The Roach Motel

摘要

One of biotech's biggest struggles over the past eight years has been trying to bust out of the low market cap trap that gripped many public companies and thwarted private firms' dreams of initial public offerings. Institutional investors are increasingly hesitant to buy into companies with a market cap under $500 million, no matter how promising the technology or the development pipeline. The net result has been that all but the top 15 public biotech stocks found themselves stuck in what Elizabeth Silverman (then of Robertson Stephens) termed "roach motels"— investors could check in, but they couldn't check out. And the companies often got stranded without access to the cash needed to move product development forward.