Investors seem to have a love-hate relationship with the biotechnology sector, and with good reason. Against a promising outlook there are lengthy periods with steep share price declines. The latter situation existed for this fund in 2001 and 2002 when it fell 27.7% and 54.1%, respectively. The Morningstar Rating of one star is partially explained by the fact that the performance of biotechnology funds on average is below that of its peers in the broader Morningstar Life Sciences category over the past three years.
The fund is up 26.4% over the last year, as of May 5th 2004. Its performance is inline with other funds focused on biotechnology and the management fee of 1.5% is also about average. The last known expense ratio – for the year ending April 30th 2003 – was 1.88%.
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Over the last eighteen months the sector has seen new drugs coming to the market and the American Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has become more accommodating when approving new drugs. Next to holdings in the large players of the industry, such as Amgen and Genentech, the fund also invests in smaller and less well-known companies. Overall the fund is quite focused with only 32 holdings.
When investing in smaller companies the fund manager tries to estimate the chance for success based on several factors. These include if the company has a powerful partner, if it owns a successful technology, how the market looks for the drugs it is developing and how healthy its financials are.
The position in Serono, which produces drugs for fertility and multiple sclerosis (MS), was reduced over the last year because of valuation concerns and a modest drugs pipeline. Biogen Idec, which also focuses on MS, is the largest position in the portfolio. The manager prefers this company over Serono because of the merger between Biogen and Idec and also thanks to promising results of pre-clinical tests for a new MS drug.
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