Life sciences briefing: Monday, Aug. 6, 2007
(UPDATED at 5:05 p.m. PDT; see below.)
(As part of my ongoing effort to strike the right balance between keeping up with venture-business news and writing more analysis, I’m inaugurating a daily briefing that will collect deal-related news items from the life sciences in one place. I’ll continue updating this post throughout the day as the news dictates. Comments on this or any other feature of this blog are always welcome; sound off below. For more on… Continue Reading
IPO roundup: Sucampo prices low, Amedica’s IPO withdrawn
One deal down – Sucampo Pharmaceuticals, which had filed to raise as much as $69 million in its IPO (we covered them briefly here), priced its IPO well below expectations. Although the company had planned to sell shares for $14 to $16 apiece, it ended up pricing today at $11.50, a 23 percent discount. If the company still manages to over-allotted stock, it will fall just shy of raising $50 million. Sucampo shares, however, were up… Continue Reading
Genoptix files $86M IPO for diagnostic services
Genoptix, a Carlsbad, Calif., provider of diagnostic services to cancer and blood-disease specialists, filed to raise as much as $86.25 million in an intial offering. The company specializes in genetic and other testing of blood and bone-marrow samples in order to diagnose various cancers and to determine appropriate treatments.
Genoptix, it turns out, is another biotech chameleon. Until late 2004, the company was focused on developing laser and optical tools for cellular analysis. Then Genoptix switched… Continue Reading
Talecris, a ludicrously large IPO, and the beginning of the end for private equity?
(UPDATED: See below.) Is the air starting to hiss out of the private-equity bubbble? Looking at Talecris Biotherapeutics, a stodgy biotech controlled by private-equity firms Cerberus Capital Management and Ampersand Ventures that filed to raise as much as $1 billion in an initial offering last Friday, you’d be perfectly justified in thinking so.
For starters, the IPO is just ridiculously huge. Biotech offerings that raise more than $100 million are fairly rare; this year, for instance, only three… Continue Reading
Funding roundup: Announcements that got away
Although I try to stay on top of events in the life sciences, announcements do sometimes manage to slip through the cracks. Some days, in fact, I end up triaging. Because the roots of this site — not to mention many of its readers — are in Silicon Valley, Bay Area events are a priority. Then come announcements from the rest of the U.S., then Asia, then Europe. Also, smaller or partial fundings tend to… Continue Reading
Biotech financing: Will ImaRx break the IPO slump?
(UPDATED: See below.)
It’s been a long, barren summer for biotech IPOs, but ImaRx, the blood-clot company we featured here, finally managed to bull its way into the public markets. The company, which withdrew an earlier $75 million IPO and lowered its offering price on the current one, finally finally priced its IPO at its most recent target of $5 a share, selling three million shares for an anemic take of $15 million, excepting fees and possible… Continue Reading
Masimo: A patient-sensor specialist with a quarter-billion dollar IPO
(UPDATED: See below.)
Masimo, an Irvine, Calif., maker of non-invasive patient-monitoring products, expects to raise nearly a quarter-billion dollars in an IPO. (The company’s latest filing statement is here.) That IPO take is almost $100 billion higher than Masimo first proposed when it filed the offering on April 17, and would value the company at almost $1 billion — $950.7 million, to be exact, if the offering prices at the upper end of its range.
It’s worth noting,… Continue Reading
ImaRx: A blood-clot attacker with sinking IPO hopes
ImaRx, a Tuscon, Ariz., biotech developing new ways to dissolve blood clots in the lungs, lowered its IPO sights and now expects to raise no more than $17.3 million in the offering. (Its latest SEC filing is here.) Late last month, the company had hoped to raise as much as $25.9 million by pricing its shares between $6.50 and $7.50 apiece.
ImaRx now expects to price its shares at $5 apiece. That will value the… Continue Reading
Amedica sets IPO terms, looks to raise $80.2M for implants
Amedica, a Salt Lake City device maker focused on spine, knee and hip implants, set its IPO terms and now hopes to raise as much as $80.2 million. The company plans to sell up to 5.3 million shares at a price of $13 to $15 apiece.
You can find our previous coverage of Amedica here and here. The company is notable in part because it listed the threat of government healthcare reform as a “risk factor”… Continue Reading
Bioheart: A risky stem-cell company boosts its IPO hopes
(UPDATED: See below.)
Sunrise, Fla.-based Bioheart thinks enough of its stem-cell treatment for heart disease that it has just boosted its expected IPO take by $10 million, to $45 million. A close reading of its latest SEC filing, however, raises a fair number of questions for would-be investors.
Bioheart’s leading therapy candidate is MyoCell, a treatment designed to reverse heart-attack damage. MyoCell consists of myoblasts — a kind of muscle stem cell — that are removed from a… Continue Reading
Virtual Radiologic, outsourced radiology company, seeks $75M IPO
Virtual Radiologic, a Minnetonka, Minn., provider of outsourced radiology services, hopes to raise $75 million in an initial offering. The company calls itself the second-largest provider of such “teleradiology” services, in which a dispersed network of radiology specialists read and interpret X-rays, MRIs and other medical images, in the U.S.
Virtual Radiologic says it considers its major competitor to be NightHawk Radiology Holdings of Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, which completed an initial offering last year. I also… Continue Reading
Quark Pharma IPO delayed
Quark Pharmaceuticals, the biotech chameleon I profiled here, delayed an IPO that the company expects to raise as much as $81 million, VentureWire reports (subscription required). The newswire said the Fremont, Calif., developer of RNA-interference drugs was slated to begin trading on the Nasdaq Stock Market today.
It’s hard to know what a postponement like this means, although I can’t help wondering if picky investors who have already turned up their noses at a number of… Continue Reading
Athenahealth files for $86M IPO
Athenahealth, a Watertown, Mass., maker of health IT systems for billing and management of electronic health records, filed to raise as much as $86.25 million in an initial offering. The company’s SEC filing is here.
Athenahealth’s systems work as Web-based services, a strategy designed to take advantage of the Internet’s flexibility and to make it easier for doctors to digitize their practices without making a huge amount of up-front investment. That said, Athenahealth’s business is still… Continue Reading
MAP Pharma charts course for $86M IPO
MAP Pharmaceuticals, a Mountain View, Calif., developer of reformulated drugs for inhalation, filed to raise up to $86 million in an initial public offering. The company’s registration statement with the SEC is here.
MAP is the latest drugmaker to brave the IPO waters, which have been markedly unfriendly for pharmas and biotechs in recent months. The much-anticipated Jazz Pharmaceuticals IPO, for instance, was marked down twice, and even then the company’s shares traded down following the… Continue Reading