The Biotech Growth Trust — Access to major innovation at low valuations

The Biotech Growth Trust’s (BIOG’s) highly experienced managers, Geoff Hsu and Josh Golomb, are able to draw on the considerable resources of global healthcare specialist OrbiMed. BIOG’s performance has been particularly challenging as the managers favour emerging (less mature) biotech companies, which have fared particularly poorly versus the S&P 500 during the longest and largest ever industry drawdown. Hsu and Golomb believe that biotech share price weakness is disconnected from industry fundamentals, as company valuations suggest an industry lacking in innovation, which has historically been the biggest driver of biotech performance. This seems incongruous as the managers believe we are in a ‘golden era of innovation’ with important technological and medical breakthroughs and a continued high number of new product approvals across multiple disease areas. They believe that sentiment towards the most innovative biotech companies, with robust clinical data, will improve and that BIOG’s portfolio is very well positioned to capture this move.