Usually, one of many final phrases a retail investor needs to listen to from a CEO of an organization he’s invested in – aside from perhaps “chapter” or “federal investigation” – is “pivot.” At greatest, it denotes a repositioning, as a agency responds to market forces with the intention to compete and stay related. Ideally, administration has finished its due diligence and altered course in time. At worst, a pivot displays a last-ditch, determined try and dump a nasty enterprise mannequin earlier than the ship absolutely sinks.
We’ve definitely seen a lot examples of the latter. Bear in mind Amyris, an artificial biology firm that pivoted into well being and wonder product elements? It filed for chapter final yr. One other synbio outfit, Intrexon, pivoted from growing genetically modified apples that don’t brown to promoting luggage of sliced apples. Now known as Precigen (PGEN), Intrexon has reinvented itself as soon as once more right into a biopharmaceutical firm growing cell and gene therapies, with a market cap of about $340 million. Profitable.
A theoretical instance of the previous t
