IP Group eyes future royalties from obesity drug candidates following Pfizer/Metsera deal

And it's also got huge potential to have an impact on many, many hundreds of thousands, if not millions of patients' lives. So I think this is another great example of where the sorts of things that we back and develop within IP Group address very big markets, which means real human impact and real scope for some very significant financial returns.

Hi Stephen. Yeah, this is quite an interesting development. So this is something that we spoke a little bit about at our half year results. As a part of our business, we have some patents that we license and that we manage, and license to companies. And this is one of those examples. And I think that announcement that Pfizer was acquiring Metsera has just sort of shone an additional light on this area of our business and perhaps something that we feel has been a little bit overlooked by the market. So we just felt it deserved a bit of an update on its own in the spirit of our commitment to transparency. So yes, it's very interesting that Pfizer has announced that they're going to pay almost $5 billion upfront to acquire Metsera and this collection of anti-obesity drug programs. The reason that it's interesting for IP Group is because we are the licensor of the fundamental underlying technology behind their lead compounds, and a number of others, so if the compounds can go successfully through phase two, phase three and get to market, then the group could stand to benefit from some quite substantial royalties on sales from those drugs. And so obviously it's quite a significant potential source of value for the future for IP Group and its shareholders.

Yeah, I mean, interestingly, the company Metsera came out recently and said they were accelerating the timetable because it's shown such good progress. So I think they're actually targeting getting the phase three up and running by the end of this year, which obviously would be good news. I think analyst forecasts appear to see first sales maybe in 2029, 2030, that sort of time. So dependent on how quickly the drugs progress through the approval pipeline. Then the majority of our value would accrue at the point at which sales start. So in the sort of 2029, 2030 and beyond, I mean, I think it's just that for the interest of listeners, this is worth pointing out that this is a collection of compounds that were produced by one of the real sort of founding fathers of the anti-obesity drug market, a guy called Professor Stephen Bloom who is a professor at Imperial College in London. And way back in 1996, it was his team that originally discovered that the so-called GLP-1 suppress appetite. And so that really laid the groundwork for these incretin-based therapies, being used both for suppressing glucose but also for suppressing appetite. So it comes from a very good source. And so that's why we're particularly excited about the nature of the opportunity here. I mean, I think it's definitely worth pointing out this is a very big market, as you said. It's therefore got huge potential. And it's also got huge potential to have an impact on many, many hundreds of thousands, if not millions of patients' lives. So I think this is another great example of where the sorts of things that we back and develop with IP Group address very big markets, which means real human impact and real scope for some very significant financial returns.

Yeah, it's an interesting question Stephen. I mean, it could be of the magnitude over time. And as I said, we've got to bear in mind that we're still in phase two for the main lead compound, but it could have the magnitude over time where that kind of consideration is something that we do have to articulate both in terms of our strategy and how we think about monetizing any such revenue streams for our shareholders. So it certainly will be nice to have the option to consider that. And I think ongoing long term revenue streams are quite supportive of the long term business model that we have here at IP Group. And it's one of the benefits of having a permanent capital vehicle, which can invest over the long term, and grow some of these businesses to material value over time.