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Biotech: Making Money the Old-Fashioned Way

At the January 1999 Hambrecht & Quist meeting, investors were hearing a new message from biotechs: the Millennium-ization of the industry. Platform companies are promising to leverage their technologies much more aggressively for many more customers. They'll identify their assets, sell them, and sell them again.

Given that most of the January 1999 Hambrecht & Quist conference was given over to biotechnology—whose investment popularity has reached new lows—the sheer number of attendees was breathtaking: more than 4400 registrants, about 1000 more than last year. In part, the growth in attendance stems from the growth in the number of companies presenting: the more presenters (about 300 firms this year, up from 220 three years ago), the more analysts from each investment firm, company representatives, VCs, and the various PR tag-alongs.

But for those investors who were listening, presenters were delivering a new message: leverage. In the mid-1990s, biotechs sold Wall Street on the concept that drug companies, looking for faster...

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