I mean, they are a pick and shovel play. They don't make drugs? Plus, sequencing is great but it's getting saturated. Plus, ideas like direct sequencing using nanopores and chemical modification of nucleic acid to make the nanopore signal stronger may disrupt.
Reading a lot of 10-Ks, you get the impression that many if not most biotech companies want to appeal to investors who find "pick and shovel" companies appealing. Even companies that are basically drug companies often try to portray themselves as having a revolutionary "platform".
I'm not saying your attitude is obviously wrong, but there must be a lot of people whose imagination is captured by making tools and the potential of that to change the world. The development of a tool like optogenetics, for instance, makes me feel like amazing things can be accomplished. It's leverage.
Yea sure, I love pick and shovel plays. I think they're the ones you make the easy money from like ThermoFisher, Becton Dickinson, EMD/Milipore, Sigma-Aldrich, etc. I was thinking more like FAANG companies that are huge, pay awesome, and make the final product, though I guess you could say advertising is a bit of a pass-through income generator.
Maybe you and I have different definitions of 'platform' company? I define as a way to iterate to get new products, like Regeneron uses their humanized mice to crank-out mAbs, or Genetech/Amgen use recombinant molecular biology to make mAbs, or Vertex uses their in vitro ion channel conductance screening method to make new structure correctors for CFTR...