BioNTech: Broader appeal
After years of weak performance in the biotech sector, BioNTech has secured a landmark partnership with Bristol Myers Squibb, worth up to $11.1bn. This deal is a major validation of BioNTech’s cancer pipeline and supports Neil’s thesis: the market is undervaluing mature biotech firms. BioNTech was up 20% yesterday on the news.
First published in Noise Cancelling
The biotech sector has performed poorly for some years across all developed economy markets, but that performance is particularly pronounced in the US. Over the last five years, whilst the S&P is up 85%, the NASDAQ biotech index is flat.
There are many reasons for this poor period of performance. Arguably, coming into this period, biotech stocks were overvalued, but the sector has also struggled to compete for investor attention compared with the tech sector, especially the MAG 7.
However, this legacy of poor performance has left many high-quality companies in the sector, especially the more mature biotechs with later-stage pipelines and significant revenues, trading on very low valuations compared with their history and with the ratings of larger, slower-growing global pharma companies.
Some of these high-quality biotech companies are ones I've written about, including BioNTech, which is in the news today. In a very important announcement, BioNTech has revealed that it has signed a global strategic partnership deal with Bristol Myers Squibb (BMS), a US-listed global pharma major capitalised at just under $100bn. In the deal, BMS will pay BioNTech as much as $11.1bn to license a new, “next generation” cancer drug currently in development at BioNTech. Under the terms of the deal, BMS will pay BioNTech an upfront of $1.5bn, $2bn in instalments through to 2028 and up to $7.6bn in milestone payments. The partners will equally split this potential drug’s development and manufacturing costs and any profits from its commercialisation.
This is an especially important deal for BioNTech, which is striving to demonstrate that there is much more to the business than its COVID-19 vaccine franchise. Interestingly, BioNTech licensed this drug (BNT327) from a Chinese biotech business (Biotheus) in 2023 and later bought the entire company for up to $950 million.
I've written about BioNTech specifically for its development pipeline in cancer, the value of which has been ignored by the stock market. Although the company has yet to commercialise this product or any other drug in its late-stage pipeline (other than its COVID-19 vaccine), this deal is critical validation of the quality and appeal of the company’s technology and broader potential.
BioNTech’s shares were up just over 20% yesterday on the back of this very important deal, which brings the business's EV up to €10.6bn (the business had €13.5bn of net cash on its balance sheet prior to this deal).
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