Gates Earns 10X on BioNTech in Just Two Years: $55m Investment Now Over $550m

TrialSite StaffJuly 2, 2021

As it turns out, the vaccine business has been incredibly lucrative for Bill Gates and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation lately. From one point of view, it’s truly a compelling position to be in, seeking to profit off the business of saving lives. In our system, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with this; in fact, it’s celebrated. And the Gates Foundation should be celebrating as apparently, they have turned the $55 million vaccine investment in BioNTech into $550 million in just a couple of years! That is, they injected $55 million in exchange for pre-IPO equity in the German biotech company, which based on the market capitalization present day is worth north of $550 million. This represents, frankly, a staggering return in the world of drug development that often takes a decade for a return on investment. Of course, the coronavirus vaccines have received enormous government subsidies, albeit the BioNTech and Pfizer partnership, to their credit, took a pass on the Operation Warp Speed clinical development cash injection..

Thanks to some reporting by Nickie Louise writing for Tech Startups, the world can learn a little more about some ingenious investment platform strategies. As it turns out, Gates and Co also possess vested equity in other COVID-19 vaccine makers and therapeutic developers. For example, Ms. Louise writes that Gates took positions in Pfizer, CureVac, and Vir Biotechnology. The reporter found via Fool.com that in 2015, Gates put $52 million into CureVac and thereafter made further bets to progress various mRNA-based vaccines on the CureVac platform.

What a Difference a Couple Years can Make

Gates and Co. first placed the $55 million back in September 2019. Those funds were to help develop HIV and TB programs as well as to further expand the German biotech venture’s infectious disease portfolio. The first $55 million as described in their press release were used to develop preclinical vaccine and immunotherapy candidates targeting HIV and TB infection. The total funding was anticipated to reach $100 million. New infectious disease projects were very much on top of mind as evident in press releases back then.

Now BioNTech’s stock’s at $224 and a market capitalization of $54 billion. The top two institutional holders of the German company’s stock include Scottish Ballie Gifford and Company and Pasadena, CA-based Primecap Management Company, totaling just under 5% between the two of them.

Deep, Integrated Platform Strategy

Gates’ involvement apparently in vaccine research has gone well beyond investment at the early research and development or clinical development stages and crossed into production and commercialization. For example, back in 2015, his organization invested $52 million in not only mRNA-based vaccine development programs with the “potential to revolutionize the prevention of a wide range of infectious diseases “but also a “Good Manufacturing Practice (GM) production facility.”

Move into Vir Biotechnology

Moreover, Gates Foundation took a lead investment role in Vir Biotechnology emphasizing vaccine development. At least one investment totaled $14.8 million. Vir has gone on to see significant success with its monoclonal antibody investigational product in combination with GlaxoSmithKline. On May 26, GSK and Vir Biotechnology shared with the world that their VIR-7831 (Sotrovimab) received an emergency use authorization (EUA) from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the treatment of mild-to-moderate COVID-19 in high-risk adults and pediatric cases.

Turnaround on Idea of Lifting Vaccine Patent Restrictions

While Gates and Co. were initially resistant to temporarily resisting the lifting of vaccine patent protection for equitable distribution of the COVID-19 vaccines the group apparently changed their position, sharing with the world that the foundation would support this effort floated by the POTUS. Social media was abuzz that Gates “was on the wrong side of history” in this previous position.

Not a Conspiracy

That Gates has earned 10X on the foundation’s money isn’t the result of some nefarious, dark-order orchestrated conspiracy but rather part of a methodical, systematic investment thesis dedicated to monetizing public health. Now, all of this, of course, must unfold in an ethical and lawful manner. As society moves toward a new, heretofore not contemplated reality where billionaires and powerful private equity intermediaries’ movements can shape life as we know it, the endpoints can certainly feel like planned. Yet when combining regulatory capture and evolving corporate crony capitalism (as opposed to dynamic free markets) and well, it’s easy to see how some could mistakenly point to a “conspiracy” when it’s really just representative of an unfolding confluence of interests, marked by a series of coincidences.