Vertex Pharmaceuticals says it can quickly spot winning drugs. All the speakers on stage said their nickel's worth. However brash his attitude, Boger knows that biotechnology companies are valued not so much on actual sales and profits as on the promise of sales and profits. All the better, of course, if a drugmaker can deliver both.
Vertex seems to promise just that.
Little wonder that most analysts rate the stock a buy. Vertex, however, is just one of a gaggle of companies trying to make drugs based on the genetic nature of diseases. And the company clearly has its work cut out for it. Profitability is not on the horizon until 2005. Then, Vertex could be on its way to becoming the New Age drugmaker Boger envisioned when he founded the company 12 years ago.