| | | Life sciences stocks fall on NIH funding concerns
Jan. 23, 2025 12:55 PM ET
By: Val Brickates Kennedy, SA News Editor
 Grandbrothers/iStock Editorial via Getty Images
Life sciences stocks were in retreat Thursday after the news outlet Science reported that newly imposed restrictions on the National Institutes of Health by the Trump administration have stoked concerns in the research community about future support.
Shares of 10x Genomics (NASDAQ: TXG) and Pacific Biosciences of California (NASDAQ: PACB), also known as PacBio, both fell 10%, while Illumina (NASDAQ: ILMN) and Bio-Rad ( BIO) shares fell 5% and 4%, respectively. Shares of Qiagen ( QGEN) and Bruker ( BRKR) slid 3%, with shares of Thermo Fisher Scientific ( TMO), Charles River Laboratories ( CRL) and Revvity ( RVTY) slipping 1%.
Late Wednesday, Science reported that the incoming administration had already imposed a "wide range of restrictions" on the NIH, including the cancellation of grant review meetings.
“The impact of the collective executive orders and directives appears devastating,” one senior NIH employee told Science.
In a note released Thursday, UBS said the new administration and both chambers of Congress had "appetite to reform the NIH."
"We expect the NIH budget to be flat to declining in the next few years and ex-U.S. academic funding to be muted as well. The newly imposed restrictions are consistent with our cautious view," UBS added.
UBS said that in its area of coverage, genomics companies 10x (NASDAQ: TXG), PacBio (NASDAQ: PACB) and Illumina (NASDAQ: ILMN) were the most exposed to potential cuts in U.S. academic/government spending.
UBS added that 10x ( TXG) and PacBio ( PACB) had greater than 20% exposure to the NIH budget and that it expected 2025 to be "a challenging year" for genomic technology companies. |
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