With the collective recovery of the medical and health industry, many sub-industries have been promoted. After medical devices, innovative drugs have also become a sub-industry that investors who are optimistic about the pharmaceutical sector are now highly concerned about. After the National Day, innovative drugs began to rise. The CSI Innovative Drug Industry Index rebounded more than 22% from the staged low point, and the CSI Innovative Drug 30 Index rebounded more than 25% from the staged low point.
Fund practitioners said that innovative drugs have gone through a period of clearance in the past, and the industry pattern has gradually become clear. Pharmaceutical companies with high clinical value may stand out, and some enterprises will enter the commercialization stage. In the hot market, investors need to focus on the development progress and competition pattern of the pipeline, and at the same time pay attention to avoiding the overestimation risk of the secondary market.
Policy impact is expected to reduce the uncertainty of investment.
Recently, the medical and health sector has rebounded strongly, and many sub-sectors including innovative drugs have performed well. In this context, the new trend of medical insurance negotiations has also attracted great attention from the market.
Wu, manager of Guangfa Health Care Fund, told the Securities Times reporter that in the next two months, innovative drug countries will talk about the medical insurance incidents related to the eighth batch of generic drugs, and the price reduction of related drugs will be a very important weather vane. In terms of innovative drugs, the medical insurance bureau has issued a clear negotiation policy and simple contract renewal rules. The rules themselves are open, transparent and relatively mild. It can be expected that this innovative drug country talk may not put the relevant drugs under greater pressure of price reduction.
Wanjia Fund has a similar view. Medical insurance negotiations have been going on for several rounds since 18, and more experience has been accumulated in constant attempts. The simple updated rules for this innovative drug negotiation were announced in June. Combined with 10 intensive procurement of IVD (in vitro diagnostic products), the biggest feature is that there is no such extreme price reduction as before, and the medical insurance bureau will also negotiate with enterprises in advance. It can be seen that the overall negotiation rhythm of medical insurance is more mature and predictable, which reduces the uncertainty of investment.
According to Zhou Sicong, the medical fund manager of Changsheng Fund, no matter what the outcome of the negotiations is, the interpretation of the market will be more rational and calm than before. Referring to the centralized purchase of orthopedic spine in September, the market trend of the whole orthopedic-related stocks is still very strong.
Hu Ying, a strategist in the quantification department of CITIC Prudential Fund, has been studying for a long time to increase investment in pharmaceutical and other industries. She believes that the innovative drugs to be negotiated at present cover biological drugs, small molecular drugs, innovative drugs of traditional Chinese medicine and so on. About 35 contracts have been renewed and 65,438+00 new contracts have been introduced. Compared with the sharp price cuts in previous years, this year's medical insurance negotiations have been slightly relaxed. This feature has also been reflected in the trend of the pharmaceutical industry in the past month. Hu Ying said.
In her view, according to the different competition patterns of drugs themselves, the varieties under discussion gradually announced later may generally have several performances: First, take PD- 1, which is familiar to the market, as an example, most of them have entered medical insurance this year, and it is more likely to renew their contracts in the past. Secondly, there are some new and exclusive indications, and the technical barriers are high, so enterprises will have more choices, and they can decide whether to enter medical insurance according to the decline. Whether joining or not will not have a great negative impact on pharmaceutical companies. In addition, there are some non-exclusive and new minor indications this year. The proportion of small indications in the overall pipeline of pharmaceutical companies will not be particularly high, and pharmaceutical companies do not have enough incentive to reduce the prices of such innovative drugs by a large proportion. Hu Ying believes that the current market attention to medical insurance negotiation is a process of desensitization, and the overall impact of this medical insurance negotiation on the market may not be particularly great.
Pharmaceutical companies with high clinical value may stand out.
At present, what is the competitive pattern in the field of innovative medicine? As a public offering institution of professional investors, what kind of innovative drug companies are more optimistic about?
Wu said that the highlights and logic of innovative pharmaceutical sector enterprises are generally diverse. Some enterprises set up their own clinical and commercialization teams in the United States, some enterprises focus on individual high-quality varieties for overseas authorization, and some enterprises take the route of efficient domestic R&D and commercialization promotion. These different development paths are all possible, and they all face matching risks and rewards. Generally speaking, it's hard to say which route is better, because there are obvious differences in the abilities needed behind it. Wu told reporters that the relative possibility is that whoever can produce more excellent clinical data will have a favorable opportunity in the subsequent commercial competition.
Wang Zeshi, manager of Huaxia's leading innovative medicine mixed fund, believes that the development of innovative medicine in China is going through a transitional stage from being too good for me to being better and first-class for me. In the past five years, the innovative medicine industry has experienced a period from fiery to calm. At present, companies in the R&D pipeline industry have greatly eased involution compared with the past. Considering that the industry has gone through 1 year and a half, the competition pattern of many enterprises has gradually become clear, and the current industry development has reached the stage of commercialization. He is optimistic about enterprises with good R&D product line competition pattern and enterprises with independent intellectual property rights and certain expansion of R&D platform.
Wanjia Fund believes that since the state supported the development policy of innovative drugs in 20 15, a large number of domestic innovative drugs appeared in 20 18-20 19, some of which were imitation innovations and had no special value. Therefore, after negotiations and shuffling after 2020, on the whole, the state obviously supports truly scarce innovations, but obviously suppresses categories that have no obvious clinical value. The final result is that many biotechnology companies with insufficient pipelines obviously have no commercialization ability and insufficient financing ability, so it is difficult for such companies to make great achievements. At the same time, companies with real clinical value will also suffer short-term manslaughter, but they will eventually come out and will be strong and exceed expectations.
In Hu Ying's view, medical innovation in China is accelerating. On the one hand, national policies support and encourage innovation, and medical reform continues to deepen. For example, shortening the front-end approval cycle can reduce the innovation cost of enterprises, further refine the medical insurance control fee, bring better profit space to innovative drugs, and make pharmaceutical companies more actively research and develop innovation subjectively. On the other hand, in recent years, outstanding professionals have emerged further, funds have strengthened support for innovative drugs, and industrial technology iteration has accelerated, all of which have provided objective conditions for development.
In this context, the intensification of competition is inevitable, and the characteristics of high failure rate and high return rate of innovation, for pharmaceutical enterprises, innovative pharmaceutical industry is more like sailing against the current. Hu Ying concluded that not only innovation is needed, but also continuous innovation is needed. She believes that enterprises with technical barriers, differentiated competitive advantages, showing a secondary growth curve, replacing the main force with domestic products, and even the core varieties that are expected to embark on internationalization are worthy of attention.
Be calm when the heat is high.
Focus on channels and valuation
Then, while the innovative drug sector has rebounded sharply, are there some risk factors that investors need to carefully screen?
Wu believes that risks exist objectively at all times. As far as innovative drugs are concerned, he understands the following risks: first, for offshore enterprises, the profound evolution of the current global economic structure is the lowest risk; Second, for pharmaceutical companies with China as the main battlefield, we need to pay close attention to the evolution of relevant policies; Third, for small enterprises with few varieties, the biggest risk is that the clinical data of key pipeline varieties are less than expected.
Wang Zeshi said that innovative drugs are still a relatively professional investment field. He admits that the research and development of innovative pharmaceutical companies also has a probability of success. A good product will go through a long research and development process, and countless products will be sacrificed on the way to the market. He suggested that investors conduct in-depth research to grasp the R&D risks of enterprises.
Wanjia Fund believes that in the one-step process, the market will also speculate on some companies that obviously have no channels, and these companies are worthless regardless of whether the medical insurance negotiations are eased or not, and the stock prices of such companies are at great risk.
Hu Ying said that the market policy is expected to improve recently, the superimposed valuation is low, the fundamentals are supported, the positions in the pharmaceutical industry have rebounded, and the heat has restarted. However, as far as the innovative pharmaceutical sector is concerned, some stocks with high fundamental quality have returned to a relatively reasonable or even high valuation level, and investment choices need to be cautious.
Zhou Sicong believes that there are three levels of risks in the investment in innovative drug industry: First, for innovative drug companies that are still in the research and development stage, the risk of their investment lies in whether the clinical data is ideal, whether the subsequent clinical promotion is smooth, whether the drug research and development can eventually become drugs, whether it can be approved, etc.; Second, for enterprises whose drugs have been approved, the policy level has a greater impact; The third is the change of product competition pattern that may be caused by drug research and development. If a pharmaceutical company obtains very good clinical data in the new research and development direction, it may directly lead to the direct termination of similar assembly line research and development of other pharmaceutical companies under research, and the previous R&D investment will be wasted. It may also make similar old drugs on sale face fierce competition in the future, thus shortening the life cycle of drugs.