Near-Term BioPharma Profitability: Must-Have or Distraction?

01 Sep 2003

• By Melanie Senior

Being profitable has its advantages, particularly in the current biopharma funding environment-and particularly for those companies able to leverage relatively small investment into relatively quick profitability. But for firms whose own pipelines have yet to come to fruition, it also imposes constraints and pressures on management that wouldn't otherwise be there. In Vivo Europe Rx looks at how four of Europe's biopharma firms became profitable, and how this has affected company strategy. Their differences lie precisely in the purpose of their early profits-as a means to an end, or as the end in itself.

Sustainable profitability is the ultimate aim of any business. And given the recent, extended downturn in the financial markets, getting to profitability faster—before the fruits of a discovery-based pipeline can be harvested—seems more sensible than ever. In Europe, acquisition is the preferred, though not the only, method for jump-starting profits—using relatively high-value biotech shares to buy a troubled business with at least the potential for making money sooner than can its acquirer.

Early-profit strategies, broadly speaking, have served the four companies we profile in this issue, along with a few other European...