Life Sciences Industry Trends – Catalysts for Commercial Change

Arshad Carim: Hi, everyone. My name is Arshad Carim with the Alexander Group, and I’m here with my colleague Raj Sharan. We’re leaders in our Life Sciences and Analytical Instruments practice. We’re looking forward today to sharing with you the latest from our research, our events and our client work around traversing surging growth, what life sciences and analytical instruments companies are thinking around commercial planning priorities for 2022. Raj, glad to have you here.

Raj Sharan: Thanks, Arshad. Glad to be here with you.

Arshad Carim: You know, six months ago, when we were talking about commercial priorities at the beginning of 2021, we talked a lot about how companies are prioritizing growth markets and really focusing and rallying their resources around those growth markets and also how companies were talking a lot about reinvesting in the commercial organization. It’s been a pretty interesting 18 months, obviously, with the pandemic and a lot of focus on servicing existing customers. A lot of issues around supply chain and of course, access to customers has been limited. But we are seeing this surge of growth and companies in this space, particularly ones that are working with any aspects related to COVID, you know, experiencing a lot of growth. And so as we think about some of the catalysts for what’s going on with commercial priorities and how they’re thinking about planning, there are some interesting catalysts that we believe are kind of feeling that fire. And I’ll mention some of them here, and then we’ll jump into the to the trends and Raj, we can talk more about what we’re seeing across companies there. But the big trends that we’re seeing in these catalysts are No. 1 around major growth from established companies. So you see some of the very large companies are actually standing up very big businesses very quickly in response to the pandemic. But also we’re seeing a heavy amount of funding that’s coming into the space. So what’s happening is smaller companies are getting a lot more VC funding. They’re able to make it further in their commercial progress as a company and seeing that commercial success, which is bringing in a lot of new companies and players, which is also providing a lot of fodder, potentially for future acquisitions as we think about some of these deep-pocketed large players in the industry. So that’s creating a lot of innovation and a lot of innovative technology. Areas we hear about day in and day out, right? MRNA, COVID specifically, but also digital and digital technologies. Given some of the access constraints of the last 18 months, there’s also this zeal to get out there and to communicate around these innovative technologies that companies are coming up with. And in addition, we’re just we’re seeing more M&A activity as well, right? There’s more companies with successful models. There’s more companies that have technologies that are synergistic, that work with other companies, technologies and solutions. And so those are fitting together nicely, and we’re seeing those acquisitions and mergers happen.

Raj Sharan: Yeah. So I’ll give you two examples that come to mind, just sort of pure numbers, right? Thermo and this is public knowledge. They had a billion dollars in sales that stood up because of COVID. I think that’s a really big number that didn’t exist and all of a sudden exists now. Another example is Danaher acquired Aldevron for almost 10 billion dollars. I think they had revenue sales of $100 million acquisition of $10 billion. So huge potential that Danaher sees for the Aldevron portfolio. So those are just two examples of what you just reflected about how the market is evaluating these new technologies.

Arshad Carim: Yeah, but you a lot of companies would like to have a net new billion dollar ad, right? That’s really amazing. But it’s happening. So, yeah, a lot, a lot of money in the space and fueling a lot of innovation and advancement, which is pretty interesting and cool to see now.

Raj Sharan: Definitely. I think especially if you compare to how things were 18 months ago to now, I think there’s a lot of positivity and excitement with all of our clients.

Arshad Carim: Yeah, I think the uncertainty is turning more into excitement and aspiration for what can be in the coming months. Thank you all for listening in. Please feel free to visit our website to receive a complimentary debrief with one of our practice leaders. Or if you’d like to learn more about how Alexander can help you build a successful team heading into 2022. Thank you.