DUBLIN – To no one's great surprise, the underwriters of Genmab A/S's IPO on Nasdaq exercised their overallotment option, the company announced Friday, taking the total gross to $581.8 million. The Copenhagen-based antibody developer priced the offering of about 32.8 million American depositary shares at $17.75 Thursday. The stock (NASDAQ:GMAB) ended the week at $18.10.

Despite the ups and downs of the general markets and a U.S. government shutdown at the beginning of the year that contributed to no biopharma companies graduating to the public ranks in January, the enthusiasm for biopharma IPOs has remained steady since then. In fact, a flurry of IPO listings on U.S. stock exchanges last month helped bring the total of those offerings to 30 at the halfway point in the year. 

DUBLIN – European biotechnology firms engaged in drug discovery and development raised an aggregate $3.172 billion in equity investment during the first half of 2019, down 19% on the same period last year. Unless there is a substantial pickup in the third and fourth quarters, the sector's record-breaking 2018 total of $7.715 billion looks to be out of reach. 

IPOs in the United States may be lagging overall, but in med-tech we have seen a flurry of IPO activity, sparking some long overdue optimism regarding the health of the industry. Most recently, Natera, a California-based company, began trading (NASDAQ: NTRA) this past Thursday at $22.10 after pricing 10 million shares of its common stock at $18, the high end of the expected $17 to $18 range. Natera is a genetic testing company that develops non-invasive methods for analyzing DNA. ConforMIS, a Massachusetts-based company, also received a warm welcome from investors when it began trading last Wednesday (NASDAQ: CFMS) at...