Arkuda Therapeutics
This is a really
thoughtful and compelling article
from their German-born CEO about corporate cultural differences between Germany and America. Work-life boundaries, Americans' infinite obsession with University pedigree, small talk and sports. He's certainly come a long way in assimilating...but he *did* mention that Tom Brady is now playing for 'Florida'.
ORIC Pharmaceuticals
The world of investing continues to elude BioPharmGuy. ORIC set the
terms
of their $75M IPO on April 20, then on April 23 filed for a
larger $94M IPO
and on April 24 went public at the high-end of the expected range for a
$120M IPO
. All this with *no* clinical results at all, during a global pandemic. Really thought this kind of thing would die off at the onset of a potential economic depression. #notmymoney
Public Biotech Bailout
Speaking of public biotech money madness, Factbase is making available a database of
public companies
who have mentioned receipt of bailout funds in their 8-K filings.
So we did a ticker symbol comparison to see how many were in the BioPharmGuy directory. It turns out 54 (!) of the publicly traded companies we list have been approved for a federal small business bailout loan. A total of $146 million was shoveled at these publicly traded biotech companies.
Most of these companies at least have product/s for sale and can argue they may lose out on business due to lockdowns. However, a chunk of them are pre-commercial companies who do not have *anything* for sale. So how exactly do they make the argument that their business was negatively impacted by COVID-19 when they had nothing to sell in the first place? These leeches averaged about $438,000 each in bailout money.
Here are a few standouts:
Zosano Pharma
Quarterly Revenue: $0
Employees: 56
Lead product: Submitted to FDA for approval
Bailout: $1,610,000
Per Employee: $28,750
Note: $11M stock sale March 2020, $8M stock sale Feb 2020
Innovate Biopharmaceuticals
Quarterly Revenue: $0
Employees: 8
Lead product: Phase 3
Bailout: $220,000
Per Employee: $27,525
TrovaGene Oncology
Quarterly Revenue: $0
Employees: 12
Lead product: Phase 2
Bailout: $305,000
Per Employee: $25,400
Note: $5M stock sale Oct 2019
Our
data downloads
page has some info on all 54 companies plus a separate tab of slightly more detailed info on that $0 revenue cadre. More applications are hitting every day, so we may follow up on this in a week or two.
Final note - several of these companies are listed as being in the 500-1000 employee range. Those numbers fluctuate, but still it's a bad look when the putative bailout ceiling was 500 employees.
(Leech employee numbers from Yahoo Finance)
