The UK BioIndustry Association (BIA) and business intelligence group, Informa, have released their first quarterly financing update on the biotech sector, showing that venture capital financing and follow on financings on the public markets are off to a solid start for the year.
Flexibly financing
Biotech Financing Update: December 2017–February 2018 demonstrates a continuation of many of the trends shown in the annual report released by the BIA early this year — ‘Pipeline progressing: the UK’s Global Bioscience cluster in 2017’— key findings of which are listed below:
- Venture capital funding was dominated by strong B rounds that are already more than half of the 2017 total (largely made up of Orchard Therapeutics’ £85 million raise), and seed funding which is already nearly half of the 2017 annual total.
- Follow on financing was dominated by the GW Pharma follow on public offering on Nasdaq, which raised £221.6 million.
- The public markets have had a quiet start to the year, much like 2017 where we just saw one biotech IPO in the first half of the year. The Main Market has been quiet overall with February seeing just £31 million raised in IPOs and £233 million in follow on financing across all sectors.
- Three UK biotech companies have used debt financing so far this year and the total accessed (£18.8 million) represents around a quarter of the total from 2017.
“It’s great to see UK biotech companies starting the year with some strong fundraisings, including some great outcomes for BIA member companies such as Orchard Therapeutics and GW Pharma,” said Steve Bates, BIA CEO. “We look forward to tracking the trends for UK biotech financing throughout these quarterly updates in 2018.”
Informa data editor, John Hodgson, added: “Biopharma offerings globally so far in 2018 are double 2017 levels. This bodes well for a cash-hungry, market-ready companies in the UK.”