BioCentury
ARTICLE | Finance

Week 1: So far so good

March 15, 1999 8:00 AM UTC

MorphoSys (NMarkt:MORG) didn't disappoint buyers of its $28 million IPO on the Neuer Markt, gaining 43 percent in trading after last Tuesday's offering to close Friday at Eur35.7, a market cap of Eur122.4 million ($132.6 million). The combinatorial biology company, the first German biotech company to float on Frankfurt's exchange for growth stocks, opened at Eur25, the top of its IPO range. According to Nick Woolf of BancBoston Robertson Stephens, the IPO was oversold by 30 percent, with demand coming from Europe, the U.K. and the U.S.

MORG's flotation may prompt others to declare their hands. The next Neuer Markt debutant from the life sciences sector is likely to be Evotec, the ultra high-throughput company, although Peptor, a combinatorial chemistry company based in Israel, is looking seriously at the German high growth exchange. Peptor, which had an aborted attempt at a double NASDAQ/EASDAQ quotation in summer 1997, has established a German subsidiary that could give it some local visibility...