The median and mean operational cash spending for small public US biotechs (less than 250 employees) is down 37% and 42% respectively, since the 1st Quarter of 2008. Company cut backs have shown up in the lay-off numbers as well as in the number of drug development projects put on hold. These…

With 90% of public US biotech companies reporting for 3Q09, we are seeing a modest reduction in the % of companies with less than 6 months of cash left. Instead of 1 in 4, we are near 1 in 5 companies operating with 6 months of operating cash. The trend is encouraging. However, as noted in my…

Year to date,  27% of biotech stocks have doubled in price. 65% are in positive territory in 2009, a strong contrast to the YTD data last year:

Both major biotech indices (BTK and NBI) trailed the US small cap index (R2000) in the week ending Dec 4th, but landed ahead of the broad large cap (SP500) and "Big Pharma" (DRG) indices:

If "price to cash" is a usable metric for fair value of a risky biotech (i.e. valuation of a biotech vs what its cash balance is at the bank), then the cheap times are long gone. Back at the end of 2008 we had a record 24% of biotechs trading below cash. Investors were making the assumption that…

Back in 2008, the Nasdaq Biotech Index outperformed all major sectors of the SP500 with a negative 12% return. That was a year when investors in large biotechs (the index’s bias) benefited from weak market correlation with the overall market. Every sector went down in 2008, some over 50%, creating…

The number of US public biotechs has dropped from almost 400 in January 2008 to a little over 300 in October 2009. About half of these are due to acquisitions, the other half are largely OTC companies that failed to file with the SEC, have filed bankruptcy or are in liquidation.

Is the current crisis stabilizing? The latest numbers are for 2Q 2009 (June 30th): 27% of public US biotechs have 6 months of cash, 39% have 1 year of cash left. Note that some companies have been able to raise cash in the public markets (in the form of “Follow-On Offerings”, “Private investments…