BioCentury
ARTICLE | Finance

Another (yawn) $billion IPO

February 7, 2000 8:00 AM UTC

Antigenics (AGEN) on Friday put its emphatic exclamation mark on the exploding biotech IPO market, pricing 3.5 million shares at $18 and then watching them skyrocket $43.375 (241 percent) to $61.375 on 5.2 million shares. The Phase II developer of heat shock proteins was valued at $1.5 billion at the close of its first day of trading.

Friday also saw Sequenom (SQNM) hurdling through the $2 billion market cap barrier after floating 5.25 million IPO shares at $26 to raise $136.5 million on Tuesday. Investors tripped over themselves to buy in the secondary market, bidding SQNM up to $95.375 and valuing the company at $2.25 billion; nearly seven times the $331 million take out price that PE Biosystems (PEB) is paying for another genomics play, Third Wave Technologies (see BioCentury, Jan. 31)...