INVESTING SHOW: How biotech investors can profit from an ageing population and the future of medicine
The wealthy western world’s population is ageing and medicine is changing fast.
Biotechnology lies at the intersection of this growing need for healthcare and treatments that are tailored to patients, such as immunotherapy, rather than taking a traditional one size fits all approach.
Investors’ excitement for this brave new world saw many biotech fund and trusts deliver startling performance from 2012 to 2016 before the sector then suffered a fall, as the last US election brought worries to the fore.
Things have begun to look up again for biotech over the past year and we are joined on this Investing Show by Ailsa Craig, of International Biotechnology Trust, to find out more about this and the sector.
Ailsa explains what biotechnology is, about the firms operating within the sector, and what some of the companies that her trusts invests in do.
She discussed how International Biotechnology Trust, which dates back to 1994, invests, from unquoted companies to companies worth billions.
Ailsa says that it looks for highly innovative, high growth companies with pricing power, but explains how it also seeks to take some of the risk out of such a high stakes sector.
International Biotechnology Trust has beaten the market over five years, with a 74.9 per cent return, compared to 65.3 per cent for the biotech and healthcare sector. It is also unusual in paying a dividend, currently 4.4 per cent.
