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Pharmaceutical industry

Investors unfazed by drug-patent expiry

Nature volume 481, page 265 (2012)Cite this article

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Your data on changing stock prices for five pharmaceutical companies from 1997 to 2010 (Nature 480, 16–17; 2011) erroneously indicate a 39% drop in aggregated share value, when in fact it would have risen by 82% (see Correction, Nature 480, 425; 2011). The error was due mainly to the selection of unadjusted, rather than adjusted, stock-market closing prices.

The corrected data set indicates that the aggregated share prices rose roughly in line with the Dow Jones Industry Average. Considering that these companies have the biggest patent cliffs in the industry, this result is very positive; moreover, it argues against your implication that the impending expiry of their patents is affecting investor confidence in pharmaceutical stocks.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University College London, UK

    David Brindley

  2. Harvard Stem Cell Institute and Harvard Business School, Massachusetts, USA

    David Brindley

  3. Brock Reeve The Harvard Stem Cell Institute, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA

    Brock Reeve

  4. Chris Mason University College London, UK

    Chris Mason

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  1. David Brindley
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  2. Brock Reeve
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  3. Chris Mason
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Correspondence to David Brindley.

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Brindley, D., Reeve, B. & Mason, C. Investors unfazed by drug-patent expiry. Nature 481, 265 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/481265d

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  1. Chris Mason

    The authors, DB, BR & CM, want to acknowledge Chris Allen and James Zeitler (Harvard Business School) for their significant assistance in producing the corrected statistics and William Sahlman (Harvard Business School), Emily Culme-Seymour (London Regenerative Medicine Network) and Natasha Davie (University College London/Harvard Stem Cell Institute/Harvard Medical School) for their significant contributions.

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