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Forget Crypto Winter. In Biotech, It’s Been Freezing for Months
Angelica Peebles
Fri, 17 June 2022 at 4:32 pm
(Bloomberg) -- Biotech executives are bracing for more pain as global uncertainty hammers the already beaten-down industry.
The downturn in biotech started long before Russia invaded Ukraine and high inflation became a dinner-table conversation. In the biotech stock slide that accelerated last winter and that’s continued in recent weeks, few companies have been spared. That includes those that went public in 2021 – a record number – amid pandemic-induced euphoria in the sector.
Many of those same firms are now facing the possibility that the situation could deteriorate more. It was enough to create a notable sense of anxiety at the BIO International Convention in San Diego this week, where more than 10,000 executives, scientists and investors gathered.
“Everybody right now is kind of holding their breath to see what's next,” Joe Panetta, chief executive officer of the trade and lobbying group Biocom California, said in an interview at the conference. The Biotechnology Industry Organization, or BIO, the sector’s national advocacy group, hosted the convention, its first in-person summit in three years.
One executive compared the environment to a hurricane. Biotechnology firms were already facing a Category 3 storm...