BioPharma Credit - High investment volume in H219

BioPharma Credit (BPCR) offers investors access to a diverse portfolio of secured debt instruments for life science companies. During 2019, BPCR was able to deploy more than US$500m and was thus able to reduce the large cash position accumulated as a result of the share issue in late 2018 and prepayment of the Tesaro note in January 2019. New investments include the largest deal so far with Sarepta Therapeutics, where BPCR provided funding of up to US$350m (of which half was initially drawn). We estimate that BPCR’s current loan portfolio has an attractive average coupon rate of c 9% (of which c 50% is at a fixed rate). On drawdown of outstanding commitments, arrangement fees and additional coupons will provide full cover of the annual dividend.