Replies to post #133623 on Biotech Values

[mcbio]

First thoughts on MNTA-BAX FoB partnership:

I’m fine with the financial terms—to the extent that they’ve been sketchily disclosed—but I don’t like BAX as the partner. BAX strikes me as firm that makes more than its share of mistakes for a medium-sized biotech and is habitually preoccupied with fighting regulatory fires such as manufacturing deficiencies and product recalls.

Maybe MNTA’s know-how will ensure BAX’s success in this endeavor, but I would have much preferred a partner such as PFE or SNY.

I’ll have more to say after the CC tomorrow.

Appreciate the fair take. Will be interesting to hear Wheeler go into more detail as to why BAX was the right fit. Regarding the financial terms and the royalties on the FoBs, I now see that MNTA disclosed that max royalty is "slightly more" than double the base rate so hopefully that gets us to about 20% max royalty if all criteria is met.

I am curious what those two initial FoBs are likely to be.

[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)

[jq1234]

I agree with your sentiment that financial term is fine but BAX isn't that good a partner. I did think outside of NVS, MNTA would have to get a non-traditional partner unlike PFE/SNY because of the non-traditional approach to biosimilar/biogenetic by MNTA.