Biotech IPOs Grind to a Halt as Stock Rout Rattles Investors
- After Cytomx pricing Wednesday, none expected next 30 days
- Clinton tweet, negative trial results weigh on industry
The biotechnology sector’s two-and-a-half-year deluge of public market debuts, with dozens of companies raising billions of dollars in funding, has ground to a halt.
After CytomX Therapeutics Inc. priced its initial public offering late Wednesday, not a single biomedical, drug or therapeutics company is expected to follow suit in the next 30 days. That would make this the slowest monthlong period for IPOs for those industries since February 2013, according to Bloomberg data.
The lull follows two of the highest-flying years in at least the past decade and a half: in 2013, a record $7.1 billion was raised from 50 biopharmaceutical IPOs that began trading, while the following year’s record 81 offerings brought in a total of about $6 billion, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Yet a confluence of bad news for the sector has thrown cold water on the market during the tail end of this year, in which $4.6 billion has been raised thus far from 48 IPOs.