Millennium Pharmaceuticals CEO Deborah Dunsire showed up at ASCO's annual meeting in Orlando intent on finding mid- and late-stage cancer therapies to buy. And she came away with the distinct belief that most biotech execs have yet to wake up and smell the new valuations wafting through the drug development business.
Dunsire tells Dow Jones that Millennium--bought by Takeda a year ago--plans to make a string of new deals on oncology products. Most of those buyouts are likely to be "smaller, single product acquisitions," she notes, but isn't ruling out an acquisition in the $10 billion range.
A lot of biotech companies, though, believe that they can weather the financial storm buffeting the industry and are valuing their products too high, says the CEO. Still, they aren't entirely to blame for the bargain basement prices that investors have placed on many of the companies.
"They probably are delusional that [their valuation] is going to get back to exactly where it was before, but there is a down draft that may have nothing to do with the fundamentals of their company," she adds.
- read the report from Dow Jones