Nordic Life Science 1
CONVERSATION // TED FJÄLLMAN & TIM OPLER What’s y
our view on the Scandinavian market? In particular, do you have any recommendations for other Americans who are looking outside of the US when it comes to doing business in Scandinavia? ABOUT THE CONVERSATION TO The growth of intellectual property industries typically starts with university systems. There are two things that are very unique about Scandinavia. The first is the great universities. In Sweden, places like Lund and Uppsala have been there since the 1600s and the Swedes, I guess, attacked the Danes and then the Danes attacked the Swedes. And so it’s not been so easy to maintain this academic strength. But there’s really strong science in Scandinavia and these days, it’s the best in the world, like the stuff that’s coming out of Uppsala and proteomics. You’ve got access to really good science. T TF he second thing that I think is very interesting about Scandinavia is that many of the companies have this ownership structure that is more long-term. Foundation ownership is very common. In Denmark and Sweden you have slightly different setups where you have family that has a stake, or a pension fund that has a stake that it can hold for 10 or 20 years. What makes Scandinavia so interesting is that you have sources of capital that are aligned with the timelines of this industry, as you mentioned before. I think that’s interesting. Of course we’d love to go see the Scandi companies because there are some really very good companies in Sweden, Denmark, and now also Norway. The sad thing is, historically in Sweden every biotech gets sold, right? Even Astra got sold to Zeneca. We are hoping to start to see Sweden, and maybe Flerie can be part of this, to really hold on to this stuff, stop viewing it as a buy-and-sell opportunity and instead a Charlie Munger-opportunity, that we’re going to buy this and we’re going to own this. A final question to wrap up with. I promised myself that I wouldn’t talk too much about macroeconomic trends, but I do want to ask one thing. The S&P 500 has been high especially for tech stocks, probably driven by AI. I don’t follow the tech space that well, but that’s my gut feeling. Why has the biotech XBI Index only increased slightly in comparison during 2024? What should we think about in 2025 in terms of volatility and the financing climate? When you look at 2024, the XBI is not that impressive. Is there any light at the end of the tunnel for the biotech sector? TO This content is a transcription of parts of a conversation between Tim Opler and Ted Fjällman, recorded online on January 7, 2025, by Gustav Ceder, Communications Officer, SciLifeLab. It has been edited for clarity and flow to ensure a better reading experience. While every effort has been made to preserve the original content and meaning, some minor adjustments have been made to improve readability. It has also been shortened significantly. The full conversation can be read on nordiclifescience.org First of all, biotech’s actually done much better. If you look at companies that are in the non-commercial stage, you’ll see that they were up globally by 22 percent last year. They actually did much better. The XBI is mainly weighted with some of these commercial pharma companies that have really struggled in the last year or so. Interestingly, Novo and Eli Lilly, the two companies that have done really well, are not in the XBI. It’s a bit of a selective index. Nevertheless you are correct, the techs have done better. I think the answer relates very much to the topics we’re discussing here, which is really getting companies that have the right bets on these big drugs for big diseases really going for the obesity play in the right way, really being smart about development and not running off to run high-risk clinical trials. I do think that there’s a deeper problem in the pharma industry, which is that drugs are protected by patents. Tech companies have technologies that are not protected. They actually create natural monopolies through customer lockin and a variety of other mechanisms. We need to think hard about redesigning healthcare businesses in general to essentially exist and grow without the benefit of patent protection. I think that this can be done and I’m hopeful that we will see the evolution of business models in the next 20 years. NLS NORDICLIFESCIENCE.ORG | 75