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welcome everybody to today's panel discussion deal-making during the pandemic I'm Joe Volman from Burns 11 s'en on behalf of my life sciences co-chair Andy Merkin he'll be moderating our panel and the other Burns London colleagues that are that are in attendance I want to welcome you all to this we hope to say is a very informative interesting discussion we have a great panel a good panelists investors and and I'll talk to you out what's happening right now during this pandemic lots of we have a hundred forty folks in attendance by the way so very pleased with the attendance and and thrilled to have you all with us I know there's lots of friends and clients in the audience so many of you know us but for those of you don't I'm going to give you a little bit on Byrnes 11 soon we are a full-service firm predominantly based in Boston I co-chair the corporate law group and then within that group I co-chaired the life sciences practice with Annie Morgan as I said we are full-service meaning we have not only corporate and intellectual property and real estate employment tax litigation by the clients all the areas you expect the full-service firm to have but I want to highlight clearly the two groups that I think for those of you who are gonna participate now breakout rooms afterwards you're gonna hear from which is a corporate group in our life's are on intellectual property group our intellectual property group is we're really proud of that group it's a very deep diverse group of professionals who represent companies in a variety of industries mineral life sciences practice area and the corporate group which is about 40 of the 135 or so lawyers represents companies really of all sizes from startups all the way up to larger public and private companies as well as investors in those companies so seed funds venture funds I net worth individuals investment bankers etc happy to say that we had a record year in nineteen Anna started off twenty as many of you did with a bang thinking this was going to be another rah-rah year and had a great first quarter and then of course it all came to a halt some which you'll hear about Andy in the panel but despite that during the pandemic have been fortunate enough to close some financing deals in the life sciences space and M&A deals and just did a public shelf takedown so have still maintained a level of activity we obviously wish it were a little greater and start to see some you start we're trying to see some activity in the pipeline getting filled up again but which it's really a practice they are very proud of we're very proud professionals in the group our clients in the group and we we hope to to get a chance to meet all of you and so without further ado let me turn it over to our to mine I'll just say a brief word about Andy which is he and I work together for nearly 20 years and I've had a great run together we we try to build this life's product life sciences practice together he too comes from a background of deal-making within life sciences and has great depth and breadth of expertise and a terrific client base so we couldn't have had a better moderator someone to put this panel together so take it away Andy yeah thanks oh I think I owe you a couple of beers we know we can actually get together in person again so welcome everybody just quickly to add a little bit to what John was saying we really feel to be able to share today the experience that we've had the experience our terrific panelists have had during this pandemic in terms of deal-making how things are changing those short term and long term John did that the comment we're really looking forward to ultimately being able to see everybody alive in person again as our friends where we you know we host several different networking events during the year we do a kickoff cocktail party at JPMorgan when I was held in bass and we do one similar down at the waterfront in Boston in the past few years during what's now called Boston biotech week we have had also a generally speaking networking only outside in the Seaport events which we would leave out doing we love seeing people but more importantly gives our clients contacts and friends the chance to network meet each other we all know that in the life sciences space more so than any other industry things are done via connection and collaboratively and if these types of events whether they're in person or today virtual that allow us to share that opportunity with people the Joe mentioned we've got 140 people registered from all over the country these are people in all different areas of the life sciences and all different aspects of companies and investment banks and venture capital firms so again welcome and what you ought to be able to virtually see everybody today I will now just quickly introduce our panelists the three panelists at in they're gonna introduce themselves much better than I will our Tom Miller of Labor adventures then Conway of Concilium partners and Randy Scott at Southwest capital so we have one investment banker at two venture capital investors but as you'll hear each of them also crosses over into some of the other areas so with that I would turn it over to our pin was to give us a little bit of background and then to filter directly into one of the initial discussions great this is Tom Miller from Graber adventures we are somewhat unusual venture firm we're the world's largest dedicated diagnostic investors we're also the world's smallest dedicated diagnostic investors since almost no one does that and that was a an area no one paid much attention to until it turned out it's pretty important so next slide please we fairly new firm we made our first investment only in early 2016 we were founded by three guys as micro Devlin he's a banker lawyer and American who speaks fluent Mandarin and Cantonese scott ghazal who is academician Harvard professor physician founder of the largest Institute to assess the clinical and diagnostic efficacy of of new technologies at Mass General and me so the operating guy I've run very big things with 26,000 employees and very small things like startups with 12 employees in between and of course the brains are a bunch of operating advisors who have really stellar resumes next level what we invest exclusively in Diagnostics with a capital D anything that helps characterize a human's biology or physiology so that can be imaging information technology or in vitro diagnostics we invest early typically eight rounds we we have led every investment that we've made in fact we've been the dominant investor and every investment we made we are not focused on any geography we have companies in the United States in Europe and in China investing there is not for the faint of heart our investment range goes from small of four million to a large of 10 may go larger and we tell all of our CEOs that we are the opposite of passive investors we are very active in all of the companies next slide and one thing that makes us different is we're a bit manic when it comes to understanding the space work in we maintain the world's largest database of early-stage diagnostic companies and curate it together with our a capital we produce diagnostic landscapes in order to understand the whole world of areas like cancer diagnostics infectious disease Diagnostics Diagnostics around cardiovascular disease etc and use this to inform our investing decisions and that's it for us I look forward to an exciting webinar so this is ready Scott next slide yeah I'm with HealthQuest capital we're a what we described as a venture growth investor so investing revenue stage businesses across the health care spectrum so that's medical device Diagnostics healthcare IT digital health services consumer health anything that's healthcare medically related as long as it's a revenue stage and positioned for growth we invest really anywhere but certainly all across the US and we pay particular attention to some of the can underserved parts of the country like the southeast the Midwest the Mountain States but also invested Silicon Valley and Boston and what-have-you we've got a distributed investment teams we have a investors headquarters is in California in the Bay Area but I'm based out of Florida and we also have folks in with two of us here in Florida and Atlanta Philadelphia Austin San Diego San Francisco so we're kind of covering the country currently making investments out of a four hundred fifty million dollar fund typical check sizes can run anywhere from ten to forty million dollars will go to thank you Ben Conway cilium partners give you background but then let's just jump into the to the slide deck that I prepared just to set the stage here Concilium partners we are a tech focused middle market investment bank twenty years twenty years old founded by X Robby Stephens bankers the life science practice which I'm the head of we are involved in transactions across a wide range of industry of companies in the industry with both products and services the deals we do include both by side and south side M&A as well as kappa praises of know is that we have significant activity so with that let's skip through this slide and through the next slide those those are the overviews of our practice let's get into the into the real meat of the discussion I'm going to quickly go through these and then you know and then we'll open it up for conversation obviously coming into the pandemic venture I kidded a life-size sword now the next slide please that's Ted that have been driven largely by the receptive public market environment as you can see in both 18 and 19 it's huge levels of money raised and IPOs so then next slide please life science deals have become an increasingly prominent part of the overall new issues market again highlighting their prominence by please nineteen hasn't stopped that momentum as you can see in 2020 annualizing the performance through today or through the first half we're looking at a significant bump up even for over the past two years where in fact we're heading for a record year next slide please so if we look at the overall dynamics and then what we see is the outlook vestment perspective we see new venture funds in fact forming albeit selectively but the whole sector appears to be benefiting from a covert related halo effect where the idea that the the the pharmaceutical space certainly and much of healthcare was under this this price magnify glass currently though we are seen as the heroes as the group that's gonna save us all from the Kovach though from an investment perspective it's as if we're saying you know Kobe 19 bring it on now next slide because that's gonna sharply contrast what we're seeing in the M&A space next time so from strictly and numbers of announced deals perspective we're looking pretty good I'd say right Oh in fact if we look at the number anything I don't know if you can see it here I think something has been cut off the bottom in fact though of a billion dollar deal has sharpened sharply over this period in fact it's gone from q3 where there are six and elf deals to five and Keyport to 3 and Q 1 to 1 billion dollar deal and now so far in the second quarter so this is quite a sharp decline and what that signifies is that there's little appetite for risk and no one is willing to make a big bet right now and that follows next likely a sharp decline in M&A activity that began well before the Cova 19 outbreak and next slide and deals that are getting done increasingly are structured deals involving erna but again the the theme here is that hedging risk is front of mind next slide so in contrast to the IPO market M&A really is at a large stand still right now we're waiting for clarity on the markets continued direction future direction and while there may be some crooning Inventor portfolios even then the appetite of ice tide is going to be uneven it's going to be where they want to place their bets yeah and my belief is that after all this nicely settled out the M&A market this is going to follow the current trends in the IPO market is likely to favor later stage development later stage companies with development candidates in these later stage development stages if not marketed products outright so with that I'll turn it back to the panel wait thanks thanks bananas grapes hopefully you had a chance to catch up laughs I know you covered a lot and a little bit of time there but - on tour - we will drill down a little bit Morgan says some of the aspects of what then was going over as we're doing as we're doing our questions so one thing I had to collect information at the beginning of the webinar that if you have questions as we're going through please submit them through the Q&A function and then when we get to the end of the piano we will have QA and depending we will pick as many of those questions as possible so please do that just following up on what Ben was discussing we're gonna talk a little bit first about M&A and then we will pivot to us adventure financing so again just looking at what's been going on in the other name markets can the panelists have any thoughts on how the code would nineteen crisis has impacted zero activity in both of terms the numbers of deals and also the timeline from kickoff to closing which is a question that we're getting all the time for people so maybe I can first of all speak to the Diagnostics industry I'm a very narrow limited person so I can always speak to that one one segment but we see a bimodal thing happening if you happen to have technology that could be relevant in the short term to come at 19 I mean we have our own companies I know of a couple of others who are never expected to be approached for any potential M&A activity and all of a sudden they are front and center on the other hand I see exactly what Randy just said if you're not we had two companies involved in discussions preliminary discussions those discussions just got shifted out you know for who knows when and part of it is due to very practical reasons you know one of the companies was looking at technology for a nursing home well you can't do a deployment in a nursing home now you can't even go in a nursing home now right another with Luke waiting for results from a clinical trial on oncology there's clinical trials have ground to a halt I mean patient recruitment has got to help so you know I think it's very much bimodal with a little thing in the middle of weird stuff going on around technologies that are trying to promote themselves as having been related to Kovan 19 which have nothing to do with over 90 but that's an anomaly yeah I think that's the chime in there too I think that there is a interesting dynamic of two sides of this coin one is I completely agree I think any active idea of doing an M&A deal during this time period for the most part just kind of ice because people are like too much uncertainty we're gonna hold on to our England big money or a big company can hold on to her cash whatever you know there was all that kind of dynamic that was going on so I think that's a and then B I think there's also a perception as people in our industry look back at 2009 or whatever and they look back at 911 they say okay well look at those instances private company valuations the Nader the low point of private company valuations were probably six or nine months after the event if you will and so there may be some tendency to want to wait and see if maybe deals get a little sweeter or whatever but meanwhile of course I don't think there has been any adjustment of valuations at all because the public markets have defied gravity so why would anyone chase your expectations so there's all those dynamics but on the flip side everybody's been at home not on airplanes lots of extra time on their hand so I think the amount of early conversations sort of networking with the Corp deaf people and all this kind of stuff I think that has been through the roof and that will probably come back to roost in a positive way my guess is and you know whatever may be into this year or first half the next year or whatever should have been a bunch of conversations that have started and been able to advance at least to a certain point that maybe would have taken you know whatever six weeks to get a call on this calendar before maybe somebody would have even responded to an email before because they're all too busy so I think there's those two conflicting dynamics going on Randy that's actually a very interesting point that I know we're going to touch on a little bit later in terms of in terms of you know companies and investors BIOS not being able to actually meet in person and the impact of that you mentioned from what you're seeing at least that transaction value has remained robust and hasn't decreased I'm wondering is a transaction expectations better Tom are you seeing that as well and into any of you it sounds really like you're suggesting that at some point in the future just based on the lag that when transactions come back the valuations are going to be down but I interested in any what anybody thinks on that yeah no I would agree need that on the one hand but it's a bifurcated picture because on the one hand we've got the the sellers we're looking at the public markets for Cubs and trying to get direction from them and the public market value got a hiding you scratching your head and everybody else does you know when you're looking at though what the future might hold on the floor and even the private act big private equity groups that I'm talking everybody value I think there's a lot of expectation that there's gonna be a quick fix to this a vaccines right around the corner etc etc etc so I mean so that's on the sell side but on the buy side no one's moving so I mean again the the interest is there yeah play for the thought and I will say as it was mentioned in my opening comments you saw there the the level of M&A active activity dropping off sharply over the past several number of several years that in large part you know was driven because evaluation concerns that and and the reason that they do seem more structured deals all the other great part valuation driven but you know so that's you're gonna see delays somebody's gonna have to capitulate we just don't know yes another it's interesting I would have expected to have heard and the more we're seeing of the more in the venture saw them in a M&A side that you know discounts evaluations is such but it's great to hear at least for they haven't taken a hit although you know you're uh you're suggesting that it's certainly it's certainly to come so that's let's talk a little bit about the deal process itself and my question is in terms of and and at least one or two you had had going into this a little bit and financial due diligence including review of financial projections as part of the due diligence process it has that undergone a change at all in in the M&A space maybe just a quick comment I think the entire due diligence process since it's amazing I actually think it got more productive it's having discussions every single night you know via zoom they've no one's hopping on planes so actually the frequency is is higher feedback is faster so actually the process itself has been surprisingly not delayed with one exception in another case you know people wanted to touch and feel things so we're shipping stuff rather than the shipping stuff for the touching and feeling things that's not happened we have not had any transactions where the companies involved have been negatively impacted by copa90 and so in fact if we were to have a EBIT and kovat impact it would actually be for a couple of the companies the Komen impact would be incredibly positive and in but in one case if they were in question they're not it would be negative I mean their revenues you know crashed during the first months of the year yeah I think it depends on the product right because there's some areas of the life-science spectrum that are essentially database transactions I usually think about therapeutics for examples you're looking at clinical study results your yeah all this kind of stuff you you don't really need to meet face to face to be able to do most of that and you're buying the asset not mine the management team whatever you know I think you shift over to medical devices can be very different than because they're yeah I want to you know get this in the hands of my you know Kol surgeons and I want them to use it on some patients and see does it you know what they think of it not and you can't do that and so I think men device most email device at least is probably completely iced right now but I would guess they're therapeutics it may be Diagnostics because they're much more data based decisions and you know kind of science asset purchases there's no reason they can't progress pretty well without you know having group meetings traveling on airplanes in style I don't know about that actually I think that you know that you know Randy certainly for therapeutics deals which are later stage that's certainly the case words and they're not you know outright marking I like said it's clear but certainly a with companies and this is what we deal with quite often with companies with earlier stage technology either their preclinical or their very early in the clinical development there's a lot of touchy-feely die I think people want a face-to-face interaction or they they you can't really do that over zoom I mean that's just the sense so I mean what in fact from a number of investors they're saying look we can get it to the LOI stage but after that then they slow down because of that there's that personal connection to that and certainly integration issues yeah I mean unless you think we're jettison the whole organization as far as people goes you know integration issues that's really very tricky that's the way I think the other thing that maybe slows things down a little bit is there's reduced FOMO yeah fear of missing out too right and so people are willing you know they figure out nobody's too much deals making right now so we can drag this thing out and you know whatever maybe a few more experiments will happen or some material adverse change will happen or something the meantime we'll be glad to created so let me ask you have Anton touched upon this a little bit have any of you seen the formal use of the new phrase ebay doc learning early before interest taxes depreciation amortization in coronavirus Tom you mentioned it's sort of it's played it's being factored in it's it's coming out naturally just because of how it impacts the business but our our people know actually applying this as an analysis tool is it more just a little bit on the fly I mean I just just say you know there are two cases where the companies have been negatively impacted so and I can speak to one of our companies our Chinese company as you might expect our Chinese company from January to March their revenues went to zero we're just plain zero you know I mean these are early-stage companies the last year that revenues was slightly over two million but they expected to double that this year and then they went to zero so that was tough but just this morning with the reopening of the Chinese economy hopefully it doesn't close down again they announced three very large deals and still are holding to their expectations so it could be that they're latter half is the same but you know there is going to be every sort of song and dance around revenue projections and earnings that people can make to make themselves look good right it's and some will be real and some will be not so real and let me let me just throw a lady I don't interupt let me just throw this out and there may not be an answer to this but what would you what would all the three of you think is going to be the trigger point for things say coming back to normal is it a VAX you know you know on the market is it just you know very very positive changes to the numbers of infections that a very high level what do you think will be the pivot point I think you know announcement of a vaccine obviously a huge or for that matter just therapeutic and of course there's a recent announcement on something there too but a therapeutic that was you know mass-producible and effective even I think helps a lot also I think your question is a little biased and that it seems to presume that things are that there will be a triggering event they will return to zero which I actually think the market is assuming but I'm not so sure is fair to assume personally and I think a couple of announced failures of vaccine trials just as easily happen could be you know really thankful but Maxine production you know it's gonna take time do it right and know that you have a good however you wanted to find good vaccine it takes time you know and there's nothing you can do to change that you know I mean especially if the cases were to come way down then is just going to take longer the vaccine works or not so I'm not so sure that the vaccine there look I think it has a lot of belief the idea that we have a vaccine near-term or at least I'll say or maybe a vaccine but I'll stand in line to get vaccine right after our president yeah I'm not so sure people are gonna be really enthusiastic but always step back and I wanted to drill down a little bit more into to the extent that you are seeing deals and then it's it sounds like you're seeing you know more sort of South Side push than by side if I heard that correctly but but different one well are you are you seeing covet related changes to terms a code word related that some warranties you know changes in the thrashing of deals in terms of on the M&A side obviously your notes and milestones language in the for special classes that lawyers all come to love things along those lines well you know given the the big deal it just aren't happening I haven't seen anything actually you know but me as far as look it's large the deal getting done these are going to be the smaller truck in the ad on the bolt ons so there are some in fact that a annum of reverse mergers going on where companies you know are joining are getting popular so I guess following the coattails of the IPO window but doing but doing that through reverse mergers so yeah you know the when you when you talk about are you speaking different deal structures I mean the one I highlight I was the deal that was just announced yesterday gilja adds acquisition of pioneer you know that's an interesting one it's on the immuno on the immuno oncology but did that deal was structured and then nothing you haven't seen this before but here in DC in these time thank you're more of it where it's structured as a as an exclusive option where gilja and in and paid you know two hundred seven five million dollars for a minority a significant minority but a minority stake in the company with the option post phase one B results acquire the rest of it you know and then pay of course you know certain certain uh my internal payments with that but I think you're gonna see more about gets back to this idea that I was discussing in the upfront presentation people are looking to hedge or they're looking to hedge the the exposure they have kill yeah I mean look Gilead with Brendon severe they're there front and center so if anyone has you look like they have some way over I would imagine chiliad and perhaps from modernity and whatnot but I mean that's what you're starting to see people factor right that's certainly not a new model but you're saying that you know you are seeing and you and you expect to see it more and more yes so I agree with Ben's comments especially when it comes to structuring deals were you know mitigate risk you think that's right place where I disagree actually is maybe you know it's only an end of to but it's an expensive to I actually think that people are becoming very comfortable with a zoom diligence you know they're one of the companies that we've been interacting with actually ask the question on Friday an anticipation of this webinar I said and these are this is a they want to incorporate all the personnel retention is a big a big deal and it's amazing I said to them do you feel the need to meet in person and they said no we know so-and-so has a dog another person has a little kid these are things we'd never know before or speaking of longer more frequently than ever we're seeing my dog by the way but so I actually agree with Randy and bad that things will not go back to normal anytime soon in fact I don't think they go back to normal forever I think this is a this is an event that is going to change how we are that the interesting take on that one last question on the M&A front and then we'll shift into the the financing side so anyone who wants to attack with us what advice would you have for companies as they are as they're considering they're looking for a buyer or recently kicked off a sale process just well there are a couple of key points for them to keep in mind as they're starting the process now hey well I would throw off its right with just one thing that customized this will come up later more talk about new investments too but I think there's historically in our business a lot of people have waited two key things off of JPMorgan in January and I think that looks like a really bad idea right now but I don't think any of us know is there gonna be a JP Morgan as anyone gonna show up to JP Morgan whatever and you know is there gonna be some other economic shoe that drops and you throw an election or anything else I would say if you think you're gonna want to transact in the next 18 months I think you ought to be out there beating the bushes right now in part because it is easier to have those early conference even the early-to-mid conversations yeah I Ben's point about maybe you can't get past an LOI or whatever get to an LOI is the hardest part of the job anyway so I would say you accelerate any anticipated steelmaking process would be my advice that's great advice has absolutely makes it makes perfect sense it makes perfect sense so with that why don't we turn a little turn to venture financing some of the questions are a little going to be somewhat analogous but I think it's it's a very different playing field so by the first question is much like with M&A is what are you seeing in terms of numbers of deals that are happening as well as the timeline of deals from kickoff to closing on the venture finance side under the close of 19 endemic you know like once again it's bimodal although I have to say there's a whole lot of companies who thought they had financing who all of a sudden don't it's been amazing the number of phone calls I have had with companies calling us up saying you know Tom you sure you're not interested I so I thought you had your money already well no I guess I don't so I think there's been a lot of variability there and I think there has been a lot of people who are waiting I mean I know two other VCS who I'm close to basically said we're gonna wait for a little bit to see what what happens because we're not quite sure where evaluations are going and and so I think there's a bit of a pause yeah so go ahead going Randy I said we've we've actually done since the crisis started whatever we closed two deals we put out or signed on to three terms so we've been quite active in fact probably a little bit more active than normal I was though the two deals that got done though one of them was already in process so maybe doesn't count but we followed through and the other one was though accompany to Tom's point that it actually intended to do an IPO in the first half of the year and we had given him a term sheet would have been kind of a crossover sort of round and whatever late last year and they decided they didn't need it they were just going to advance to go and collect acuter dollars or whatever and then they came back to us and said okay well on second thought you know we kind of like to still do that and so that and then we seen a number of these companies to Tom's point they thought they had financing and you know some portion of the the investment community has hit the pause button when all this stuff hit the fan and so those got little trout sort of searching it on the flip side though we've seen a ton of deals coming bounced and we have actually had a few instances and just flat out getting scooped on deals where we thought we had plenty of time to ask act and the companies like firm sheets and 15 minutes or whatever and we didn't get a chance to really get into diligence very far so there seems to be a lot of activity going on kind of like the public markets it's a little bit mystifying to be honest but stuff's getting done I mean it's everything where you put your money I mean you can put it onto your pillow lose money there put it in bonds there you know you can put any overseas but you know that's quite on 30 so people are flocking to to get yield from US equities I mean that's what it is it's just you know you're not gonna put your money year don't for you 1% or whatever it is that's you know and I gotta say yeah yeah I believe strongly is that the Robin Hood effect is playing a factor as well now Tom you have un touched upon the the point about people some people sitting on the sidelines because we're waiting to see what valuations are doing I know we've you know on in our practice on both the company side of the investor side we've seen some deals get put on hold in most cases because one of a syndicate of investors has chosen not to move forward then they come back with a replacement investor but the valuations have been down we've seen them anywhere from sort of 15 to 25 percent what just wonder people what are you all seeing in your little with the deals that actually are moving forward Randy in the case of some of these companies that you're saying are having a much easier time finding potential investors in signing term sheets are they are they at their valuations remaining steady or they're lower I think the standard district distribution or whatever standard deviation of valuations is much broader than he would normally expect I think is actually what's going on so we've seen some deals that some super high valuations and then we've seen a couple that work bargaining's to where we were kind of asking ourselves hey what are we missing here you know so I they're all over the board I'm not quite sure what the explanation that is a great interesting question that has been posed to us a number of times and again everybody touched upon it a little bit in the M&A discussion is in the world of venture financing well a and then today's world of everything we've done virtually with a VC investor without ever having met a management team in person either sign a term sheet or if they will sign a turn of shape well they actually closed a deal again without ever having met management in person in for those companies where they actually have a have a site that matters to see their operations being able to do that you know my stance I say yes yes and I would say that in fact once partners close to that deal earlier maybe you know last week I mean where they had they I mean they were commenting that this was peculiar that they had never shot a deal with permit the management team before closing but in fact that's what happened they closed the deal without it yeah I will say on a couple of the deals where we've been working on it where we knew we weren't going to be able to meet the management team for example one in New York we knew the timelines of the deal had to happen on and it just was quite obvious we weren't going to meet the team in person right and there we actually just tell them up front okay we're not going to be able to meet so let's but yeah the good news is we don't have to spend a bunch of time on airplanes and in my case whatever so let's just block out some time on Zune just you and me the CEO or the the top two or three people on the team we're just gonna block out in 90 minutes and we're just gonna whatever you know talk about life or whatever you know the kind of stuff you do over a beer or dinner or something like that it works surprisingly one you can comment about well tell me about that picture you know behind you on that bookshelf or whatever you know that's um I mean it's that's great to hear I'm sure you know people listening in who are on you know particularly on the company side that are looking to raise are very excited to hear that it's it's interesting because a couple weeks ago as part of a investor conference or that virtual conference that I participated in I asked that question of several invested several venture investors and because going back only two weeks that the fuel in general was that they said unlikely to happen but it's still early in the process and one connacher said yeah there's no we would we would sign a term sheet we would never closed but if we're still sitting here in December in the same situation that we can't get on a plane then we've got a you know we'll have to assess our strategy because to the point does you know the funds have have money that needs to be deployed and in he suggests as that things would most likely change at that point but it was every everything was in there a little bit of a state of flux but it's very very positive to hear everybody say what you weren't doing or what you're here let's shift to just talk about some existing portfolio so for existing portfolio that raised capital prior to the pandemic of how is the pandemic impacting that both their operations in their ongoing capital needs they'll start again by modal I told you about the Chinese company zero we had another company where we were anticipating doing a B round later this year and it turns out the company is probably going to go cash positive due to Como I mean if you had asked me in December I actually thought that they were under shooting to be round they were gonna need even more money and voila so it's it's really bimodal there's a lot of I mean I'm not sure as sustainable that that's a different question but it's if if you have a solution right now there's a lot of cash to be gotten not only from venture and others but from you know government sources and other and things like that especially if you have a covent pertaining solution and not small amounts of money I mean rather large amounts of one I would go so far as say my team a kind of tribe of them to go so you do that some companies have gotten crushed by this y'all elective surgery stuff and referral starters the most obvious I think because we're in health care there yup for example we've got an investment a cardiac monitoring company zero impact on where the other people are still going to get their you know hearts monitor limb and then we've also got some investments in things like telemedicine that are just you know walkers and surprisingly be we've got a couple of investments in the employee benefit space that have done remarkably well because ironically employers are spending less money on health claims this year so they actually have money their benefits bucket to spend and the decision makers are sitting around willing to take phone calls so that was a surprise winner for us all three of those very interesting point interesting point and just I want to point out to our guests that we have some some good questions that are being submitted through the Q&A feature and I just some are very specific to what one of the panelists just said but we won't capture them all at the end in a few minutes and because they're good and they're good questions that we could all discuss same question that we asked about with with M&A so for companies that are considering whether you're starting capital raise or that may have just kicked off the capital raise what advice would you have for them I know Randy either message in the evidence-base start now no it's gonna take longer don't don't pin your hopes to JPM which I agree is you know for everybody in this space knows what that does similar types of advice from anybody for that your secrets right now what randy said [Music] but actually from the investor society and granted yes on the private equity I mean private equity am saying the private versus public there's probably more hesitant to invest right now they're looking to be sure their portfolio companies are adequately that said though the interest is there you know and the appetite and so I am NOT saying go out expecting you're gonna get this done tomorrow but you know there to to see the idea you know with it it with a range of investors then you know most likely bring in a look is definitely something that's worth pursuing yeah I've actually questioned myself for for Tom and Ben and you Andy so you know we've seen a lot of deals that kind of don't have that much Tobit but they they come in and they've got a deck with their co fits spin on their story or whatever personally I find it be a little bit of a turn-off but I'm curious before they turn to Q&A just so one last some enough of a wrap-up question and everybody everybody touched upon this already to some extent in terms of what you are seeing what you think things will look like short term and long term so I'll just throw out the question that I had a high level for both M&A and for a venture for dance things what is your outlook for the next say three to six months one year out and three years out defense you can even predict at this point I'll begin again remember on the Diagnostics gun I have to say that when we started great bird ventures no one wanted to talk to us we had trouble raising money you know a lot of times we would say we're only going to do Diagnostics but we'd hear the door slam all of a sudden Diagnostics is in the front page of every single newspaper every single day oh definitely you tom is sitting in the catbird seat you know I mean Diagnostics and I'm sure Tom recognises this it's always been sort of the ugly stepsister to the therapeutics and right now diagnostics is where you want to be I mean we obviously can't be are big but still diagnostics you've never seen anything like this I mean on diagnostics alone you see down to her you see Abbott you see Roche these are massive companies jumping 10 11 12 % plus an in a day all driven by the disease the idea of that Diagnostics my hat's off to you now but your question where were you be three to six months well the way the way that the way I think he's into these their programs are going to go but based on how fast Kove it's expanding across the globe you know I think you're gonna see I mean you could even see her immunity you know if you get six maybe nine months they'd be proud but seeing high number people who have the now one Thursday that translates into the hospitalization percentages and then the chaos tree that we saw back in March and April that's another story I think there will be advances in treatment regimens whether and that doesn't mean to our pewters per se but just in in approaches and processes you know plus the fact that we've been at this for a while now don't worry I will be even more so six months from now so that we'll be better prepared to handle this influx of patients not that they're it's gonna be a perfect world it's not going to be you know three years I believe we will be but you know what the amazing thing is done is you say we've been at this for some time when you think about it it's only been four months that seems like a lifetime it really does decoded focus of social media where it's not gone now long from 15 minutes of fame to 15 seconds of fame that's true that is true so I'm just keeping an eye on the clock and want to be sensitive to everybody's schedules why don't we turn we've got a few questions that have been posed so let me just go through these in order that they were posed and hopefully we can get to all of them the first question for Todd Miller are you in bed and this comes from Michael Henry are you investing in Diagnostics companies with copic 19 products or others as I said we diagnosed with a capital D so it's anything that helps characterize a patient's biology or condition prior to treating them and that's for any condition that makes makes sense with there's only one probably disease that we stay away from because we're really not specialists there that's diabetes diabetes is almost an a discipline unto itself and that's not where expertise is but in our portfolio we have effects just diseased companies oncology companies you know companies that want for neurodegenerative disease so anything terrific the second question and I apologize in advance if I mispronounced the name is from beyond for anyway and the question is broadly how is the focus how has the focus of investment focused on telemedicine delivery particularly in conjunction with state government contracts so what's happening with telemedicine I think I can take a stab on that one because we make investments in that space too so obviously right now tell Besant through the roof everything remotely related to telemedicine is doing well that and I think it's a permanent phase shift I suspect that as coab it fades - it will come down from maybe the current level but that whatever the new plateau is will be substantially higher than it was before I also think the rules around reimbursement they got changed short-term for telemedicine because of the crisis will probably be made permanent fingers crossed at least but I think you know you had Seema Verma and other people saying oh yeah this is this great idea we should have done this a long time ago or whatever so I think all those things are gonna contribute to just a permanent upward phase shift in the use of telemedicine and the application of telemedicine to other business things like an email exchange today with somebody doing telemedicine for hearing aids as an example an itchy thing right but why not why do I go to the audiologist in person I'm not gonna go to my primary care person you know terrific we have two more questions the next one comes from Joseph Muldoon Joseph how are you I know we've met I think through boost jobs you a few times in the past and the question is how so how long will the DC's wait and I'm reading that to mean how long will we cease way to get back into the game a relatively regular basis I could make a quick comment on that only because I've gone out been talking to a lot of fellow VCS or whatever and I think there's a cluster of DC's like us that didn't never waited and then I think there's another one that said we're just going to take a three-month pause we're going to relax and focus on our own families and that kind of stuff for three months then we'll get back in the game so I actually think sometime this summer everybody will be back up to speed I would agree with that that's great it again we are great to hear from the experts on that for everybody involved here who's looking forward to that your comments coming back the fourth and final question is from Rick Pierce who asks do you think early stage investors so were stationed Bester's and I'm assuming Rick you mean with smaller investment numbers and smaller funds and smaller investment numbers will be more likely to make investments and deploy capital rather than as opposed to the larger funds that says what we do maybe later stage and larger deals so is it you know is there any reason to believe that the smaller earlier stage deals will get done more readily than the larger later stage deals if I'm ready to get reading that correctly I'm not saying that you know ain't the same I mean that discussion you see a lot of the trends toward the more conservative investments which generally translate to later stage or more mature companies you know and you see that both from the IPO perspective where more and more companies are investors are shifting to companies with later stage products and clinical development you're seeing that and I think you're seeing that from the M&A side too so that's I figure you're seeing a shift that way not look they're always for good not really outstanding technologies people will always invest so I will say that I agree completely terrific I do see one funnel sort of logistical question somebody had asked if the slides will be made available the answer to that is yes absolutely we will send out to everybody following the webinar today these the flight deck that's had been put up and people had gone through which also contains the contact information for all our panelists so I'm putting mouths words into their mouths but certainly feel free to reach out directly to any of them with follow-up questions I'm sure they'll be you're thrilled to talk generally about specifically and how to help answer questions I'm so we're just just about after one hour mark you know let's do a sort of a quick got a quick wrap-up and then we'll transition into our networking they got room so I do want to thank our panelists for taking the time to do this today the good news again about the ritual we all what here is that we were able to put this together fairly quickly which was nice but at the same time it's a lot of you know a lot of time on everybody's part particularly the panelists so we really do appreciate it we hope that all of our guests have learned something today of coming away with some good answers as well as some good questions we well as I mentioned that thing at the outset we in addition to the cocktail type events that we hold that JPMorgan a bio Boston biotech week we also offer a growing number of subsets of events much like today's presentation and again in this new world of everything because initially we expect to be accelerating that a little bit so we are in the early stages of planning for a probably a q3 a fall panel it may be something along the lines of a CEO forum or something like that certainly if any of our guests have either ideas for panels or ideas for speakers or otherwise or one a volunteer themselves certainly please reach out and let me know and I just want to mention one other thing which is that in the week of September 14th which was supposed to be Boston biotech week which I am assuming is also being held virtually if at all I haven't seen anything about it yet there are two conferences that friends of Levinson has been participating in over time a little bit but we're going to be getting much more about this year we're very excited about the opportunity so I just wanted a lot of people know that during the week of the 14th the the resi Digital conference which is rediscovering early stage investing in the life sciences space and a new sister conference that same week for DNA I are going to be our fourth Okara basically cover the entire week we're going to be sponsors of both those but more importantly we will be moderating Supino's we will have some of our own life sciences folks both on the corporate and the IP in the FDA side making presentations volume panels so I'm really looking forward to that and hope people can join again gives us an opportunity to help share our knowledge share our network and ultimately introduce those two terrific panelists like like we have here today