Valuation of Healthcare companies

I have an upcoming interview and wanted a high-level overview on what metrics are used to value healthcare companies. Is it EV/EBITDA and P/E or any industry specific ones?

Given that lot of biotechs are smaller and start-ups with negative net income, is EV/Sales more often used. What about pharma companies given that they have lot of R&D expenses? Any special valuation metrics used for them. DCF might not be best way for biotech company given sales can fluctate from year-to-year and business isn't very stable.

Any comments/help is greatly appreciated.

18 Comments
 

"Healthcare" is more of a thematic category than an industry.. valuation will vary substantially from Pharma to Insurers to REITs, etc.

"There are three ways to make a living in this business: be first, be smarter, or cheat."
 

for early stage firms, check out real option theory and monte carlo valuations. not sure if these are done in practice, though.

 

I don't know if it's too technical, but I've gotten some pretty crazy questions during interviews. ie for FIG someone asked me why a bank would choose subordinated debt over senior secured debt... So I figure better safe than sorry.

 

Be prepared for valuation questions on pharma/biotech firms. They are mostly based on Inline and Pipeline drug estimated future sales. Estimated sales are accounted for at a rate depending on the phase in pipeline, you probably need to be familiar with these concepts.

Particular multiples are EV / Peak Sales.

I think there have been some threads about this in the past on WSO.

 

I don't know of a book or primer, but I would try to find good equity research for prominent products in the area of interest (onco, cf, etc). Those are helpful to identify what R&D / SG&A / Peak Sales look like over the period of exclusivity. They can also be useful if they show how various partnership agreements work (royalty fee vs. other). I think you hit on a lot of the pertinent differences.

Good luck.

 

Forecasting for the Pharmaceutical Industry - Arthur Cooke

This should answer your questions around product forecasts.. probably not much about valuation though

 

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