ed:

— A dis­tinct surge of sup­port for any changes in the drug pric­ing sys­tem we have now that would pro­vide some added trans­paren­cy for the pub­lic. The ad­min­is­tra­tion’s sug­gest­ed end to re­bates is gen­er­al­ly pop­u­lar.

— A pro­nounced lev­el of cau­tion over the hype we’re hear­ing re­gard­ing AI in drug dis­cov­ery and de­vel­op­ment.

— A sense of du­ty ac­com­pa­nied by a deep-seat­ed lev­el of an­i­mos­i­ty re­gard­ing our an­nu­al mi­gra­tion to at­tend JP­Mor­gan, topped by a lay­er of dis­con­tent when it comes to San Fran­cis­co sprin­kled with a lit­tle gung-ho en­thu­si­asm for lim­it­less deal talks.

— A gen­er­al sense of op­ti­mism for the year ahead, with a strong cur­rent of ap­pre­ci­a­tion for ac­cess to cap­i­tal and a ma­jor shift in sen­ti­ment re­gard­ing the E100’s eval­u­a­tion of IPOs and biotech val­u­a­tions even as M&A turns hot, hot, hot. The go-go days of 2018 are clear­ly over.

Who’s next on the M&A list? There’s no short­age of sug­ges­tions and plen­ty of fore­casts that the Bris­tol-My­ers/Cel­gene al­liance won’t work out.

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