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9. Bull, Bear & Beyond – BB Biotech: executive interview
6 Plays1 year ago
In this interview, we speak to Dr Christian Koch, deputy head of investment management at BB Biotech (BION), the Switzerland-based investment company listed in Switzerland, Germany and Italy. Dr Koch will assume the role of head of investment management at BB Biotech at the beginning of 2025.
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About ‘Bull, Bear & Beyond’
'Bull, Bear & Beyond': features candid conversations with senior executives and from our own team of experts from across industries, exploring strategy, innovation, and the opportunities shaping their markets.
About Edison:
Edison is a content-led IR business. We believe quality investment content should inform all investors, not just brokers. Our mission: engage and build bigger, better-informed investor audiences for our clients.
Edison covers 50+ investment trusts, read about them here: https://www.edisongroup.com/equities/investment-companies/
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Transcript
Introduction to Participants and Topic
00:00:07
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Edison TV. My name is Aaron Atkar. I'm an analyst here at Edison within the healthcare and investment trust teams.
Introduction to BB Biotech
00:00:15
Speaker
Today, we're looking at BB Biotech, a Switzerland based investment company targeting long term capital growth from biotechnology companies that develop and market innovative drugs.
00:00:26
Speaker
We are joined by Dr. Christian Koch, who is currently deputy head of the investment management team, but will assume the role head of the investment management team on the 1st of January, 2025. Welcome, Chris. Thank you, Aaron.
Investment Climate in Biotech
00:00:38
Speaker
ah karen So to kick off, there is a strong sense within the biotech sector at the moment that the investment environment is improving. In your view, what are the key factors left in this sentiment?
00:00:50
Speaker
Well, for one, it's the prospects, I think, of lower interest rates over the mid to long term, and which means for many of these biotech companies, lower capital costs.
00:01:01
Speaker
It is very relevant because of the high capital requirements that they have and the long duration. um of the drug development process.
Financing Environment and Market Dynamics
00:01:10
Speaker
The second part that we're seeing improve slowly is on the financing side.
00:01:14
Speaker
The IPO market has woken up again. um There are secondaries after good data sets. So that's a very important part of the industry. Aside from that, it's for sure the fundamental prospects of good clinical data. We've seen a couple of very important and big updates.
00:01:32
Speaker
um For example, the big trial of NMOLNALM in TTR cardiomyopathy. and then regulatory approvals. And those regulatory approvals are actually on a very high level if you look at it historically.
00:01:43
Speaker
And then last, the part that's very important as well for the industry, for the biotech industry, is M&A. and we had There was a very um high number of M&A last year. This year, it's been little bit mute. um We think this could start picking up after the US election.
Portfolio Milestones and Highlights
00:02:01
Speaker
Great. So aside from those generally supportive fundamental factors just mentioned, there's some major jam milestones on the horizon for BB Biotech's portfolio holdings.
00:02:12
Speaker
Can you outline the potential ramification of these for the portfolio? Yeah, we have more or less big masters for almost all of our holdings and some of the smaller ones over the next 12 months.
00:02:23
Speaker
think the ones that I can point out it a little bit too is, for example, for IONIS, one of our largest holdings. and they alone have three major clinical late stage results over the next 12 months and at least two product launches so we're very hopeful to see good clinical data there and anticipate that they will execute well on the product launches um Another one I can point out is one of our, or the only private investment we have, Ruvus Pharmaceuticals and Obesity.
00:02:52
Speaker
What I can disclose there is that they ah have a late-breaking abstract and presentation at the Heart Failure Association Congress in the US end of this month.
00:03:06
Speaker
And we hope that will show a good path forward for that company. um And the third one would be, for example, our large oncology holding revolution medicines that will show first larger data set on lung cancer, um where they have shown pancreatic, promising data on pancreatic cancer before that, and it's the same
AI and Big Data in Investment Strategies
00:03:27
Speaker
asset.
00:03:27
Speaker
We see that BB Biotech's search for new investment opportunities is supported by the work of an in-house team of data scientists. Firstly, could you help us understand how this team uses ai and big data techniques?
00:03:41
Speaker
Yeah, and in its essence, it's supposed to impact every part of um the investment process or specifically investment case um that can be on various levels.
00:03:52
Speaker
And at a later time, when we hope hope it also impacts us on an aggregated level over the whole portfolio, understanding our fundamental data of every investment case at scale. um There's many different ways that it can be impacted. One is through efficiency, for example.
00:04:09
Speaker
and The highest impact it can have is in generating novel insights. For example, um we buy real-world evidence data in form of insurance claims, so very large data sets.
00:04:21
Speaker
And there we can now understand in the actual market um patient journeys in a new way. We can finally ask different or other ah there questions that we couldn't even answer before.
Machine Learning and Decision-Making
00:04:33
Speaker
Also, um reduce the fuzziness and a lot of parameters in our models, for example, about incidents and prevalence of certain rare diseases or more common diseases. we get a better picture of how the actual treatment landscape is at the moment versus how our people were always taking literature and taking very small sample sets there.
00:04:54
Speaker
I think it can impact us really on every level and it's growing in contribution on many to the mosaic of an investment case on many levels there. Fantastic. So finally, following on from that, could you maybe share a bit more color on how this work on AI and big data techniques enhances BB Biotech's investment process and decision making?
00:05:13
Speaker
Well, the same way it's impacting the on the investment process level and then individual investment case, we also annotate and collect um what decisions we took at which point um through the data science network. That's one annotation framework.
00:05:28
Speaker
And then we can apply machine learning or easier tech or also a simpler techniques um to correlate decision-making processes with findings and learnings. That again can happen on an individual case level and future prospects of investment candidates, how we can replace specific learning sets in a certain therapeutic area or with a certain technology.
00:05:50
Speaker
and But that can also be a helpful for a portfolio construction construction and balancing. Fantastic. Well, thank you very much, Chris. us We appreciate your time and look forward to following your progress in years to
Conclusion and Further Information
00:06:02
Speaker
come.
00:06:02
Speaker
If our audience would like to learn more about BB Biotech, please refer to edisongroup.com. Thanks again, Chris. Thank you very much, Aaron.