What Are the Biggest Risks to Biotech?

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One of the risks that investors generally worry about when you think about healthcare and especially therapeutics and medicine is the price of medicine. Today about a third of patients don't fill their prescriptions because of the copays that they can't afford. And just recently we had passage of what was called the IRA or the Inflation Reduction Act. That was for the first time in more than 25 years of trying to address drug pricing.

On today’s show we’ll discuss another empty room – an opportunity ignored by most investors because they either don’t want to or can’t participate. Andy Acker is a Portfolio Manager at our anchor sponsor, Janus Henderson Investors, where he manages the firm’s healthcare strategies. Janus Henderson is a global asset manager with $300B in assets under management, and Andy oversees the firm’s Global Life Sciences strategy and its Biotechnology strategy. Biotech stocks have been crushed despite significant advances in drug development, making it a proverbial empty room with only specialists and contrarians left standing. Our conversation starts with Andy’s path to becoming a healthcare investor, scientific innovation over his time at Janus Henderson, translation of science into commercial success for businesses, and the 90/90 rule for how stocks behave. We then turn to his investment process across filtering ideas, research, assessment of management teams and commercial success, portfolio construction, trading around names, and private crossover investing. We close with Andy’s perspective on opportunities and risks to the space from here, and green shoots he sees that might fill seats in the empty room. For full show notes, visit the episode webpage here. Learn More Follow Ted on Twitter at @tseides or LinkedIn Subscribe to the mailing list Access Transcript with Premium Membership