BIV’s 2023 list of fastest-growing companies highlights 100 B.C. companies that have seen extraordinary success increasing revenue over the past five years.
Prasad’s venture employs 250 people at manufacturing plants in India, the U.S. and Canada, and he is looking to add to his company’s 37-worker contingent in Burnaby. Companies’ share prices can fluctuate because of investors’ unwarranted exuberance or sudden fickleness, he added. Hours later, AbCellera’s shares were trading for more than US$70 per share. They have since slumped more than 90 per cent to trade for between US$5 and US$6 per share.
Recent investor skittishness about AbCellera could be because people have moved on from investing in companies that make COVID-19 treatments. “The payments that we got for doing the work – the research payments, the cash payments up front – they are tiny compared to the value of the royalties,” he said.
AbCellera has worked on more than 70 different drug-development partnerships, most of which relate to cancer, autoimmunity and metabolic disorders. The path to having approved drugs for those ailments, however, can easily take up to 10 years. The privately held venture, which provides background checks for employers and potential landlords, saw its revenue rise 18,289.2 per cent to $33,500,000 between 2018 and 2022.Certn’s vice-president of corporate affairs and general counsel, Shannon Davidson, told BIV that Certn also received several funding rounds, including an US$80 million Series B financing.
It has made several dozen acquisitions in the past couple decades, including many in the past five years. Its largest acquisition in the 2018-2022 time period was in 2020, when it joined with a Mi’kmaq First Nations coalition to spend approximately $1 billion, including debt, to buy Clearwater Seafoods Inc.