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Stock Watch: 2022 Starts Badly For Biotech

The Usual Early-Year Flurry Of Good News Is Absent

 
• By Andy Smith

A slow start to the year in health care is usually tempered by announcements that build up to investor conference season. However, early 2022’s plethora of negative announcements may continue biotech’s unloved status of 2021.

Andy Smith
ANDY SMITH OFFERS A LIFE SCIENCE INVESTOR'S PERSPECTIVE ON BIOPHARMA BUSINESS • Source: Alamy/Pharma Intelligence

The New Year often brings out the optimist in investors, especially in health care, where the build-up to the annual J.P. Morgan Healthcare conference in San Francisco includes pre-announcements of the previous year’s financial performance and the much-anticipated product licensing and merger and acquisition (M&A) transactions. So far, 2022 feels very different to previous years, not only because the Omicron variant of COVID-19 has kept the conference virtual, but also because the performance of biotechnology stocks in 2021 is hanging like a specter over 2022.

Some argue that developed nations have emerged from the acute crisis and are now living with SARS-CoV-19 rather than being...

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