Real Option in Biotechnological Firms Valuation. An Empirical Analysis of European Firms.

Abstract

Firms’ intangible assets are becoming more and more relevant in the different areas within the financial discipline. Its management, its quantification and its valuation nowadays constitute one of the main challenges which economy and business try to face. Through this paper we will evaluate some models based on the real options theory in order to estimate the intangible assets value of certain firms, specifically I+D biotechnological firms projects. With this aim, and after deep research on biotechnological industry, we will establish the parameters regarding one model which can be considered as a quantitative valuation method that we apply to a sample of biotechnological European companies. The results obtained through the empirical analysis are promising and they support the use of the real options theory to evaluate biotechnological firms.