MLB Trade Rumors and News: MLB announces Silver Slugger winners with Braves and White Sox biggest winners
MLB Trade Rumors and News: MLB announces Silver Slugger winners with Braves and White Sox biggest winners
The Silver Slugger awards were announced last night with a good mix of familiar and new faces with a good helping of Braves and White Sox players.
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- With everything going on in the world, it is easy to overlook that MLB decided this week was the ideal week to announce several awards including the Silver Slugger awards. That announcement took place last night with the Braves and White Sox leading the way with four and three selections respectively. Also, Mike Trout won his eighth Silver Slugger because of course he did.
- The Red Sox have an opening in their manager chair and according to a report from MLB.com, they recently talked to their old manager, Alex Cora, about a possible reunion. This is noteworthy not only as the usual rumor, but also because Cora was the Red Sox manager before the two sides parted ways due to Cora’s role in the Astros’ sign stealing scandal. Not sure what has changed since Cora was suspended for the 2020 season to make that option desirable, but here we are.
- Most Americans were probably focused on a different election than the one that determined the results of the Rawlings Gold Glove Awards on Tuesday night, but MLB went ahead and announced the winners anyway. A trio of defenders who are putting together legendary resumes were the most notable winners, as Nolan Arenado won his eighth straight Gold Glove, Alex Gordon won for a fourth straight year and an eighth (and final) time overall, and Mookie Betts won for the fifth straight year. But a flurry of players also won for the first time, including Evan White, César Hernández, J.P. Crawford, Javier Báez, Isiah Kiner-Falefa, Tyler O’Neill, Luis Robert, Trent Grisham, Joey Gallo, Griffin Canning, and Max Fried.
- Trevor Bauer is one of the most intriguing free agents on the market this offseason.
- The BBWAA awards finalists were announced on Monday evening without any huge surprises even if a bit of nitpicking could be done. Freddie Freeman remains the heavy favorite for NL MVP, Shane Bieber is the frontrunner for the AL Cy Young, and Don Mattingly will probably win Manager of the Year despite his team nearly torpedoing the entire MLB season and getting lucky to get into the postseason.
- Six MLB free agents have received qualifying offers, including Trevor Bauer and D.J. LeMahieu. They have until November 11th at 5 PM to accept or decline. This year’s qualifying offer was worth $18.9M and in a class with weak free agents, it could be a huge lowball for what some of these players will be worth if they enter free agency.
- The Rays have declined 2021 options on Charlie Morton and Mike Zunino, setting them free while breaking hearts everywhere.
- No surprise here. The Tigers have hired A.J. Hinch as their new manager. Some may even say this is an extension of Hinch’s punishment from the Astros’ cheating scandal.
- In another bizarre but fantastic move, the White Sox have hired Tony La Russa as their manager. Why yes, he is coming out of a decade long retirement to manage the White Sox. I’m almost excited as you are for what chaos will transpire.
- The Rangers declined Corey Kluber’s option for 2021, releasing him to this abysmal free agent market. This comes as a shock to no one given the injury laden and outright depressing season that Kluber faced this year.
- Staying in line with people parting ways, the Cardinals are not exercising Kolten Wong’s option.
- Maybe some happiness can finally come to Queens. Steve Cohen’s purchase of Mets has officially gone through, thus ending the dark Wilpon cloud that has been looming over the borough.
- The Marlins have exercised their option on Starling Marte for 2021, to the surprise of exactly no one.
- The Dodgers snapped the 10th-longest championship drought in baseball — one that was often infuriating for fans of a team that is consistently near the top of the league in payroll and has won the NL West for eight straight seasons — by defeating the Rays in Game 6 of the World Series on Tuesday night. Los Angeles took advantage of an extremely puzzling decision by Rays manager Kevin Cash to pull starter Blake Snell after he threw just 73 pitches and allowed just one hit over 5.1 innings. With the potential tying run on first base, Cash inserted reliever Nick Anderson, who had allowed runs in six straight appearances, and sure enough, he extended the streak to seven games, as he first allowed Austin Barnes to score from third on a wild pitch, then gave up the go-ahead run as Corey Seager grounded into an RBI fielder’s choice. Mookie Betts hit a solo homer in the eighth to finish off the Dodgers’ scoring in a 3-1 victory.
- Unfortunately, the good vibes surrounding the Dodgers’ World Series victory were quickly sullied as it was revealed that Dodgers third baseman Justin Turner had tested positive for COVID-19, explaining manager Dave Roberts’ decision to pull him prior to the eighth inning of Game 6. As if MLB’s decision to proceed with a game involving an infected player wasn’t controversial enough, Turner then returned to the field to celebrate with the trophy, participate in a non-socially distant team photo (he pulled his mask down for the occasion), and kiss his wife on the field. When asked how Turner managed to participate in the celebration, president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman was quoted as saying, “I don’t think there was anyone that was going to stop him from going out,” per the New York Daily News’ Bradford William Davis.
- Astros reliever Josh James underwent surgery to repair a labral tear in his left hip, Chandler Rome of the Houston Chronicle reports. He’ll be out of commission for 6-8 months, meaning he’ll miss the beginning of the 2021 season...that is, granted, if it starts on time next year. The 27-year old threw for a 7.27 ERA this season.
- Yankees bench coach Carlos Mendoza has kept busy this offseason by interviewing for many of the managerial vacancies across the league, George A. King III of the New York Post reports. He has emerged as a top candidate with the Red Sox and the Tigers. The 40-year old was once a player within the Yankees farm system and was promoted to the Major League coaching staff as a quality control coach and infield instructor just before the 2018 season. He was promoted to bench coach last season. Whether either team is serious about Mendoza or are just waiting out Alex Cora’s and A.J. Hinch’s suspensions to be up once the World Series is over is still up in the air, but I guess we’ll find out in the next few days if it was all just smoke and mirrors.
- The Marlins have split with president of baseball operations Mike Hill. Odd considering this was the first season in 17 years that the Marlins have made it to the playoffs.
- Speaking of a front office shuffle, after firing Billy Eppler last month, the Angels are already forming a shortlist of who they want to replace him. Jon Morosi of MLB Network reports that they’re assembling a growing list of candidates.
- The baseball world at large lost another legend as Hall of Famer Joe Morgan passed away. Morgan is the latest on a growing list of baseball legends who have passed away in 2020. In related news, 2020 is the absolute worst.
- The Chicago White Sox were one of the league’s more fun stories in the regular season with a bunch of young talent on their roster and a surprising run to the playoffs. However, after an early exit from the playoffs, the organization felt the need to make a move and parted ways with manager Rick Renteria.
- The Red Sox owners group might be taking the company public, in case you want to get a little piece of the action. Fenway Sports LLC is in special negations with a special acquisitions company that would bring them public, reports Cara Lombardo and Miriam Gottfried of the Wall Street Journal. After going public, Fenway Sports would be valued at $8B, giving the acquisition company, RedBall Acquisitions, a $1.575B minority share. Don’t worry Red Sox fans, John Henry will still maintain majority control of the group.
- Hall of Famer Whitey Ford has passed away at age 91.
- The Reds got some less than ideal news recently as their president of baseball operations, Dick Williams, resigned. There isn’t really a sordid reason for Williams’ decision, as he just wants to spend more time with family and work on ventures outside of baseball. His former right-hand man, Nick Krall, will now oversee the team’s baseball operations department.
- After five disappointing and cringeworthy seasons, Matt Klentak has stepped down as Phillies’ GM. The 40-year old with be reassigned a new role within the club, one that the Phillies have yet to announce and frankly we’re scared to hear. While Klentak was great when it came to blockbuster and exciting deals like Brycer Harper and J.T. Realmuto, he could never quite seem to get lasting depth in the bullpen.
- Francisco Cervelli has announced his retirement on Instagram, reports Jason Mackey of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Signed by the Yankees out of Venezuela in 2003, the veteran backstop didn’t make his name in the league until 2008. After bouncing to Pittsburg and a brief stint in Atlanta, he signed a one-year deal with the Marlins last season. Cervelli slashed a career average .268/.358/.382, earning what FanGraphs has has doled out to him: a career 18 WAR.
- The Astros announced that they’ve signed first baseman Yuli Gurriel to a one-year extension with a club option for 2022. They’ll be hoping he bounces back during a more normal season next year after struggling during the pandemic-shortened 2020 campaign.
- The Angels have fired general manager Billy Eppler, as The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal first reported. Eppler had one year left on his contract after being given an extension last year. He joined the team during the 2015 offseason and was a part of many of the team’s major moves, such as signing Shohei Ohtani and Anthony Rendon and locking down Mike Trout for an extension. While replacement talks may not start in earnest until this weird postseason is done, it will be interesting to see who owner Arte Moreno has on his mind to replace him.
- Alex Gordon has been a critical part of the Royals over the last 14 seasons. While Father Time has really caught up with him in recent seasons, Gordon was one of main reasons that the Royals reached back to back World Series in 2014 and 2015. Now, after a long and successful career, he has decided to retire.
- News that comes as a shock to no one and was pretty much just a matter of time: Astros’ Justin Verlander will undergo Tommy John surgery. The poor timing of Verlander’s surgery will almost certainly put a kibosh on his 2021 season as well, which, oh you guessed it, is the end of his contract with the Astros.
- Despite the fact that he was elected to a new four-year term last year, Minor League Baseball president Pat O’Conner announced that he’ll be retiring after the season. This seems like bad news for the future of MiLB as we know it, as there’s a strong possibility that his position will be eliminated upon his departure as part of Rob Manfred’s “One Baseball” plan — one that would give the commissioner’s office much more authority over MiLB and calls for massive contraction in the minors. While O’Conner played a major role in the growth and development of Minor League Baseball, his legacy is tainted by the fact that he very publicly advocated against minor leaguers having a right to a living wage.
International
EyePoint poaches medical chief from Apellis; Sandoz CFO, longtime BioNTech exec to retire
Ramiro Ribeiro
After six years as head of clinical development at Apellis Pharmaceuticals, Ramiro Ribeiro is joining EyePoint Pharmaceuticals as CMO.
“The…
After six years as head of clinical development at Apellis Pharmaceuticals, Ramiro Ribeiro is joining EyePoint Pharmaceuticals as CMO.
“The retinal community is relatively small, so everybody knows each other,” Ribeiro told Endpoints News in an interview. “As soon as I started to talk about EyePoint, I got really good feedback from KOLs and physicians on its scientific standards and quality of work.”
Ribeiro kicked off his career as a clinician in Brazil, earning a doctorate in stem cell therapy for retinal diseases. He previously held roles at Alcon and Ophthotech Corporation, now known as Astellas’ M&A prize Iveric Bio.
At Apellis, Ribeiro oversaw the Phase III development, filing and approval of Syfovre, the first drug for geographic atrophy secondary to age-related macular degeneration (AMD). The complement C3 inhibitor went on to make $275 million in 2023 despite reports of a rare side effect that only emerged after commercialization.
Now, Ribeiro is hoping to replicate that success with EyePoint’s lead candidate, EYP-1901 for wet AMD, which is set to enter the Phase III LUGANO trial in the second half of the year after passing a Phase II test in December.
Ribeiro told Endpoints he was optimistic about the company’s intraocular sustained-delivery tech, which he said could help address treatment burden and compliance issues seen with injectables. He also has plans to expand the EyePoint team.
“My goal is not just execution of the Phase III study — of course that’s a priority — but also looking at the pipeline and which different assets we can bring in to leverage the strength of the team that we have,” Ribeiro said.
— Ayisha Sharma
→ Sandoz CFO Colin Bond will retire on June 30 and board member Remco Steenbergen will replace him. Steenbergen, who will step down from the board when he takes over on July 1, had a 20-year career with Philips and has held the group CFO post at Deutsche Lufthansa since January 2021. Bond joined Sandoz nearly two years ago and is the former finance chief at Evotec and Vifor Pharma. Investors didn’t react warmly to Wednesday’s news as shares fell by almost 4%.
The Swiss generics and biosimilars company, which finally split from Novartis in October 2023, has also nominated FogPharma CEO Mathai Mammen to the board of directors. The ex-R&D chief at J&J will be joined by two other new faces, Swisscom chairman Michael Rechsteiner and former Unilever CFO Graeme Pitkethly.
On Monday, Sandoz said it completed its $70 million purchase of Coherus BioSciences’ Lucentis biosimilar Cimerli sooner than expected. The FDA then approved its first two biosimilars of Amgen’s denosumab the next day, in a move that could whittle away at the pharma giant’s market share for Prolia and Xgeva.
→ BioNTech’s chief business and commercial officer Sean Marett will retire on July 1 and will have an advisory role “until the end of the year,” the German drugmaker said in a release. Legal chief James Ryan will assume CBO responsibilities and BioNTech plans to name a new chief commercial officer by the end of the month. Marett was hired as BioNTech’s COO in 2012 after gigs at GSK, Evotec and Next Pharma, and led its commercial efforts as the Pfizer-partnered Comirnaty received the first FDA approval for a Covid-19 vaccine. BioNTech has also built a cancer portfolio that TD Cowen’s Yaron Werber described as “one of the most extensive” in biotech, from antibody-drug conjugates to CAR-T therapies.
→ GSK has plucked Chris Austin from Flagship and he’ll start his new gig as the pharma giant’s SVP, research technologies on April 1. After a long career at NIH in which he was director of the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS), Austin became CEO of Flagship’s Vesalius Therapeutics, which debuted with a $75 million Series A two years ago this week but made job cuts that affected 43% of its employees six months into the life of the company. In response to Austin’s departure, John Mendlein — who chairs the board at Sail Biomedicines and has board seats at a few other Flagship biotechs — will become chairman and interim CEO at Vesalius “later this month.”
→ BioMarin has lined up Cristin Hubbard to replace Jeff Ajer as chief commercial officer on May 20. Hubbard worked for new BioMarin chief Alexander Hardy as Genentech’s SVP, global product strategy, immunology, infectious diseases and ophthalmology, and they had been colleagues for years before Hardy was named Genentech CEO in 2019. She shifted to Roche Diagnostics as global head of partnering in 2021 and had been head of global product strategy for Roche’s pharmaceutical division since last May. Sales of the hemophilia A gene therapy Roctavian have fallen well short of expectations, but Hardy insisted in a recent investor call that BioMarin is “still very much at the early stage” in the launch.
→ BeiGene has promoted Pilar de la Rocha to head of Europe, global clinical operations. After 13 years in a variety of roles at Novartis, de la Rocha was named global head of global clinical operations excellence at the Brukinsa maker in the summer of 2022. A short time ago, BeiGene ended its natural killer cell therapy alliance with Shoreline Biosciences, saying that it was “a result of BeiGene’s internal prioritization decisions and does not reflect any deficit in Shoreline’s platform technology.”
→ Andy Crockett has resigned as CEO of KalVista Pharmaceuticals. Crockett had been running the company since its launch in 2011 and will hand the keys to president Ben Palleiko, who joined KalVista in 2016 as CFO. Serious safety issues ended a Phase II study of its hereditary angioedema drug KVD824, but KalVista is mounting a comeback with positive Phase III results for sebetralstat in the same indication and could compete with Takeda’s injectable Firazyr. “If approved, sebetralstat may offer a compelling treatment option for patients and their caregivers given the long-standing preference for an effective and safe oral therapy that provides rapid symptom relief for HAE attacks,” Crockett said last month.
→ Vaxart has tapped Steven Lo as its permanent president and CEO, while interim chief Michael Finney will stay on as chairman. Endpoints News last caught up with Lo when he became CEO at Valitor, the UC Berkeley spinout that raised a $28 million Series B round in October 2022. The ex-Zosano Pharma CEO had a handful of roles in his 13 years at Genentech before his appointments as chief commercial officer of Corcept Therapeutics and Puma Biotechnology. Andrei Floroiu resigned as Vaxart’s CEO in mid-January.
→ Kartik Krishnan has taken over for Martin Driscoll as CEO of OncoNano Medicine, and Melissa Paoloni has moved up to COO at the cancer biotech located in the Dallas-Fort Worth suburb of Southlake. The execs were colleagues at Arcus Biosciences, Gilead’s TIGIT partner: Krishnan spent two and a half years in the CMO post, while Paoloni was VP of corporate development and external alliances. In 2022, Krishnan took the CMO job at OncoNano and was just promoted to president and head of R&D last November. Paoloni came on board as OncoNano’s SVP, corporate development and strategy not long after Krishnan’s first promotion.
→ Genesis Research Group, a consultancy specializing in market access, has brought in David Miller as chairman and CEO, replacing co-founder Frank Corvino — who is transitioning to the role of vice chairman and senior advisor. Miller joins the New Jersey-based team with a number of roles under his belt from Biogen (SVP of global market access), Elan (VP of pharmacoeconomics) and GSK (VP of global health outcomes).
→ Adrian Schreyer helped build Exscientia’s AI drug discovery platform from the ground up, but he has packed his bags for Nimbus Therapeutics’ AI partner Anagenex. The new chief technology officer joined Exscientia in 2013 as head of molecular informatics and was elevated to technology chief five years later. He then held the role of VP, AI technology until January, a month before Exscientia fired CEO Andrew Hopkins.
→ Paul O’Neill has been promoted from SVP to EVP, quality & operations, specialty brands at Mallinckrodt. Before his arrival at the Irish pharma in March 2023, O’Neill was executive director of biologics operations in the second half of his 12-year career with Merck driving supply strategy for Keytruda. Mallinckrodt’s specialty brands portfolio includes its controversial Acthar Gel (a treatment for flares in a number of chronic and autoimmune indications) and the hepatorenal syndrome med Terlivaz.
→ Staying in Ireland, Prothena has enlisted David Ford as its first chief people officer. Ford worked in human resources at Sanofi from 2002-17 and then led the HR team at Intercept, which was sold to Italian pharma Alfasigma in late September. We recently told you that Daniel Welch, the former InterMune CEO who was a board member at Intercept for six years, will succeed Lars Ekman as Prothena’s chairman.
→ Co-founded by Sanofi R&D chief Houman Ashrafian and backed by GSK, Eli Lilly partner Sitryx stapled an additional $39 million to its Series A last fall. It has now welcomed a pair of execs: Ben Stephens (COO) had been finance director for ViaNautis Bio and Rinri Therapeutics, and Gordon Dingwall (head of clinical operations) is a Roche and AstraZeneca vet who led development operations at Mission Therapeutics. Dingwall has also served as a clinical operations leader for Shionogi and Freeline Therapeutics.
→ MBrace Therapeutics, an antibody-drug conjugate specialist that nabbed $85 million in Series B financing last November, has named Steve Alley as CSO. Alley spent two decades at Seagen before the $43 billion buyout by Pfizer and was the ADC maker’s executive director, translational sciences.
→ California cancer drug developer Apollomics, which has been mired in Nasdaq compliance problems nearly a year after it joined the public markets through a SPAC merger, has recruited Matthew Plunkett as CFO. Plunkett has held the same title at Nkarta as well as Imago BioSciences — leading the companies to $290 million and $155 million IPOs, respectively — and at Aeovian Pharmaceuticals since March 2022.
→ Co-founded by Oxford professor Adrian Hill — the co-inventor of AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine — lipid nanoparticle biotech NeoVac has brought in Heinrich Haas as chief technology officer. During his nine years at BioNTech, Haas was VP of RNA formulation and drug delivery.
→ New Jersey-based neuro biotech 4M Therapeutics is making its Peer Review debut by introducing Kimberly Lee as CBO. Lee was hired at Taysha Gene Therapies during its meteoric rise in 2020 and got promoted to chief corporate affairs officer in 2022. Earlier, she led corporate strategy and investor relations efforts for Lexicon Pharmaceuticals.
→ Another Peer Review newcomer, Osmol Therapeutics, has tapped former Exelixis clinical development chief Ron Weitzman as interim CMO. Weitzman only lasted seven months as medical chief of Tango Therapeutics after Marc Rudoltz had a similarly short stay in that position. Osmol is going after chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy and chemotherapy-induced cognitive impairment with its lead asset OSM-0205.
→ Last August, cardiometabolic disease player NeuroBo Pharmaceuticals locked in Hyung Heon Kim as president and CEO. Now, the company is giving Marshall Woodworth the title of CFO and principal financial and accounting officer, after he served in the interim since last October. Before NeuroBo, Woodworth had a string of CFO roles at Nevakar, Braeburn Pharmaceuticals, Aerocrine and Fureix Pharmaceuticals.
→ Claire Poll has retired after more than 17 years as Verona Pharma’s general counsel, and the company has appointed Andrew Fisher as her successor. In his own 17-year tenure at United Therapeutics that ended in 2018, Fisher was chief strategy officer and deputy general counsel. The FDA will decide on Verona’s non-cystic fibrosis bronchiectasis candidate ensifentrine by June 26.
→ Alkermes won its proxy battle with Sarissa Capital Management and is tinkering with its board nearly nine months later. The newest director, Bristol Myers Squibb alum Nancy Lurker, ran EyePoint Pharmaceuticals from 2016-23 and still has a board seat there. For a brief period, Lurker was chief marketing officer for Novartis’ US subsidiary.
→ Chaired by former Celgene business development chief George Golumbeski, Shattuck Labs has expanded its board to nine members by bringing in ex-Seagen CEO Clay Siegall and Tempus CSO Kate Sasser. Siegall holds the top spots at Immunome and chairs the board at Tourmaline Bio, while Sasser came to Tempus from Genmab in 2022.
→ Ex-AMAG Pharmaceuticals and Rainier Therapeutics chief Scott Myers has been named chairman of the board at Convergent Therapeutics, a radiopharma player that secured a $90 million Series A last May. Former Magenta exec Steve Mahoney replaced Myers as CEO of Viridian Therapeutics a few months ago.
→ Montreal-based Find Therapeutics has elected Tony Johnson to the board of directors. Johnson is in his first year as CEO of Domain Therapeutics. He is also the former chief executive at Goldfinch Bio, the kidney disease biotech that closed its doors last year.
→ Former Acceleron chief Habib Dable has replaced Kala Bio CEO Mark Iwicki as chairman of the board at Aerovate Therapeutics, which is signing up patients for Phase IIb and Phase III studies of its lead drug AV-101 for pulmonary arterial hypertension. Dable joined Aerovate’s board in July and works part-time as a venture partner for RA Capital Management.
→ In the burgeoning world of ADCs, Elevation Oncology is developing one of its own that targets Claudin 18.2. Its board is now up to eight members with the additions of Julie Cherrington and Mirati CMO Alan Sandler. Cherrington, a venture partner at Brandon Capital Partners, also chairs the boards at Actym Therapeutics and Tolremo Therapeutics. Sandler took the CMO job at Mirati in November 2022 and will stay in that position after Bristol Myers acquired the Krazati maker.
→ Lonnie Moulder’s Zenas BioPharma has welcomed Patty Allen to the board of directors. Allen was a key figure in Vividion’s $2 billion sale to Bayer as the San Diego biotech’s CFO, and she’s a board member at Deciphera Pharmaceuticals, SwanBio Therapeutics and Anokion.
→ In January 2023, Y-mAbs Therapeutics cut 35% of its staff to focus on commercialization of Danyelza. This week, the company has reserved a seat on its board of directors for Nektar Therapeutics CMO Mary Tagliaferri. Tagliaferri also sits on the boards of Enzo Biochem and is a former board member of RayzeBio.
→ The ex-Biogen neurodegeneration leader at the center of Aduhelm’s controversial approval is now on the scientific advisory board at Asceneuron, a Swiss-based company focused on Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. Samantha Budd-Haeberlein tops the list of new SAB members, which also includes Henrik Zetterberg, Rik Ossenkoppele and Christopher van Dyck.
nasdaq covid-19 vaccine treatment fda therapy rna brazil europeUncategorized
Is the biotech market rally real? Data suggest comeback in private, public markets
After some halting starts, false dawns and fragile rallies, the biotech market may finally be back.
No, really.
In the last several months, several important…
After some halting starts, false dawns and fragile rallies, the biotech market may finally be back.
No, really.
In the last several months, several important signals have added up to what feels like a rally, with more depth and certainty than some of the short-lived upticks during the doldrums of 2022 and 2023, when only the industry’s most optimistic souls were willing to call it a comeback.
But now, public biotechs are releasing positive data and raising money in follow-on offerings with ease. Biopharmas have already raised $13.7 billion in secondary raises in 2024, according to Stifel’s Tim Opler. Biotech’s benchmark index, the $XBI, is up 56% from last year’s lows and has broken the $100 mark, thanks to gains that go deep into the 120-company index. And in the private markets, crossover rounds are trickling back, and IPOs are showing signs of life.
Investors and executives told Endpoints News that this moment feels different, encouraged by a return to the basics, a focus on data, and signs of a healthier — if smaller — biotech ecosystem.
“We should be beyond any of the lows,” said Chris Garabedian, a venture portfolio manager at Perceptive Advisors and founder of the firm’s early-stage investing unit Xontogeny. “We are going to see continued forward momentum.”
Investor sentiment is “very different from what it was in ‘22 to ‘23, where it was all doom and gloom,” MoonLake Immunotherapeutics CEO Jorge Santos da Silva said. A year ago, “The question was like, ‘What are the 22 ways in which you can die?’ That has really changed.”
The XBI cracking $100 is encouraging, but a deeper look at the index shows more signs of strength. The exchange-traded fund, which lets investors buy shares of its basket of 120 biotech companies, has seen $457 million in net inflows over the past month, according to YCharts data. And about 80% of biotechs on the index — which includes giants like Vertex $VRTX and small companies like Avidity Biosciences $RNA — have seen their stock in the green over the past three months.
Some of that gain is clearly driven by a surge in M&A, including the buyouts of Seagen, Horizon, Cerevel, and Karuna, all of which have returned billions of dollars back to investors who need to put it back to work in the private or public markets. And industry insiders have said there’s also a breadth in the disease areas drawing interest, including obesity, cancer, cardiology, neurology, and inflammation.
Even ARCH Venture Partners managing director Bob Nelsen voiced some broader — albeit measured — optimism for the market.
“For our internal base case, we’re still assuming that things are going to suck like they have in the last couple of years,” Nelsen told Endpoints. “But we all believe that it has turned.”
Nelsen still implores his portfolio companies and limited partners to “assume it’s going to be worse than you think.” But his optimism is driven by two major trends: the easing of macro factors like interest rates and the persistence of M&A. He’s closely watching whether generalist investors — whose huge dollars can swing a sector up or down, as they did dramatically during the pandemic — will come back to biotech.
“The conventional wisdom in Q4 is, they were never coming back in the market,” he said. “Turns out, in Q4 they were buying.”
From atonement to ‘FOMO’
Da Silva said the industry had been “paying for our sins” committed in the boom years of 2019 to 2021, when hundreds of biotechs went public — many far from going into the clinic. Along with layoffs and company closures, it resulted in an infestation of the corporate walking dead in companies trading at values below the amount of cash on their books.
But the number of those companies with negative equity value has dropped in the past few months, suggesting that a much-needed cleanup from the go-go years is well in progress.
“I call it a detox,” da Silva said. “Whatever we did was clearly excessive and everyone knew it at the time. But when you’re at a party, it’s like, ‘Oh my God, this is crazy, but let’s keep going.’ The detox phase is definitely coming to an end.”
Otello Stampacchia, the managing director of the Boston-based VC firm Omega Funds, said the mood is even “getting a little bit bubblicious” for biotechs with clinical-stage drug candidates in large markets with meaningful milestones in the next 12 to 18 months.
“There’s really a rush to get into those, particularly now that the indices have started flipping their dynamic,” said Stampacchia, who founded Omega two decades ago. “Up until early last fall, nobody wanted to catch the falling knife. It’s now the exact opposite dynamic, and there’s a bit of crowding in some of these names.”
“There’s real FOMO to invest in the right therapeutic products and the right therapeutic companies,” he added.
That’s carried through the private and public markets, Stampacchia said, noting that Omega participated in Alumis’ recent $259 million Series C raise — biotech’s biggest round this year. He said he was “incredibly surprised by the amount of demand there was for the deal.” All told, Omega has seen roughly half a dozen of its portfolio companies raise close to half a billion dollars over the last few months, with increased valuations.
“In each case, it really wasn’t difficult to syndicate,” he said. “There’s real demand.”
rna pandemic interest ratesInternational
Deflationary pressures in China – be careful what you wish for
Until recently, China’s decelerating inflation was welcomed by the West, as it led to lower imported prices and helped reduce inflationary pressures….
Until recently, China’s decelerating inflation was welcomed by the West, as it led to lower imported prices and helped reduce inflationary pressures. However, China’s consumer prices fell for the third consecutive month in December 2023, delaying the expected rebound in economic activity following the lifting of COVID-19 controls. For calendar year 2023, CPI growth was negligible, whilst the producer price index declined by 3.0 per cent.
China’s inflation dynamics
Chinese consumers are hindered by the weaker residential property market and high youth unemployment. Several property developers have defaulted, collectively wiping out nearly all the U.S.$155 billion worth of U.S. dollar denominated-bonds.
Meanwhile, the Shanghai Composite Index is at half of its record high, recorded in late 2007. The share prices of major developers, including Evergrande Group, Country Garden Holdings, Sunac China and Shimao Group, have declined by an average of 98 per cent over recent years. Some economists are pointing to the Japanese experience of a debt-deflation cycle in the 1990s, with economic stagnation and elevated debt levels.
Australia has certainly enjoyed the “pull-up effect” from China, particularly with the iron-ore price jumping from around U.S.$20/tonne in 2000 to an average closer to U.S.$120/tonne over the 17 years from 2007. With strong volume increases, the value of Australia’s iron ore exports has jumped 20-fold to around A$12 billion per month, accounting for approximately 35 per cent of Australia’s exports.
For context, China takes 85 per cent of Australia’s iron ore exports, whilst Australia accounts for 65 per cent of China’s iron ore imports. China’s steel industry depends on its own domestic iron ore mines for 20 per cent of its requirement, however, these are high-cost operations and need high iron ore prices to keep them in business. To reduce its dependence on Australia’s iron ore, China has increased its use of scrap metal and invested large sums of money in Africa, including the Simandou mine in Guinea, which is forecast to export 60 million tonnes of iron ore from 2028.
The Chinese housing market has historically been the source of 40 per cent of China’s steel usage. However, the recent high iron ore prices are attributable to the growth in China’s industrial and infrastructure activity, which has offset the weakness in residential construction.
Whilst this has continued to deliver supernormal profits for Australia’s major iron ore producers (and has greatly assisted the federal budget), watch out for any sustainable downturn in the iron ore price, particularly if the deflationary pressures in China continue into the medium term.
unemployment covid-19 bonds shanghai composite housing market africa china-
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