The R&D World Index (RDWI) for the week ending September 15, 2023, closed at 3,040.46 for the 25 companies in the RDWI. The Index was down -0.44% (or -10.13 basis points). Fourteen of the 25 RDWI members gained value last week from 0.07% (Astra Zeneca PLC) to 7.00% (Alphabet/Google). Eleven of the 25 RDWI members lost value last week from -0.34% (Intel) to -9.82% (Oracle).
Click to enlarge.
Moderna, Cambridge, Massachusetts, announced last week that it plans to invest about $25 billion in R&D from 2024 to 2028 and roll out up to 15 new products during that time targeted at cancer, rare diseases, and infectious diseases. Up to four of those products will be launched by 2025. The company also plans to move up to 50 new candidate drugs into clinical trials during this period. It expects to add from $10 billion to $15 billion in annual sales five years after launching new products in oncology, rare and latent diseases by 2028. This would be incremental to its previously outlined target of $8 billion to $15 billion from its respiratory drugs in 2027. Its current flu vaccine candidate has met all co-primary endpoints in a phase 3 clinical trial.
West Virginia University (WVU), Morgantown, announced last week that it will cut 28 academic programs and eliminate 143 faculty jobs in moves to obtain financial viability. WVU is among a growing number of public universities facing financial stress brought on by years of excessive spending, state funding cuts, and enrollment pressures. WVU will eliminate a Ph.D. in mathematics, M.S. in public administration, graduate degrees in higher education administration, and other programs. Faculty cuts will include positions in its school of law, mathematical and data science, chemistry, and plant and soil sciences. Spending at the school increased by 38% between 2002 and 2022 while state funding fell by more than 50%.
The Biden administration announced last week that the U.S. government plans to launch a $100 million program to upgrade the availability and reliability of public electric vehicle (EV) charging stations across the U.S. to help solve the major hurdle preventing drivers from switching out their gas-powered vehicles. The funds for this program are made available under the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and will be applied to chargers nationwide currently listed as “temporarily unavailable” according to government data.
Venture capitalists from various countries have substantially reduced their investments in China’s biotechnology industry, according to a report from E Squared Capital Management, Great Neck, New York. Biotech venture investments in China rose from $1.2 billion in 2015 to $19.3 billion in 2021 and then fell to $8.9 billion in 2022, according to market analyst Pitchbook Data, Seattle, Washington. China’s biotech has grown crowded and suffers from too many companies doing the same thing, according to analysts.
A resurgence in nuclear power generating plants is causing increasing demand for uranium and resulting shortages and increasing prices, according to a report from Uranium Energy Corp., Hobson, Texas. New reactors have recently been brought online in the U.S., Asia, and Europe. Japan is bringing nuclear power stations online that were closed following the 2011 Fukushima disaster. Small modular reactor projects produced by General Electric and Rolls-Royce have also taken steps toward commercialization. The recent political coup in uranium-rich Nigeria has also distressed the availability of the materials. Both China and India also have long-term plans to increase their nuclear-generating capabilities. Uranium prices have risen from 9% to 11% over the past year.
RDW Index member Meta Platforms (formerly Facebook), Menlo Park, California, announced it is working on an artificial intelligence (AI) system as powerful as the most advanced system offered by OpenAI, San Francisco. OpenAI created ChatGPT and was initially funded by Microsoft. The new Meta system is expected to be several times more powerful than the Llama 2 AI system the company created several months ago. The new system would help other companies build AI services that produce sophisticated text, analysis, and other output. Meta is building up new data centers and has acquired advanced Nvidia H100 chips. The product will be open-sourced and available free for companies to build AI-powered tools.
RDW Index member Alphabet/Google, Mountain View, California, announced last week that it is pushing back the expiration date of Google Chromebooks, following concerns that the laptop computers were too short-lived to be cost-effective. The new policy starts in 2024 and ensures that no existing Chromebook will expire within the next two years.
Management recruiter Korn Ferry, Chicago, reported last week that more private equity firms are recruiting data-science experts as they incorporate machine learning, AI, and data analytics into their investment processes and support their portfolio companies. Small and midsized firms have been adding data science experts to their staff, while larger firms and early movers have already built sizable data science teams. Research scientists are top targets for these hires and will likely demand sizable salaries.
Qualcomm, San Diego, announced last week that it had reached a three-year deal with Apple, Cupertino, California, to supply 5G communications chips. The deal suggests that Apple’s efforts to create its own iPhone modems (purchased from Intel in 2019 for $1 billion) is not making its way into Apple products anytime soon. Qualcomm said it is supplying modem chips to Apple for their iPhone launches in 2024, 2025, and 2026. Apple continues to be flush with cash with more than $166 billion in the bank and a $100 billion annual cash flow.
Consulting firm EY (Ernst & Young), London, announced last week that it had recently completed a $1.4 billion investment into AI. The company stated that it had created its own large language model and that it would train its 400,000 employees on AI. EY said it will spend more on AI annually than it has spent combined over the past five years.
R&D World’s R&D Index is a weekly stock market summary of the top international companies involved in R&D. The top 25 industrial R&D spenders in 2020 were selected based on the latest listings from Schonfeld & Associates’ June 2020 R&D Ratios & Budgets. These 25 companies include pharmaceutical (10 companies), automotive (6 companies), and ICT (9 companies) which invested a cumulative total of nearly 260 billion dollars in R&D in 2019, or approximately 10% of all the R&D spending in the world by government, industries and academia combined, according to R&D World’s 2021 Global R&D Funding Forecast. The stock prices used in the R&D World Index are tabulated from NASDAQ, NYSE, and OTC common stock prices for the companies selected at the close of stock trading business on the Friday preceding the online publication of the R&D World Index.
