RE: How to Build and Sell a Biotech in 2024 | Transcript25 Aug 2024 15:38
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Bill Muery
If you're running a company, you should have a very well developed point of view. Not the CFOs point of view, not a banker's point of view of what the intrinsic value of your business is. When you're managing the balance sheet and cash flow, you're worried about the low end of the range, and when you're trying to sell your company, you're thinking about the upper end of the range. And I think you really have to be realistic, because in my experience, if there's a mistake companies make, the smaller companies, biotech or emerging biopharma, is you overestimate the marketability your product and you underestimate about five things. Time to market. Investment basic risk. And you underestimate the inertia in the market, how hard it is to get market access. All those things and if you have that well developed view, your buyers are going to have it too. They know exactly what they think it's worth. And it doesn't matter what you think it's worth. It only matters what they think it's worth. And then, of course, if it turns into a competitive process, then all of a sudden, intrinsic value is here, and then there's a market value. And there are a number of different reasons these premiums reach 70, 80, 90% or more. But start with, what's the intrinsic value of the business? And people can debate all the assumptions. The assumptions and say, ‘well, they're just assumptions.’ You have to go on if someone's going to write a check. The decisions that some of these large companies, they serious decisions. They need. They don't want to get too many of them wrong. I think the equity research analysts and the point of view in research is incredibly valuable for buyers and sellers, because they'll think about it different, will challenge the conventional wisdom of a management team, and there is validation when investors believe in the potential of business, when analysts believe in the potential of business, as long as it's a balanced sort of presentation of the fact, I think it's really important to make do some of these deals, especially the larger you know, when you get into 5, 10, 15 billion or more, those are not small bets, no matter how much money people have.