The End­points Slack in­ter­view: Roivant CEO Matt Gline on play­ing mon­ey­ball in phar­ma, Vivek and pol­i­tics, and the $7B Roche deal

peo­ple love the idea that Roivant is play­ing mon­ey­ball with phar­ma. what do you make of that com­par­i­son?

I think im­plic­it in the mon­ey­ball anal­o­gy is maybe some sense that those star play­ers are “over­val­ued,” and I’m not pre­pared to say that’s true about Roche and the TL1A – I think they’re get­ting a re­al gem of a pro­gram. But al­so I think that in the sport we’re play­ing we’re go­ing to be able to build a great ‘ros­ter’ by mak­ing this ‘trade.’

this feels like an on­ly-in-2023 biotech mo­ment. You ef­fec­tive­ly turn $50 mil­lion in­to $5 bil­lion in less than a year. But Roivant’s stock has fall­en more than 10% since the deal was an­nounced. What’s that stock move tell us about … the deal, biotech to­day, if the mar­ket still doesn’t ful­ly get what Roivant is try­ing to do?

That said, it stings a lit­tle to be val­ued un­der cash, be­cause it im­plies peo­ple think we may not be pro­duc­tive in de­ploy­ing cap­i­tal and I would have hoped that our whole his­to­ry, and most def­i­nite­ly in­clud­ing this trans­ac­tion, sug­gests we can be ef­fi­cient stew­ards.

You ob­vi­ous­ly have a good sense of in­vestors’ puls­es and what they want­ed/dreamed of

In par­tic­u­lar, to go back to your trans­for­ma­tion­al po­ten­tial idea: any changes in what this bal­ance sheet al­lows Roivant to con­sid­er in deal size or the num­ber of deals?

I have no pa­tience

The im­plic­it con­clu­sion there is, now we can ap­proach sim­i­lar op­por­tu­ni­ties with even high­er con­vic­tion.

You two share a unique sit­u­a­tion in hav­ing your boss run for pres­i­dent. Drew men­tioned how it was le­git­i­mate­ly chal­leng­ing, it be­ing a dis­trac­tion even in telling every­one how it’s not a dis­trac­tion

Most­ly I can tru­ly say it hasn’t mat­tered a lot. In­vestors have judged us large­ly, frankly, for things that have hap­pened since he left – the ac­qui­si­tion of the TL1A, the de­vel­op­ment of IMVT-1402, the launch of VTA­MA, etc.

But that sounds about right

And it’s chal­leng­ing be­cause we want peo­ple to fo­cus on what we’re ac­tu­al­ly do­ing — de­vel­op­ing med­i­cines — and it’s just a rea­son for peo­ple to look at Roivant through some oth­er lens, and that doesn’t help us do our job bet­ter.

How of­ten did Drew talk to Michael while he was run­ning?

So I am both sym­pa­thet­ic, and cu­ri­ous

I think there haven’t been too many of those threads, to be hon­est, but we’ve spent more time talk­ing about Ax­o­vant, where the lead pro­gram failed in 2017, than I think we would oth­er­wise. And our DEI pro­gram­ming – of which I am proud, though there’s al­ways more work to do – has got­ten as much ink as some of our late stage drugs.

Let’s piv­ot back to the re­al star of this Slack though – in par­tic­u­lar a 2006 vin­tage of Matt Gline

Ac­tu­al­ly, on a sad note, I was re­cent­ly re­flect­ing on that be­cause one of my Crim­son ed­i­tors, a class­mate of mine, passed away un­ex­pect­ed­ly.

Look­ing at that now, how does that hold up? What sur­pris­es you most about how tech­nol­o­gy has changed?

I was a ‘late join­er of the ear­ly in­ter­net,’ is prob­a­bly how I’d put it. So I sort of re­mem­ber the last ves­tiges of this weird bot­toms-up hack­er-built aca­d­e­m­ic place, and it wasn’t per­fect but the home­brew feel of it was, in hind­sight, in many ways a lot more be­nign than what we have now.

Or have you got­ten a shade more cyn­i­cal since col­lege (gasp)

I have def­i­nite­ly got­ten more cyn­i­cal since col­lege.

What were your fa­vorite & least fa­vorite parts of work­ing in bank­ing?

Al­so, fi­nan­cial prob­lems are gen­er­al­ly in­ter­est­ing and com­pli­cat­ed, and I feel like un­der­stand­ing some small piece of how the fi­nan­cial mar­kets work has served me well as I’ve turned my at­ten­tion to oth­er com­pli­cat­ed in­ter­est­ing prob­lems.

That said, one les­son that is as true for biotech as it was for Lehman: stay­ing alive is a pre-req­ui­site to every­thing else.

It’s easy to list missed op­por­tu­ni­ties. A bunch of VC firms have pages of their fail­ures, which are lists of com­pa­nies they passed on that went on to make it big. We had tried to in-li­cense the IL-17af that is now the main as­set at Moon­lake and that looks like a great drug. But the truth is the op­por­tu­ni­ties you don’t take nev­er stick out that sharply in the rear-view mir­ror, it’s just too busy. So it’s hard to know.

I even got to drag in my ed­i­tor and have him dis­cuss Michael Bloomberg, so thank you for that and for tak­ing the time. Who should we in­vite next to the Slack room?

re­al­ly en­joyed it

So you could do him?

Have a great day!