Hello Stern IR Clients,
We’re all used to September being a very busy month, with many medical meetings and investor conferences jammed into the weeks immediately post-Labor Day – and this otherwise unusual year was no exception! We wanted to take a moment to “shout out” several Stern IR clients on a slew of remarkable recent achievements, which run the gamut from major clinical data readouts to product approvals, crossover rounds and IPOs to major M&A:
Over the summer, the SEC announced a proposal to increase the 13F disclosure threshold from $100M to $3.5B. As we wrote at the time, this proposal raised some pretty substantial questions and incited backlash from hundreds of companies who felt the SEC’s proposal put transparency at risk for both companies and investors.
Earlier this week, NASDAQ, with the support of 321 companies – including several Stern IR clients – submitted two filings to the SEC in response to their proposals. The first was a comment letter from NASDAQ’s Chief Legal and Regulatory Officer John Zecca, outlining how the increased 13F disclosure threshold would not only reduce transparency for public companies and their investors, but impede stockholder engagement and deny retail investors and issuers critical information needed to make their investment decisions. The second filing was a joint comment letter, showing support from hundreds of companies across 50 sectors and letter, showing support from hundreds of companies across 50 sectors and industries representing $3.3T in market cap, and including some (newly) household names, like Zoom Video. Importantly, NASDAQ and the 300+ signatories feel that the effects of the SEC’s proposal would be felt most significantly by small-cap companies: funds held by managers in the $100M-$3.5B range of report assets currently account for 30% of the total assets invested in these companies.
Of course, it’s too soon to say how this will all play out, but the impact is potentially significant, both for our ability to track company shareholders and target potential new ones. We’ll be keeping a close eye!
While the markets remain a bit shaky overall, we have seen a number of substantial financings close in recent weeks, as well as VC firms raising new funds, signaling continued excitement around, and interest in, biotech.
Last week, Longitude Capital closed its largest fund to date, raising $585 million. The fund will follow the firm’s existing strategy, investing in around 25 companies, with 2/3 allocated to biotech and 1/3 allocated to medtech.
Additionally, Medicxi closed Medicxi Secondary 1 (MS1) in connection with the completion of an “Exit & Reinvest” type of structured secondary transaction. The interests in six clinical and preclinical companies held by Index Ventures Life VI were acquired by the newly formed MS1. MS1 has committed to invest in each of the six companies the funding required to accelerate their clinical development through the next stages of value creation.
Looking at market performance last week, the NASDAQ, DJI, and S&P 500 lost 2%, 4% and 3% respectively as of Thursday EOD. The NBI, XBI and BTK also had a tougher week, closing Thursday down 4%, 6% and 3%, respectively. The VIX was up 7%. On the financing front:
We hope you are all well and, for those who celebrated, we wish you a very Happy New Year!
Very best,
The team at Stern IR