Latest / Bloomberg Intelligence / Merger Monday for Banks and Biotech
Transcript
- 0:02Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news. You're listening to the
- 0:10Speaker 1: Bloomberg Intelligence podcast. Catch us live weekdays at ten am
- 0:14Speaker 1: Eastern on Apple Coarclay, and Android Auto with the Bloomberg
- 0:17Speaker 1: Business App. Listen on demand wherever you get your podcasts,
- 0:21Speaker 1: or watch us live on YouTube.
- 0:23Speaker 2: We had an M and A trade.
- 0:24Speaker 3: Had a few M and A trades hit the tape
- 0:26Speaker 3: here this morning, one including the regional bank business, maybe
- 0:29Speaker 3: a super regional bank to be Herman Chen, Bloomberg Intelligence,
- 0:32Speaker 3: senior analyst for US regional banks, hunting to bank shares,
- 0:35Speaker 3: buying Cadence.
- 0:37Speaker 2: Herman talking to us about this deal. What's going on here?
- 0:39Speaker 4: So, Huntington's fresh off of a deal in Texas. They
- 0:42Speaker 4: just closed the Veritext deal which added to face Right
- 0:46Speaker 4: and turned Texas through the Veritext merger. And they're doubling
- 0:50Speaker 4: down in Texas, adding Cadence, which is in the Houston
- 0:56Speaker 4: market primarily and also some slower gross Southeast market. It's
- 1:00Speaker 4: like Birmingham two below. They have some exposure to Arkansas
- 1:04Speaker 4: and Missouri, but Texas is really the prize.
- 1:08Speaker 5: Texas is really the prize in Cadence. I believe has
- 1:10Speaker 5: two headquarters, one in Houston, one in Tupelo. So Huntington
- 1:15Speaker 5: now has presence in twenty one states.
- 1:17Speaker 6: And it becomes a super regional. That term super regional.
- 1:20Speaker 5: What does that mean in terms of regular regulation and
- 1:24Speaker 5: what kind of capital needs to hold on its bounce stream?
- 1:26Speaker 4: Yeah, so that's that's a good question. It will clear
- 1:29Speaker 4: the two hundred and fifty billion asset mark, which is
- 1:32Speaker 4: a step up in regulation. Really, all that means is
- 1:35Speaker 4: there's more regulatory reporting, there's a tougher regulation in regards
- 1:41Speaker 4: to liquidity. But overall, should it mean too much for Huntington?
- 1:46Speaker 4: And we are expecting some deregulatory efforts from the Fed
- 1:51Speaker 4: later down the next few months, so that should actually
- 1:55Speaker 4: work out in Huntington's favor. And I think what we're
- 1:58Speaker 4: seeing is that just the regulatory efforts increasing M and
- 2:02Speaker 4: A transactions as a result of the Trump administration being
- 2:07Speaker 4: very more open to deal making. And you're seeing that
- 2:10Speaker 4: playouts not only in this deal, but also with the
- 2:14Speaker 4: Third buying Comerica and also P ANDC buying a bank
- 2:19Speaker 4: in Denver, First Bank, So more transactions to come.
- 2:22Speaker 2: Wow, what's the upside for Huntingdon bank shares here? In
- 2:26Speaker 2: getting bigger.
- 2:27Speaker 4: Yeah, so they are doubling down in higher growth markets.
- 2:32Speaker 7: Right.
- 2:32Speaker 4: So Huntington is based mostly in the Midwest, Upper Midwest,
- 2:36Speaker 4: lower growth demographics. They've focused on not only hiring folks
- 2:44Speaker 4: in national businesses, but also expanding in areas like the Carolinas.
- 2:48Speaker 4: They were doing an organic push in Texas before the
- 2:51Speaker 4: Veritext deal. So the management team's being much more aggressive,
- 2:54Speaker 4: and they talked about improving their return profile, increasing their
- 2:59Speaker 4: return on tangible equity by two hundred basis points over
- 3:02Speaker 4: the medium term. So the higher, the greater scale, the
- 3:06Speaker 4: better growth demographics really will fall to the bottom line.
- 3:09Speaker 5: So what I found interesting in this Hermann is that
- 3:11Speaker 5: earlier this year Cadence bought another bank industry bank shares.
- 3:15Speaker 5: Who's a buyer, who's a seller in this great regional
- 3:17Speaker 5: bank m and a thing that we're seeing.
- 3:20Speaker 4: Yeah, I think what you're seeing today is and I'm
- 3:23Speaker 4: just looking at the Kerry Index and all these Texas
- 3:26Speaker 4: based institutions that are part of that are getting bid up,
- 3:32Speaker 4: like banks like Prosperity First Financial.
- 3:38Speaker 8: Origin.
- 3:38Speaker 4: These are We've seen a number of bank deals in Texas,
- 3:41Speaker 4: both larger and smaller. Remember, coll America is a Texas
- 3:45Speaker 4: based bank as well. So these are that's that seems
- 3:49Speaker 4: to be the area of choice for these regionals and
- 3:53Speaker 4: we're seeing that activity really pick up.
- 3:56Speaker 2: Stay with us more from Bloomberg Intelligence coming up after this.
- 4:02Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Intelligence podcast. Catch us live
- 4:06Speaker 1: weekdays at ten am Eastern on Apple Corplay and Android
- 4:09Speaker 1: Auto with the Bloomberg Business app. Listen on demand wherever
- 4:13Speaker 1: you get your podcasts, or watch us live on YouTube.
- 4:17Speaker 3: No Artist agrees to buy Avidity in a twelve billion
- 4:21Speaker 3: dollar biotech deal, Sam Fazzelli, you became an analyst, You
- 4:25Speaker 3: should have become a banker.
- 4:26Speaker 2: I don't know what you're thinking.
- 4:27Speaker 3: Back in the day, Sam Fazzelli, Director of Research for
- 4:30Speaker 3: Global Industries and the Senior Farmer Analysts Folks is one
- 4:32Speaker 3: of the best out there on the street or in
- 4:34Speaker 3: the city of London, as they say, for Bloomberg Intelligence.
- 4:36Speaker 3: Is this just another deal kind of right out of
- 4:39Speaker 3: central casting, Sam, Pharma buying biotech?
- 4:43Speaker 7: Yeah, well, so, Paul, before we do that, can I
- 4:45Speaker 7: just make sure that when we come back in our
- 4:48Speaker 7: next life, can I work with you there we both
- 4:50Speaker 7: do this together, and can just you know, go and no,
- 4:54Speaker 7: but look, farmer copies. The story is similar here. We
- 4:58Speaker 7: have a company here of artists doing okay. They have
- 5:03Speaker 7: a atent exspirery that they're dealing with. Now remember that phrase,
- 5:06Speaker 7: it's always the one that rears itsumily head eventually, which
- 5:09Speaker 7: is good for consumers and drug budgets, but obviously in
- 5:13Speaker 7: the end bad for the top and bottom line of
- 5:14Speaker 7: pharma companies. They have another drug that's really big, expected
- 5:18Speaker 7: to hit about seven point four billion dollars of sales
- 5:20Speaker 7: by twenty twenty nine twenty thirty, called Cocentics that's going
- 5:23Speaker 7: to go off pattern. So what do they need. They
- 5:25Speaker 7: need assets and products to feed it. They do their
- 5:28Speaker 7: own R and D, but here they also have an
- 5:30Speaker 7: opportunity to go and get really exciting stuff from biotech companies,
- 5:33Speaker 7: which is exactly what Novartist is doing twelve billion dollars
- 5:37Speaker 7: for Avidity Biosciences. And then what they're getting here is
- 5:43Speaker 7: three products there are at different stages of development but
- 5:46Speaker 7: very soon to get to hit the market, all rare diseases.
- 5:49Speaker 7: So it's one that's harder for people to argue against
- 5:53Speaker 7: in terms of price, et cetera. And it will help
- 5:56Speaker 7: them with that post twenty twenty nine, twenty thirty revenue
- 6:00Speaker 7: growth and earnings growth, so pretty much fits perfectly in
- 6:05Speaker 7: this sweet spot of what they need and what this
- 6:08Speaker 7: company and for their growth and also their technology platforms.
- 6:12Speaker 5: Sam you laid out beautifully strategically why Novartists is buying Avidity.
- 6:17Speaker 5: The CEO of Novartists, Vasenara Simhun, has been making some deals,
- 6:20Speaker 5: but mostly they've been focused on deals under five billion dollars.
- 6:24Speaker 5: Regular therapeutics you bought for one point seven billion, and
- 6:27Speaker 5: those therapeutics also in that neighborhood. Is this purchase, this
- 6:31Speaker 5: twelve billion dollar purchase a shift in strategy?
- 6:35Speaker 7: Yeah, I mean it's so hard us on lists, we
- 6:39Speaker 7: love asking a pharma companies, so what kind of deals
- 6:42Speaker 7: are you going to be doing? And you go back
- 6:43Speaker 7: and look at the Q two results. Ah, we like tukens,
- 6:46Speaker 7: et cetera. Right, and here we go. I mean, you know,
- 6:49Speaker 7: in my world, a tuck in is three to five
- 6:51Speaker 7: billion dollars, two to four billion dollars that sort of size.
- 6:54Speaker 7: So but they all give you this caveat we will
- 6:58Speaker 7: be opportunistic. And I think here there was an opportunity,
- 7:02Speaker 7: an opportunity that came up to access some very novel technology.
- 7:07Speaker 7: I have to say, it's really interesting what these guys
- 7:09Speaker 7: are doing, and it's late stage enough for it to
- 7:12Speaker 7: make a difference to the bottom line of the company,
- 7:14Speaker 7: and it's not after you get that mix. So I
- 7:17Speaker 7: think the artists decided this is this takes so many
- 7:20Speaker 7: boxes that it was worth doing. Particularly it fits also
- 7:23Speaker 7: with their internal assets and their approach to some of
- 7:26Speaker 7: the other diseases. So it is really pretty good, pretty
- 7:29Speaker 7: good fit.
- 7:30Speaker 8: Sam.
- 7:31Speaker 3: Is the patent runoff or expiration for this industry?
- 7:35Speaker 2: Is it abnormally high these days?
- 7:37Speaker 3: Or is this this kind of a normal course of business,
- 7:39Speaker 3: because it seems like we hear about it more and
- 7:42Speaker 3: more or less several years.
- 7:44Speaker 7: Well, the companies have got bigger, there's broader pipelines, and
- 7:48Speaker 7: you know, I mean there was a period where it was,
- 7:52Speaker 7: you know, we had the pattern cliff in the twenty
- 7:55Speaker 7: ten eleven twelve time period. I don't remember exactly. It
- 7:58Speaker 7: was a while ago now and now we have another.
- 8:01Speaker 7: It's not quite a cliff, it's a hill that but
- 8:04Speaker 7: this is this is how it should be. These companies
- 8:06Speaker 7: get rewarded with reasonable pricing for the ten to twelve years,
- 8:10Speaker 7: and then it becomes generic so that it creates more
- 8:14Speaker 7: space in the drug budgets for the governments to pay
- 8:16Speaker 7: for the next good drug. So I don't think there's
- 8:20Speaker 7: anything new here, which is it varies by company by company, Sam.
- 8:24Speaker 5: We know that Novartis is going to be reporting earnings tomorrow,
- 8:28Speaker 5: I believe, and it's already raised its profit outlook I
- 8:30Speaker 5: believe two times. What are you anticipating is how much
- 8:34Speaker 5: is it going to tell us in terms of whether
- 8:37Speaker 5: this deal, this Avidity deal will add to earnings in
- 8:40Speaker 5: the near term.
- 8:42Speaker 7: Yeah, but they already told us that they think that
- 8:45Speaker 7: it's going to be clearly dilutive next year. And of course,
- 8:48Speaker 7: as soon as you do these deals, a large amount
- 8:50Speaker 7: of the value goes into what's called IPR and D,
- 8:52Speaker 7: which which you have to charge to your p and
- 8:55Speaker 7: lic cont just put it onto a goodwill anymore and
- 8:58Speaker 7: just live with that as an intangible. So here there
- 9:02Speaker 7: would be dilution next year, but I think they could
- 9:04Speaker 7: start seeing some at least a positive contribution maybe from
- 9:09Speaker 7: twenty seven to twenty eight on Wehre's definitely twenty nine
- 9:11Speaker 7: thirty as these drugs hit the market. Of course, they
- 9:14Speaker 7: have to still get to the market and they have
- 9:16Speaker 7: to be successful. But the drugs are looking really interesting
- 9:18Speaker 7: and the dates is looking very powerful.
- 9:20Speaker 2: Stay with us. More from Bloomberg Intelligence coming up after this.
- 9:27Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Intelligence podcast. Catch us Live
- 9:31Speaker 1: weekdays at ten am Eastern on apple Cocklay and Android
- 9:34Speaker 1: Otto with the Bloomberg Business app. Listen on demand wherever
- 9:37Speaker 1: you get your podcasts, or watch us live on YouTube.
- 9:41Speaker 5: All right, let's talk about what's happening in the Caribbean.
- 9:44Speaker 5: Hurricane Melissa plowing towards Jamaica. It's a powerful Category five storm,
- 9:49Speaker 5: the third Category five storm this Atlantic season, and Melissa
- 9:52Speaker 5: threatens to bring widespread destruction to the island. Matthew Paalazola
- 9:56Speaker 5: has been monitoring this development. He is the senior analyst
- 9:59Speaker 5: of p See Insurance for Bloomberg Intelligence, and he joins
- 10:02Speaker 5: us now with more. Matt, good to speak with you
- 10:05Speaker 5: when you try to figure out what kind of economic
- 10:08Speaker 5: damage this storm could reak.
- 10:10Speaker 6: What historical analogs are you using?
- 10:12Speaker 8: Yeah, so it is a lot easier for the US.
- 10:15Speaker 9: We have a lot more data, a lot more storms
- 10:18Speaker 9: for this one. The method we use as the same,
- 10:21Speaker 9: We look at older storms, older hurricanes, and we try
- 10:24Speaker 9: to see in what they did, we adjust for property
- 10:26Speaker 9: values inflation and try to come up with something. The
- 10:30Speaker 9: issue has been there haven't been a lot of major
- 10:32Speaker 9: hurricanes that have made landfall on Jamaica. It's really only
- 10:35Speaker 9: two since nineteen eighty actually hit the island. A bunch
- 10:38Speaker 9: of passed. The one that we're looking at is nineteen
- 10:42Speaker 9: eighty eight Hurricane Gilbert, and that one there's not great
- 10:47Speaker 9: insurance data, there's not great damage data. The best we
- 10:51Speaker 9: can find was one hundred thousand homes wiped out power communication,
- 10:55Speaker 9: killed forty five people. The economic damage, inflation adjusted, maybe
- 11:00Speaker 9: in the mid single digit billions. The way Melissa's shaping
- 11:04Speaker 9: up could be a lot worse than that.
- 11:05Speaker 3: Actually, So in your note, you're saying that Jamaica has
- 11:09Speaker 3: a low insurance penetration, and but what coverage is written
- 11:13Speaker 3: there is heavily seated.
- 11:14Speaker 2: What does that mean?
- 11:15Speaker 9: So that means that it's your your favorite business, Paul's
- 11:18Speaker 9: heavily seated to reinsurance. That's so you know, I was
- 11:22Speaker 9: talking about one hundred thousand homes ashured in Gilbert. That's
- 11:24Speaker 9: where the low insurance penetration comes in. So people's homes there,
- 11:28Speaker 9: they just they don't have insurance on them, so there'll
- 11:30Speaker 9: be a wide gap between the economic losses and the
- 11:33Speaker 9: insured losses. So that's kind of a real unfortunate aspect
- 11:37Speaker 9: of this. Like the resorts and things like that will
- 11:40Speaker 9: have insurance on them, that'll be the majority of the
- 11:41Speaker 9: insured losses. But so that's what we're saying with the
- 11:44Speaker 9: low penetration and even all any of the business there
- 11:48Speaker 9: is heavily seated to the reinsurance market.
- 11:51Speaker 6: So which reinsurers then are exposed?
- 11:53Speaker 8: You think, So, I don't. I don't have specific names
- 11:55Speaker 8: to be a lit over remiss.
- 11:57Speaker 9: You hear about Lloyd's of London kind of does you
- 12:00Speaker 9: know one off or special risks like this, So you
- 12:04Speaker 9: might have a big, a big resort that might you know.
- 12:08Speaker 8: Have a policy with them.
- 12:09Speaker 9: So a lot of the business might not be written
- 12:10Speaker 9: by the domestic companies. We cover the Bermuda reinsurance companies,
- 12:14Speaker 9: and it wouldn't be surprised if they had some the
- 12:17Speaker 9: big big European companies like Swiss Raad Munich Race. So
- 12:20Speaker 9: those are kind of the usual suspects, but I wouldn't
- 12:23Speaker 9: ascribe losses to any of them, just Yet.
- 12:25Speaker 3: When I owned a home in California, it got to
- 12:27Speaker 3: the point where the only place we could get home
- 12:30Speaker 3: insurance was Lloyd's of London. Really, I mean as saying,
- 12:32Speaker 3: people who ensure you know, tankers going through the strait
- 12:35Speaker 3: of her moves.
- 12:36Speaker 2: That's why I had to.
- 12:36Speaker 6: Go to Well, no one's even doing that now. You
- 12:38Speaker 6: only have the state insurers, the lender of nature of
- 12:41Speaker 6: last resort.
- 12:41Speaker 4: At this point, I think mine is like Joe's Insurance
- 12:44Speaker 4: of South Jersey, only one.
- 12:46Speaker 3: Exactly talk to us about the hurricane season for from
- 12:49Speaker 3: your perspective, it doesn't seem like it's been that bad.
- 12:51Speaker 8: No, it's been. It's been quite good for.
- 12:55Speaker 9: People who suffer from hurricane losses and for insurance companies.
- 12:59Speaker 9: So very mild. I think minimal US activity. We look
- 13:05Speaker 9: at catastrophe lost estimates for our companies. We started off
- 13:09Speaker 9: the year with the wildfires and I said, oh, no,
- 13:11Speaker 9: like this is going to be bad. We're going to have,
- 13:13Speaker 9: you know, major another major hurricane. It was going to
- 13:15Speaker 9: be pretty significant. Third quarter was very mild. We've only
- 13:20Speaker 9: seen a couple of companies report earning so far. Those
- 13:24Speaker 9: have been good. The catastrophellas have been very low, so
- 13:27Speaker 9: hurricane season mild. This is pretty rare to have a
- 13:30Speaker 9: major hurricane this late. We did a hurricane Sandy was
- 13:33Speaker 9: around this time when it hit. But the hurricane season
- 13:36Speaker 9: technically runs through November. But it's pretty rare for major
- 13:40Speaker 9: storms to hit that late.
- 13:42Speaker 5: Yeah, hurricane season officially ends November thirty, so we just
- 13:45Speaker 5: have to get through the next month or so. Matt,
- 13:48Speaker 5: if you have a mild hurricane season, does that mean
- 13:51Speaker 5: people's insurance premiums won't go up at that stay static?
- 13:55Speaker 8: Probably not.
- 13:57Speaker 2: That's pretty as.
- 14:00Speaker 8: Yeah, no bologna on that one either.
- 14:02Speaker 9: But yeah, and the issues behind home insurance haven't necessarily
- 14:10Speaker 9: been the large losses. It's been inflation and building materials.
- 14:14Speaker 9: It has been kind of poor regulation in certain markets
- 14:19Speaker 9: like Florida and California and causing reinsurance rates to go up.
- 14:23Speaker 9: So the things that are driving that hasn't necessarily been
- 14:26Speaker 9: these these large losses.
- 14:28Speaker 5: When is the next wildfire season or is there even
- 14:31Speaker 5: a wildfire season or is it kind of year around now?
- 14:33Speaker 9: Yeah, so in California there are times where the Santa
- 14:38Speaker 9: Ana wins are stronger. I don't have the exact dates
- 14:40Speaker 9: off the top of my head. There kind of are
- 14:43Speaker 9: seasons to it, but you know they could break out
- 14:46Speaker 9: kind of at any time.
- 14:49Speaker 2: How are they property and casualty socks doing this year?
- 14:51Speaker 9: Yeah, not great. So you know, despite the mild hurricane season,
- 14:58Speaker 9: good jumps and book value good are 's The fundamentals
- 15:02Speaker 9: are I think past the peak. So the valuations of
- 15:06Speaker 9: these stocks on a price to book basis usually peak
- 15:08Speaker 9: before they're ros. The ros have probably peaked. It's tough
- 15:12Speaker 9: to see. I keep saying it, and they keep kind
- 15:15Speaker 9: of incrementally being a little bit better, but it's tough
- 15:18Speaker 9: to see their underwriting get better next year. Interest rates
- 15:21Speaker 9: clearly are you know, at least going slightly down by
- 15:24Speaker 9: step by step. So the fundamentals are not great. Valuations
- 15:28Speaker 9: were high, so going into the year it was not
- 15:30Speaker 9: great for performance.
- 15:31Speaker 6: Does that mean there's going to be M and A
- 15:33Speaker 6: in this sector?
- 15:34Speaker 8: Probably not.
- 15:35Speaker 9: So the issue there is these companies have reserves, right,
- 15:39Speaker 9: so we write liability business for things that happen and
- 15:42Speaker 9: it could impact me many years in the future. What
- 15:45Speaker 9: has been happening is those losses from the past have
- 15:49Speaker 9: been higher than companies expected. So you'd be remiss to
- 15:53Speaker 9: want to buy another company and have this book of
- 15:55Speaker 9: business that could be worse than you expected. It's usually
- 15:57Speaker 9: the biggest obstacle to m and asrugs.
- 16:01Speaker 1: This is the Bloomberg Intelligence Podcast, available on Apple, Spotify,
- 16:06Speaker 1: and anywhere else you get your podcasts. Listen live each
- 16:09Speaker 1: weekday ten am to noon Eastern on Bloomberg dot com,
- 16:13Speaker 1: the iHeartRadio app tune In, and the Bloomberg Business app.
- 16:17Speaker 1: You can also watch us live every weekday on YouTube
- 16:21Speaker 1: and always on the Bloomberg terminal