Biotechnology companies are sprinting to the public markets and defying a broader IPO slowdown.
Twenty-three biotechs staged initial public offerings in the first three quarters this year, nearly tripling the eight such offerings in all of 2025, according to investment bank William Blair. This week, biotechs TRex Bio and Retension Pharmaceuticals expect to add to the year's IPO tally.
It is different outside biotech, where companies including health-tech concern Oura have postponed IPOs because they couldn't command the terms they were seeking.
Biotech IPOs had largely stalled until this year. Cutbacks to the Food and Drug Administration and Trump administration efforts to lower drug prices stoked uncertainty that weighed on biotech offerings in 2025.
Now, investors have learned to account for these factors, giving them greater confidence as they evaluate early-stage biotechs, said Dr. Brian Abrahams, global sector head of healthcare research for investment bank RBC Capital Markets.
A burst of biotech mergers and acquisitions this year has put money in investors' pockets that they are looking to invest in new companies, analysts said.
"A lot of funds are flush with capital that they need to deploy," said Kevin Eisele, managing director, equity capital markets for William Blair.
This year's IPO class is particularly strong because biotechs advanced drugs into clinical trials as private companies while waiting out the recent IPO drought.
"This cohort of IPOs in 2026 has been pretty high-quality," said Ben Marsh, a partner with law firm Goodwin.
That is reflected in their performance after their IPOs. Through Sept. 30, 65% of biotechs that have held IPOs this year were trading above their offering price, according to William Blair. By comparison, 37.5% of those staging IPOs in 2025 were trading above their offering price as of the same date, according to the bank.
This week, analysts will look to see if TRex, which develops treatments for autoimmune and inflammatory diseases, and Retension, whose drug candidate could treat uncontrolled hypertension and resistant hypertension, can continue the momentum. Other biotechs have filed to go public recently, including City Therapeutics, a developer of drugs known as RNAi therapies.
The outlook isn't entirely rosy. Rising interest rates could pressure biotech IPOs, and the expected stock-market debuts of artificial-intelligence companies Anthropic and OpenAI could pull generalist investors away from the sector, analysts said.
Yet the quality of biotechs in the IPO queue and the performance of this year's class are hopeful signs, said Jordan Saxe, head of healthcare listings and capital markets for Nasdaq.
"By all quantifiable measures, this year has been an overwhelming success for biotech IPOs," he said.
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