Roughly 40 years after Bio-Response launched the first-ever biotech IPO, three companies priced IPOs on Friday, riding a wave of momentum that has put 2019 into second place for the most IPO money raised in a single year. Only 2018's record $10.7 billion is beyond this year's total: 54 global IPOs raising $7.98 billion.
Gilead Sciences Inc.'s third-quarter earnings, though deemed satisfactory, brought lukewarm responses from Wall Street, with analysts such as J.P. Morgan's Cory Kasimov writing in a report that "these days the company's quarterly progress seems to take a back seat to how they [will] ultimately deploy their substantial amount of capital. The Galapagos deal notwithstanding, this feels like a long wait that's quite frankly getting a bit stale." Still reverberating is the arrangement this summer with Galapagos NV, of Mechelen, Belgium, which signed a 10-year research and development pact with Gilead under which Galapagos is getting $3.95 billion up front in hard cash plus another $1.1 billion in equity, in return for which Gilead will essentially have an option to ex-European rights on everything emanating from the firm's clinical and preclinical pipeline.
Privately held Pepticom Ltd., of Jerusalem, completed a $5 million series A fundraising, allowing it to use artificial intelligence (AI) in helping research centers, pharma and agriculture companies discover advanced peptide-based drug candidates.
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