Week of August 8, 2025

The Week at a Glance:

• Stocks Rebound: The Nasdaq hit an all-time high thanks to strong earnings from some of the Magnificent Seven despite tariff-related concerns

• Don’t Call It a Comeback: Dr. Vinay Prasad is back as the Director of CBER less than two weeks after iterative regulatory decisions around Elevidys and political pressure forced him to resign

• IPOs Continue to Favor Commercial-Stage Non-Biopharma: HeartFlow, a medical technology company providing non-invasive solutions for diagnosing and managing coronary artery diseases, raised $316.7M in its IPO. Non-biopharma commercial-stage IPOs have accounted for a staggering ~80% of aggregate IPO proceeds raised to date

• Big-Ticket M&A Remains Focused on Value Accretion: Five transactions totaling $4.2B in total deal value were announced last week, all of which were for commercial-stage targets

Markets Overview

• The S&P 500, Nasdaq, and Dow finished with gains of 2.4%, 3.9%, and 1.3%, respectively

  • Over 90% of S&P 500 companies have reported Q2 earnings, of which 81% have exceeded analyst forecasts

  • President Trump’s levy of new tariffs took effect on August 7th (the majority of which are between 10 – 20%)

  • India’s tariff rate was increased by 25% to a total of 50% (the tariff excludes pharma and generics, but the industry remains concerned about the possibility of pharma-specific tariffs between 150% - 250% over the next 18 months)

The NYSE Pharma Index was dragged down (2.8%) thanks to Eli Lilly’s (NYSE: LLY) worst day in 25 years, while the NBI dipped a minor (0.1%)

Notable changes in share price:

• Eli Lilly (NYSE: LLY): Shares ended down (17.7%) following the announcement that its highly anticipated Phase 3 data for orforglipron resulted in patients losing 11.2% of their body weight (below analyst expectations of >15%)

• Vertex (NASDAQ: VRTX): Stock fell (20.8%) after announcing it will discontinue the development of its experimental painkiller VX-993 after a Phase 2 trial failed to show a statistical improvement over the placebo

Sources: Pitchbook, Biomedtracker, and CapIQ

Equity Markets

IPO Markets:

HeartFlow (NASDAQ: HTFL) completed its IPO, raising $316.7M for its heart visualization software for the treatment of coronary artery disease to pay down outstanding debt and fund sales, marketing, and R&D initiatives

No companies filed an S-1 last week

18 companies in total remain in the queue, of which none intend to raise more than $30.0M in proceeds

Year-to-date, companies that have gone public in 2025 have had a median loss of (11.5%)

Follow-On Offering Markets:

There were seven completed follow-on equity offerings last week totaling $112.2M, including:

• Sana Biotechnology (NASDAQ: SANA) raised $70.0M in a follow-on offering to advance its allogeneic CAR-T programs for B-cell mediated autoimmune diseases and CD22+ cancers, along with its stem cell–derived islet cell program for type 1 diabetes

PIPE/RDO Markets:

• There were six PIPEs/RDOs last week totaling $247.1B, including:

  • Assembly Biosciences, developing therapies for viral diseases, priced an RDO of $175.0M with participation from new and existing investors, including Commodore Capital, Blackstone Multi-Asset Investing, Farallon Capital Management, L.L.C., Janus Henderson Investors, and RA Capital Management

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M & A

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