Not all gloom and doom

Biotech’s nuclear winter is beginning to thaw ever so slowly, but the good old rah-rah days aren’t coming back, warned Simon Gill, Managing Director and Co-Head of Healthcare Investment Banking for RBC Capital Markets in New York.

Mr. Gill’s forecast at the close of this year’s BioContact conference in Quebec City was much more upbeat than his gloomy outlook last year that left many in the luncheon audience shell-shocked.

“The worst is behind us and better days are ahead,” he predicted, pointing out that large and mid-sized biotech companies are doing well.

But challenges remain for smaller companies. There is capital available from Big Pharma, large biotech and institutional investors “to fund promising product development,” he contended, but “not for general research and not general and administrative (expenses).”

For almost all small biotech companies, “shareholders are looking for a profitable cash sale of the company sometime in the future,” he said.

“Success is now defined as progressing a worthwhile project to the next meaningful milestone, resulting in value creation for shareholders, happy and fulfilled employees, and potential benefits to patients and society.”