Valuation of Biotechnology Company Based on Real Options Approach
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Erasmus University Rotterdam Erasmus School of Economics MSc Economics and Business Master Specialization: Financial Economics Valuation of Biotechnology Company Based on Real Options Approach Author: Darius Ramoska Student Number: 432961 Thesis Supervisor: Drs Hans Haanappel Date: 09/02/2017 Valuation of Biotechnology Company Based on Real Option Approach PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to express gratitude to my supervisor, Drs. Hans Haanappel, who initially chose me as his student and gave me a chance not only to write a thesis under such a compelling topic but also for the work experience he provided me with as a result of valuation task. Amongst other people who also deserve a credit is Mark Offerhaus, who accepted me as a valuator and provided me with all the necessary information regarding his company. I would also like to thank Jovita Razauskaite for keeping me motivated during the course of the thesis. ii Valuation of Biotechnology Company Based on Real Option Approach ABSTRACT There is an increasing necessity to account for the uncertainty of the future cash flows. That becomes even a bigger problem when a significant investment has to be made in the future. This is exactly the issue with which the conventional NPV method cannot deal, since it may estimate a project to be of a negative value even if it is not. Therefore, to account for the misestimates, an auxiliary method needs to be considered. The thesis considers several techniques for that purpose, such as Monte Carlo simulation, risk-adjusted NPV, and Decision tree analysis. However, the tool selected to value a biotechnology company is Real Option approach. Even though, the Real Options valuation as a technique is highly debatable amongst scholars and practitioners, more often than not it is considered as an appropriate tool. The analysis made within the thesis confirms and proves that. Especially since the method used within this thesis is improved as proposed by Kellogg et al (2000) and Tan et al (2012) to account for the success probabilities and phase investments at different time steps. The resulting ROV lattice tree method is applied to the provided DCF estimates to compute the values of drugs separately within the portfolio of the company. Afterwards, the values are combined together to arrive at the final value of 786.7 million EUR. In addition to value estimation, I prove within the thesis that ROV lattice tree can indeed facilitate the conventional NPV method by adjusting not only for the risk factors of passing the stages but also from managerial point of view, where strategic capital budgeting decision can be made by observing the progress of the lattice tree. As a final step, the ROV is compared to the risk-adjusted NPV method. The results provide grounds to conclude that ROV lattice tree approach is a more conservative tool not only because it produces lower estimate of the value than rNPV but also because it is less sensitive to the movements in success probabilities. Keywords: Real Options, Lattice tree, Biotechnology iii Valuation of Biotechnology Company Based on Real Option Approach TABLE OF CONTENTS PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ....................................................................................................... ii ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................................................ iii LIST OF TABLES ......................................................................................................................................... v LIST OF FIGURES ..................................................................................................................................... vii 1. INTRODUCTION ....................................................................................................................................1 2. THEORETICAL SUBSTANTIATION AND LITERATURE REVIEW ................................................................3 2.1. Literature review on valuation .................................................................................................................... 4 2.1.1. Monte Carlo simulation ....................................................................................................................... 5 2.1.2. Decision tree analysis .......................................................................................................................... 6 2.1.3. Real Options approach ........................................................................................................................ 6 2.2. Literature review on ROV ............................................................................................................................ 7 2.2.1. Types of Real Options .......................................................................................................................... 9 2.2.2. ROV in biotechnology industry .......................................................................................................... 11 3. METHODOLOGY ................................................................................................................................. 13 3.1. Net present value ...................................................................................................................................... 13 3.1.1. Free cash flow .................................................................................................................................... 14 3.1.2. Discount rate ..................................................................................................................................... 16 3.1.3. Cost of equity ..................................................................................................................................... 16 3.1.3. Cost of debt ....................................................................................................................................... 17 3.4. Risk-adjusted NPV ..................................................................................................................................... 17 3.5. Real Option valuation ................................................................................................................................ 18 3.5.1. Partial differential approach .............................................................................................................. 19 3.5.2. Lattice tree ......................................................................................................................................... 20 3.6. ROV framework ......................................................................................................................................... 21 4. VALUATION CASE ............................................................................................................................... 25 4.1. Biotechnology industry .............................................................................................................................. 25 4.2. Description of the company ..................................................................................................................... 26 4.3. Assumptions .............................................................................................................................................. 27 4.3.1. WACC ................................................................................................................................................. 27 4.3.2. Operations ......................................................................................................................................... 28 4.3.3. Drugs .................................................................................................................................................. 29 4.3.4. Real Options Valuation ...................................................................................................................... 31 4.4. NPV estimation ......................................................................................................................................... 31 4.5. ROV ........................................................................................................................................................... 32 4.6. Sensitivity analysis .................................................................................................................................... 37 4.7. Comparison to rNPV ................................................................................................................................. 39 4.7.1. Comparison via NPVs ....................................................................................................................... 39 4.7.2. Comparison via sensitivity analysis .................................................................................................. 40 5. CONCLUSION ...................................................................................................................................... 43 6. FURTHER RESEARCH AND RECOMMENDATIONS ............................................................................... 44 REFERENCES .......................................................................................................................................... 46 APPENDIX .............................................................................................................................................