Biotech Values

[iwfal]

MNTA -

I’m fine with the financial terms

First thoughts: I am surprised by the boards general response that 'these terms look ok'. I doubt anyone yesterday would have predicted substantially lower terms than MNTA is getting on Copaxone - and they are a lot lower unless you assume that the competition will be very fierce (i.e. price is driven so low that GM is well under 50%). And I am reasonably certain I was as pessimistic as anyone about the amount of competition - since I assumed the non-subs biosimilars hit the market well before MNTAs generic and take market that cannot be easily recovered just because it is fully subs. But even I assumed that there would be only one fully replaceable generic. I think this set of royalties implies that Big Pharma assumes more than one fully replaceable - or that Momenta's drugs are NOT allowed to be fully substitutible and thus have full competition. And Momenta couldn't convince them otherwise. The only thing I don't understand in this scenario is why Momenta agreed to a total of 6 subs biologics unless they too share this view of the biosimilar market.

In any case I can see why they bought the bio-better patent in the last month - if the general consensus is that the competition will be brutal.

More thoughts later (may be MUCH later)