創投公司投資生技產業評估項目之研究

Abstract

2000年人類基因體解碼後，全球生物技術產業更加蓬勃發展。我國政府自1980年代開始積極規劃生技產業發展策略，而創投業者從1990年代開始投資生技公司且成立生技創投基金。 本研究訪談國內創投的生技投資經理，歸納出生技投資評估項目，並探討評估差異與投資變化，藉以提供創投業者更加瞭解生技投資。 研究發現，生技創投管理公司以投資獲利為目標，主要投資於美國和台灣，且以創建期與成長期的新藥開發與醫療器材公司為主。在案源篩選時，會考量創投基金與生技公司兩個構面。投資調查的前五個評估項目是經營團隊、市場規模、專利技術、營運模式與產品狀況，而經營團隊是創投業者最重視的項目。 對於不同階段與不同領域之生技投資案有不同的評估項目重點。創建期公司的評估重點在於經營團隊、專利技術和營運模式，擴充期公司重視產品狀況與市場行銷策略，而成熟期公司除前者重點亦注重財務狀況與公司評價。不同生技領域的主要評估差異為產品狀況，生技製藥公司注重產品的臨床試驗規劃與結果，而醫療器材公司則重視產品等級與認證。 從2000年至今，生技投資評估項目無顯著變更，但比以往重視投資案的財務規劃與出脫獲利可行性。投資案種類隨資本市場偏好而改變，從技術平台轉變為產品導向的生技公司，未來生技產業發展與投資趨勢仍會因技術發展而改變。

After the decoding of human genome in 2000, the global biotechnology industry has flourished quickly. Our government has been actively outlining and implementing the strategies for biotechnology industry since the era of 1980s, and the venture capitalists in Taiwan have begun to invest in the biotech companies as well as to establish many biotech venture funds in 1990s. We have conducted interviews with experienced venture capitalists and developed a set of evaluation criteria for investment, in order to provide the strategic reference model of assessment for all venture capitalists in evaluating biotech investment projects. In our research, we discovered that the main goal of venture capitalist is investment profits. The major biotech investment strategies of venture capitalist include investing companies which are located in Taiwan or United States, in the stages of Start-up or Expansion, and have focus on the new drug development or medical devices. Moreover, venture capitalists will also take into consideration of their fund sizes and investment targets’ conditions. In the due diligence process, the top five evaluation factors are management team, market scale, intellectual property, business model and product condition, the management team of which is the most important criteria for the venture capitalists during the decision-making process. There are different set of evaluation criteria applied by venture capitalists for biotech companies that are in different stages and in different industry sectors. The focus of evaluating start-up biotech companies is in management team, intellectual property and business model. On the other hand, companies in the expansion stage are evaluated with emphasis on the product condition and marketing strategies, and companies in the mezzanine stage are evaluated with emphasis on the financial condition and valuation. For the new drug development companies, venture capitalists put more emphasis on the planning and results of different phases of human clinical trials, while the medical devices companies are evaluated with emphasis on the class and certifications of products. In conclusion, there have been no significant changes in the evaluation criteria of biotech investment for venture capitalists since 2000 up to date. However, venture capitalists are more serious in companies’ financial planning and exit opportunity than ever before. The primary biotech investment targets for venture capitalists have already transformed to product-oriented companies instead of technology platform based companies. However, the current investment trend of biotech industry could still change or swift mainly affected by the significant breakthrough technologies and technology advancements in the future.