The weather is getting cooler, but biotech’s recovery is heating up.
After a years-long wait-and-see game exhausted many industry insiders, recent signals indicate a mostly promising direction for drug developers.
The third quarter, which ended Monday, was up and down, with the Yen carry trade fiasco and the typical August lull. But then came a long-awaited interest rate cut, and a mini IPO revival began. Two more rate cuts are expected by the end of the year, and more are anticipated in 2025.
Nine months into the year, biotech is on track to surpass the total amount of private financing from 2023, according to a new quarterly analysis from investment bank William Blair. There have been at least 10 crossover rounds each quarter for three consecutive quarters, the first stretch of its kind since the heydays of 2021. And the proportion of extension rounds dropped in the third quarter, which “potentially” means “we have passed the peak of the financing overhang in the private markets,” according to the William Blair bankers.
There were five IPOs in the third quarter, and three more are now in line, including Septerna, a Phase 1 biotech that filed Wednesday.
The number of follow-on offerings and private investments in public equity slowed last quarter, but they picked up after Labor Day. The first nine months of 2024 already surpassed 2023’s totals by 34%. Biopharmas have done 189 secondary offerings, raising $33.9 billion in total proceeds year-to-date, according to William Blair. Last year’s count was 186 offerings and $25.3 billion raised.
Private megarounds held steady throughout the year, as well, with 23 such financings in the first quarter, 27 in the second and 23 in the third, according to an Endpoints News tally.
“Combined with improving sentiment, lower rates, and better financing window (record levels of follow-ons) — Q3’s event scoreboard was supportive for XBI and biotech funds,” Jefferies analyst Michael Yee wrote in an Oct. 1 note.
For the firms funding new drugs and the next generation of startups, the money was flowing, too. In recent weeks, multiple venture capital funds announced some of the biggest biotech VC hauls ever. Bain Capital Life Sciences raised $3 billion, as did ARCH Venture Partners. Flagship Pioneering kicked off the third quarter with its own $3.6 billion pool of capital. Others included TPG‘s $580 million, venBio’s $528 million, DCVC Bio’s $400 million and Asabys’ $200 million.
The quarter’s weaknesses
One sore spot was European pharma stocks, with dips in share price at Roche (down about 6.5%), Novo Nordisk (down about 1.5%) and AstraZeneca (down about 1.5%).
“Obesity remains an important theme for the sector considering the outsized moves in large caps,” the Jefferies analysts wrote Tuesday evening, citing updates from Roche’s GLP-1 pill and GLP-1/GIP injectable, and Novo’s Phase 2a CB1 program. “We think excitement and enthusiasm remain high, but performance could be more data-driven with more winners and losers as the landscape continues to evolve and mature over the coming months.”
Another pain point was M&A and partnerships, which William Blair bankers characterized as “anemic” in the third quarter.
Eli Lilly’s $3.2 billion purchase of Morphic Therapeutic in July was the only public company buyout of more than $1 billion during that period. There were a few other deals that could eclipse $1 billion in total value, but those are contingent on the acquirees — Jnana, Nerio and Dermavant — reaching certain milestones.
Also driving M&A activity were first-generation AI biotechs and multiple commercial-stage drugmakers, including Valinor Pharma, Ironshore Therapeutics, G1 Therapeutics, Revance and Dermavant. Most of the deals have not yet closed.
“We expect some pause into the election,” Yee wrote Tuesday, “but lower rates and [continued] financing (funds putting money to work) support a higher XBI as we seek to hopefully break the key $100 level.”
The XBI closed on Monday, Sept. 30, at $98.80, though it had crossed the $100.00 threshold in mid-July and a few times since.