June 2024 - For the past 2–3 years, biotechnology investors and large pharmaceutical
companies alike have been keen to buy late-stage assets—drug candidates that have
already been tested in humans, which minimizes the amount of risk a buyer would take
on.
If decision-makers at the 2024 BIO International Convention in San Diego are to be
believed, that’s about to change. Business development heads at pharmaceutical
giants including Bayer, Johnson & Johnson, and Novo Nordisk are publicly discussing
their willingness to acquire, or at least partner on, preclinical and Phase 1 drug
candidates.
“Oftentimes, you will actually have more value-creating opportunities with early-to-mid
stage deals,” Nauman Shah, global head of business development for Johnson &
Johnson’s Janssen division, said on stage on Monday. “For us, it’s not necessarily
about struggling with finding the capital to fund a large deal.”
Indeed, Big Pharma is collectively sitting on a veritable ton of cash: more than
$1 trillion at the end of March, according to EY’s latest Beyond Borders report.
Arda Ural, EY’s Americas industry market leader for health sciences and wellness,
estimated during a webinar at the end of May that pharma firms had $1.4 trillion
sitting in balance sheets, “ready to be deployed.” That number goes up several
fold if securities are taken into account, Ural said.
https://cen.acs.org/business/finance/BIO-International-Convention-whispers-Mreturn/102/web/
2024/06