In the period from 2002 through 2010, the biopharmaceutical sector significantly underperformed the benchmark MSCI World Index, as measured by total shareholder return (TSR1). The sector lagged in seven of those nine years, by as much as 18 percentage points—though, thanks to its defensive nature and strong dividends, it beat the overall market during the financial crisis in 2008 and 2009.
The explanation for such poor performance is well known. Many companies in the biopharma sector were richly valued in the early 2000s, as a consequence of unrealistic optimism about their growth prospects. In addition, their operating costs were high. When many of the industry’s blockbuster drugs began to lose patent protection, cost pressures and the need for increased R&D productivity drove critical scrutiny of biopharma companies, and investors lost confidence in the sector.
In 2008 and 2009, several biopharma companies began taking decisive measures to improve their operational and financial performance. Companies trimmed their R&D pipelines and rationalized their R&D models to become more productive. They reduced their costs, particularly in commercial and back-office functions, and pursued growth in emerging markets. In addition, the first major “patent cliff,” which occurred in 2011 and 2012, passed, and many biopharma companies were able to add promising new projects to their R&D pipelines.
Advances in discovery and development began to pay off; for example, drugs against targets revealed through genome-wide association studies (GWAS)—such as CFTR in cystic fibrosis and PCSK9 in dyslipidemia—began to reach the market. As a result, investors regained their confidence in biopharma companies, and the sector significantly outperformed the MSCI World Index from 2011 through 2013.