Name: Biotechnology sector rides wave of vaccine rollouts
Uploaded: 2021-03-11T19:00:50.000Z
Duration: 6 min 14 s
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Focus today is biotechnology, and our guest is Patrick Healy, president of Caliber Financial Partners Reputation Early and financially, it has been a good year for biotechnology, especially drugmakers.

The global race for a coronavirus vaccine has propelled some pharmaceutical companies to household names.

And with billions more people to be inoculated, there are billions of dollars to be made.

This index, the NASDAQ Biotechnology Index, has managed to return 35% over the past year, although it is unchanged since the beginning of the year.

Some of the names that make up this index you might recognize, such as AstraZeneca and Madonna.

But as you can see, investing in biotech is not only about vaccines can also be risky for individual investors who do not benefit from detailed knowledge of these companies and their products dreams.

Hey, Patrick, thank you so much for joining us.

Do you think the oversized returns for this sector, according to that index, is especially reliant on the pandemic?

And will this trend hole this year well, 2020 obviously the covid, uh, pandemic has has dominated the news headlines and for good reason.

I'm impressed with how quickly pharma has really galvanized efforts and resources to finding treatments and a cure.

But that being said, the biotech space is always one that, uh, is a good investable thesis in terms of outcomes, not just for covid, but for other terminal illnesses and hard to treat diseases.

And so I do expect that to continue in 2010 now, Patrick, total deal values of bio farmer Therapeutics and MedTech companies fell by almost a third last year.

According to a deal, former as big farmer focus on developing vaccines to fight and stem the pandemic.

Will this trend still be in play this year?

And how will it affect investment in this sector?

Yeah, So I do think that a lot of the deal volume was put in the background during 2020 and for good reason.

Uh, the focus and priority was on, uh, finding a treatment for covid.

Um, that being said, I do think covid is going to be a seasonal, uh, issue.

And so there will continue to be efforts dedicated to that.

But there are a number of other ailments and diseases that do not go away, and so the treatments will continue for those efforts.

And I do think there's gonna be a lot of consolidation now that we're into 2021.

It looks like we're making a lot of headway with Covid.

Now, aside from vaccines, what else should investors watch out for in this biotech space?

Yeah, so I spend a lot of time focusing on biotech, and I think it's It's a sector that's ripe for consolidation.

Uh, you have large format names that, um, look to acquire small and mid cap companies that have promising drug treatments.

I think that continues very expensive and time consuming to put a drug through clinical trials and ultimately commercialize it.

And so if a farm that can inquiry a promising technology for small and mid cap name and a leapfrog that process replenish the pipeline for their drugs are going off patent, I think that will continue in 2021.

Some of the areas that I think are most prevalent for consolidation oncology players are always hot.

It's very difficult to treat certain types of cancer.

And so that's an area that is often targeted for consolidation, immunotherapy, rare diseases, gene therapy, some of the breakthrough technology.

So given all that you've said, and if you're an investor that once exposure to this space, how would you invest?

Would you say focus on Big Farmer rather than the small appears?

Well, you have to define what type of investor you are.

If you're more of a risk averse value investor, then you're sticking to form of big pharma names.

They tend to be more mature companies with more predictable cash flows.

A lot of them pay dividends, and so that's a good area, lets you sleep well at night.

Um, if you're a bit more risk appetite than I think, the bigger opportunities are in the biotech sector, where they may be acquisition targets for a large farm, it comes with more volatility.

And so you have to understand that some of the early stage companies or mid stage companies they made developing a drug that, uh, there's binary outcome.

Either they get approved by the FDA or they don't and so you'll see a lot of volatility around those names.

So just be careful thanks very much, Patrick Healy there from caliber financial partners before I go here.

Some of the top news in the sector the European Union's drugs regulator has given the green light to Johnson and Johnson's single dose Covid 19 vaccine as a block seeks to speed up its inoculation campaign.

The shot is the fourth to be endorsed in the EU after those made by Pfizer, AstraZeneca and Madonna.

Denmark and Norway have temporarily suspended the use of AstraZeneca shots after reports of the formation of blood clots in some who have been injected.

Denmark said the 14 day suspension was a quote, cautionary decision.

The move comes after Austria stopped using a batch of AstraZeneca shots while investigating a death, while the EU Medicines Agency said there was no evidence so far linking AstraZeneca to the Austria cases.

Fighter will consider making its coronavirus vaccine outside the United States and Europe only after the pandemic supply phase is over, adding it is currently not talking to India over local production.

Sources told Reuters on Wednesday that the U.

S drugmaker had told the Indian government it wanted to produce the vaccine locally, have assured faster approval and freedom on pricing and exports.

 That's your roundup of the biotech sector. 