Biotech Values

[DewDiligence]

MON—Freed from the antitrust straightjacket (#msg-86643556), MON strikes another business-development deal, collecting what may be assumed to be large royalties from Bayer for access to MON’s latest-generation soybean technology (including stacking rights):

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/bayer-cropscience-monsanto-enter-cross-130000785.html

Bayer CropScience and Monsanto Company have entered into a series of licensing agreements for next-generation and enabling technologies… Monsanto will provide Bayer CropScience with a royalty-bearing license to Genuity Roundup Ready 2 Yield and Genuity Roundup Ready 2 Xtend technology in soybeans in the United States and Canada. Bayer CropScience also will receive a royalty-bearing license to Intacta RR2 PRO in soybeans in Brazil with an option to a royalty-bearing license in other Latin-American countries in the future. Bayer CropScience has also been granted stacking-rights under certain conditions.

MON also licensed from Bayer some technology for corn-rootworm control and herbicide tolerance, but that's a sideshow compared to the above.

This is the second significant deal MON has inked in the three weeks since the DuPont settlement on 3/26/13—the first one was with Dow on 4/11/13 (#msg-86731676). In the post on the Dow deal, I questioned whether the timing of the deal so soon after the DuPont settlement was coincidence; now, in light of today’s deal with Bayer, I think it’s obvious that the timing was not a coincidence.

The IBM analogy in #msg-86643556 may seriously be valid.