Pieris Pharmaceuticals (PIRS -2.77%) is a micro-cap stock, but with big pharma now collaborating with the company, it may be time to consider an investment. In this Motley Fool Live segment from The Pharma & Biotech Show, recorded on March 23, Fool.com contributor Taylor Carmichael gives an introduction to the work of this tiny company and its potential for very big returns.
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Taylor Carmichael: This is Pieris Pharmaceuticals. Pieris owns the rights to a 100 billion Anticalin molecules. Now the way to think of an Anticalin molecule, it's like an antibody. A monoclonal antibody, except this is an important distinction, is eight times smaller. If you think about the importance of miniaturization in, any industry, in say, semiconductors or healthcare. The smaller the better, if you can make it smaller, that's really interesting. It can go places where larger molecules cannot go. It's similar to antibodies, except eight times smaller, and antibody market is huge as 145 billion market.
If Pieris, if their technology works, if they're tiny, little 1/8 the size of antibodies works. They can take at least a significant chunk of that 145 billion market. This is fascinating because Pieris is a tiny company. It is a micro-cap, it has a 230 million dollar valuation tiny company is about three dollars a share. You don't have to buy a lot of this and I do not own a lot of it. But I've made a small investment here. There are risks. I will get to them in a minute, but let me go some more on the green flags.
They have collaboration deals in place with Roche, with AstraZeneca, with Seagen are, these are too big pharma, and a medium-sized biotech that have all made deals with this tiny micro-cap and they've given them 100 million dollars, 200 million dollars. They've invested a significant amount of money in seeing if these trucks will work. If the drugs work and they have deals in place with not just those three companies, but I think like three or four other companies, they will get up to nine billion in potential milestone payments. That it doesn't include any of the royalties. That's just the start. Potential nine-billion-dollar market, again, this was 230 million small cap or micro-cap. If you can find big pharma investing in a micro-cap, you might want to take a look at that micro-cap seriously.
