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Strategies & Market Trends : YEEHAW CANDIDATES -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Crossy who wrote (2412)	6/28/2003 7:18:15 PM
From: Sergio H	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 23958

Crossy, thanks for the lead on Mark Lampertz and BVF. I am not familiar with this fund manager and the fund. In doing a search, I found there is a thread here on SI dedicated to BVF and that you have already found this thread. I've bookmarked it. Thanks again. While looking for more info on Lampertz and BVF I found the following article at Morningstar.com providing an exellent summary of the current status of the biotech sector. < Biotech Is Back! 06-24-03 06:02 AM EST \| Great News on the Product Front and a Rebound in the Capital Markets Has Reignited Investor Enthusiasm ... /PRNewswire/ -- "Strong earnings, significant product approvals, steady deal flow, and now interest blossoming on Wall Street (again) -- the biotech industry is showing that it has what it takes ... and investors are buying," said G. Steven Burrill, CEO of Burrill & Company, a San Francisco-based life sciences merchant bank. Since the start of 2003, the Burrill Biotech Select Index has risen nearly 50%, outperforming both the DJIA (up 12% YTD) and the NASDAQ (up 25% YTD). "While we haven't seen this level of investor enthusiasm since the genomics 'bubble', we're by no means back to those extraordinary values nor on the cusp of a new bubble ... just at the start of a recovery from the massive biotech devaluation of the last three years," Burrill commented. "At the end of June 2000, the market capitalization for the biotech industry was $475 billion, while at close of business on June 16, it was $301 billion, still off by more than 35%," he said. "What's interesting is that biotech has far more intrinsic value than it did in 2000. Biotech sales and revenue in 2002 was $42.7 billion versus $32 billion in 2000, an improvement of more than one third. More biotech products have now been approved, and there are nearly 400 products in late stage clinical trials," noted Burrill. "The platform companies took a huge beating last year, but the Burrill Genomics Index has gained 39% since the start of 2003 and that recovery has been based on improved sales, companies meeting their expectations, and technology validation, not hype," he said. "Indeed, with the ImClone debacle, we saw the surrogates for value that Wall Street had always embraced, disintegrate," recalled Burrill. "That, coupled with economic uncertainty and global insecurity made for a very rough ride on Wall Street. As a result, the biotech industry was forced into 'survival mode' and although some companies had to close their doors, others restructured, refocused and refinanced," he said. "Biotech is definitely back in vogue, but what we've seen thus far is mostly the recovery of lost value, rather than industry expansion," he noted. "There have been no IPOs in this industry for four consecutive quarters, and the question on everyone's lips is 'when will the IPO window reopen?' Our answer: during the next several months ... we expect to see as many as a dozen IPOs before the end of 2003 ... barring any major economic or global surprises," Burrill said. "There is still tremendous upside in this industry," added Burrill. "Right now the publicly traded US biotech industry is worth approximately 0.8x the value of Pfizer and Merck combined (see chart below). "One has but to look at biotech's recent track record with the FDA to see that we are at a turning point. We've seen a number of novel drugs receive the FDA's blessing in 2003 and the 'new' FDA commissioner, Mark McClellan is delivering on his promise to facilitate a speedier drug approval process," Burrill said. > This is just a portion of the article. For the complete article: news.morningstar.com