NEW YORK – With capital markets bustling for biopharma, the fact that the number of M&A deals stayed flat in 2013 compared to 2012 isn’t surprising; what is surprising, perhaps, is that big pharma, which had been expected to wow with multiple mega M&A deals, instead, kept a low profile.
NEW YORK – As attendees arrived at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel on Park Avenue Monday morning – the city sidewalks still slushy from a Sunday evening snowfall – it was clear that the annual BIO CEO & Investor meeting would begin with the same exuberance that pervaded the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference in San Francisco last month.
NEW YORK – In the world of biotech clichés, “multiple shots on goal,” is one that shows up frequently in executive parlance during presentations, as they boast of their companies’ diverse pipelines, mostly hoping to assure potential investors and partners that the possibilities – and the risk – are spread among a handful of programs.
The seventh biopharma to price its initial public offering (IPO) last week, Argos Therapeutics Inc. cut its share price but upped the number of shares to raise $45 million, bringing biopharma’s total IPO haul to nearly half a billion – $483.4 million – for the first week of February.
The good news is that the initial public offering (IPO) market keeps looking good for biopharma, as three more firms priced Wednesday, with two of those, both rare disease firms, pricing at the high end or above their proposed ranges. That makes nine IPOs so far this year; in comparison, only six IPOs had priced during the first four months of 2013, which turned out to be a record-breaking year for biopharma IPOs.
With an eye toward launching a Phase III program in schizophrenia later this year, Intra-Cellular Therapies Inc. priced a $107.5 million public offering after market close Thursday, selling about 6.1 million shares priced at $17.50 apiece.
In what has now become almost blandly – though happily – routine in the biopharma sector, two more companies went public via initial public offerings (IPOs) Thursday amid a heap of other financings news.
Biopharma stalwart Amgen Inc. maintained its slow-but-steady growth for the fourth quarter and full year 2013, beating consensus estimates and offering conservative guidance for 2014 as investors await key pipeline milestones, including the possible new drug application filing for evolocumab, its anti-PCSK9 drug in a tight race with Sanofi SA and Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc. in the blockbuster cardiovascular space.
Set to start its Phase III trial for antibacterial candidate plazomicin this quarter, Achagoen Inc. filed for a $74.8 million initial public offering (IPO), which, along with anticipated funding from the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), could take the firm through top-line data, expected in the first half of 2017.
On the heels of encouraging FDA feedback for a multiple sclerosis program and the possibility of profitability for marketed drug Horizant (gabapentin enacarbil) by the end of 2015, Xenoport Inc. is padding its coffers with a $72 million bumped-up public offering.
