TMFHelical (99.03)

My Kind of Biotech

August 27, 2007 – Comments (1)

I received today in my mailbox a flyer from the BioProcess International Conference and exhibition which will be held in Boston in October.  Free exhibit hall and keynote pass.  Good stuff - I'll try to get away for the day to go (could be a tough sell, I really don't do much with biologics anymore).

The flyer contains a list of over 100 companies that will have booths at the show - trying to raise business from the biotechnology community.  These are the kinds of companies I like to invest in - those that make their money servicing the volatile industry of  Biotech-Pharma.

The conference [ http://www.bioprocessintl.com/ ] is a showcase for those who manufacture, package, analyze, asses toxicology, or provide consumables for the what most people define as biotechnology.  If you are trying to make a new Mab, protein, antisense, RNAi or other biologically derived drug - you're going to outsource some of your workload to these vendors.  The outsourcing movement - not just overseas, but for all aspects of drug development is catching fire in big pharma, but it has always been a necessity for small biotechs.  Why shouldn't it be?  Hiring in high level expertise for what are likely short term projects with defined goals makes little sense for a small focused (often single program) firms. Taking on these projects can be a very good business, and more reliable than developing the next great drug product (but admitedly, lower return than the few sucessfu).

A short list of the public exhibitors follows.  I would tend to be bullish on most as biotech is pretty flush with venture capital these days.  Clearly some of the big cap companies do more than just support biotech development (GE for example) - but they all have business units that do.  Also, as I mentioned there are over 100 firms exhibiting here.  The industry is ripe for consolidation as there are many mom and pop operations (assuming mom and pop have PhD/MD/MBAs).

Good stuff here, and more than a few that I am already bullish on in CAPS.  I need to start owning more in reality.

Ticker  Cap (B)    Company

ABI       5.89        Applied Biosystems

BAX      33.95       Baxter Bioscience

BIIB      18.12       Biogen Idec

BIO       2.23         Bio-Rad

CAH      26.83         Cardinal Health

CRL       3.59         Charles River Laboratories

GLW      37.24        Corning Inc.

DOW      41.02        Dow Chemical

GE         399.6        General Electric

IVGN      3.63          Invitrogen

MIL        3.83         Millipore

NBSC    0.104        New Brunswick Scientific

PLL       4.57         Pall

RGEN    0.131       Repligen

TMO      22.46       Thermo Fisher

 Ralph (Zz)