Episode 175 - March 6, 2026

Summary

• Biotech capital markets just printed their strongest IPO quarter in four years even as the AI trade wobbles. Mike Yee’s numbers: ~$10B of Q4 follow-on activity approaching the early-‘24 peak, ~$2B of Q1 IPOs already done and a ~$2.5B run rate, with the XBI a pretty good six-month performer. Yaron Werber, fresh off a record-attendance TD Cowen conference, calls the current pullback “a little bit of steam off the valve” in a healthy way — and Yee agrees: “there never really was a real dip” to buy until now.
• Roivant’s Matt Gline walked through the up-to-$2.25B Moderna LNP settlement — $950M cash in July plus up to $1.3B riding on the §1498 appeal. He concedes “I didn’t think this case was gonna settle” with trial days away. He says the judgment of no invalidity is helpful to the separate Pfizer/BioNTech case: had Moderna prevailed on invalidity, that result could have carried over to those specific patents, though he calls the legal read-through uncertain. Pfizer’s COVID vaccine sales ran roughly 2x Moderna’s. His decode of Moderna’s “not probable” accounting language: under the standard Roivant’s accountants apply, probable means 70%-or-more likely.
• Yee’s Moderna math makes the contingent $1.3B genuinely thesis-relevant. The initial court decision already said §1498 protection doesn’t apply; with $5.4–5.9B of end-‘26 liquidity ($4.5–5B cash), another $1.3B out leaves roughly “two and change” years of cash, raising the stakes on the Merck-partnered adjuvant melanoma cancer-vaccine Phase 3 reading out later this year. Moderna’s counter: its own mRNA wins over Pfizer/BioNTech in Germany and the UK mean “assets will exceed liabilities across this portfolio of IP.”
• The UniQure episode — Marty Makary discussing an unapproved drug in what Yee said was perhaps a CNBC appearance, followed by the clarification that FDA told the company at a pre-BLA meeting it could not file without a randomized study — drew unusually pointed commentary. Werber says public disparaging remarks “would run contrary to” regulator-company confidentiality agreements; Gline’s lighthouse parable captures the power asymmetry — “We are intensely reliant on FDA for everything,” and in the end “only one person’s view or one organization’s view actually winds up mattering.”
• The GLP-1 consumer-spillover trade is getting real as the orals launch. Yee’s math: 35–50M people globally at ~$2,000/year approaches $100B; Novo’s oral is at 60,000 tracked scripts/week (~100k true) in month three, Lilly’s orforglipron possibly arrives next month, and US patients go from 3–5M to 25M in five years — pressuring alcohol, soda, snacks, restaurants and maybe casinos. Gline’s n-of-1: “I’ve lost 60 pounds on a combination of Wegovy and Mounjaro” in the last 10 months. Ex-US, the ~$20B obesity market is “essentially all cash pay” — a template Werber extends to preventative siRNA for blood pressure and LDL.
• Harrow’s pledge to “meet and beat expectations” reopened the sandbagging debate. Werber’s verdict: “it’s 100% effective, right? It’s a part of the game” — beats get extrapolated forever. Gline, who gives no guidance: “your clients all call us and tell us to sandbag you,” and says guidance for a modern dermatomyositis launch is unknowable because no one has launched one before; bar-setting by positioned investors creates a “weird adversarial dynamic.”
• Miami conference week is now a fixture — four-plus bank conferences (Yee has heard up to eight events) next week, plus Fred Hassan’s R&D Leadership Summit in Fort Lauderdale. But Yee doubts Miami displaces New York as biotech’s investing center despite Ken Griffin’s push: “pockets” of funds and portfolio managers, not a wholesale migration.

Deep dive

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