Biotech valuations at their lowest for years

The biotechnology sector has been hit particularly hard by the risk-averse sentiment sweeping through global stock markets and after reaching a high in July 2015, the Nasdaq Biotechnology index shed about one-third of its value.

The shock was even stronger as rising prices over the past few years fuelled high expectations as well as overly bullish sentiment. But a glance at sector valuation data today indicates companies' fundamentals hardly mattered during the broad sell-off. According to current Bloomberg estimates, the average profit growth rate of all listed biotech firms reporting a profit during the period from 2014 to 2017 is 12.1%. Only the generics industry offers better profit growth, albeit only slightly at 12.7%, driven by the growing number of self-payers in emerging markets. In contrast, the est...