THE VALUATION OF BIOTECH IPOS

Abstract

The valuation of initial public offerings (IPOs) is of considerable interest, given the important role these enterprises play in economic growth and investors' decisions. IPO valuation is particularly challenging due to the meager information available about new enterprises at offering dates. We extend the research on IPO valuation in various directions: First, we penetrate deep beyond the traditional proxies for value drivers, like R&D expenditures and cash flows, by defining and testing a host of specific product-related and competitive environment value drivers; second, we examine IPO valuations at three distinct phases of the going-public process; third, we employ both the direct valuation and relative valuation approaches; and fourth, we round up the analysis by examining the long-term performance of IPOs. Based on a sample of biotech IPOs that went public in the 1990s, we document the overwhelming importance of product-related and intellectual property fundamentals, as well as the irrelevance of several key signals, such as venture capital backing and the quality of underwriters, which played prominent roles in previous research.