Theratechnologies Inc T.TH

Biotech funding

[qwerty22]

Feel­ing the pain of a bear mar­ket, Macro­Gen­ics plans to start a PhII/III by year's end — once they raise the cash

by Max Gelman

The biotech bear mar­ket has proven chal­leng­ing for com­pa­nies across the sec­tor, with sev­er­al lay­ing off staff or seek­ing merg­ers and sales. And on Tues­day, one pub­lic biotech high­light­ed just how stark its chal­lenges are in rais­ing funds and con­tin­u­ing clin­i­cal stud­ies.

Macro­Gen­ics re­port­ed its first quar­ter earn­ings Tues­day af­ter­noon and not­ed that it cur­rent­ly doesn’t have enough cash to fund a planned Phase II/III study for its lead ex­per­i­men­tal drug in prostate can­cer. Ex­ecs say they’re plan­ning on launch­ing the study by the end of the year and can ob­tain the nec­es­sary fund­ing for the Phase II por­tion by that time.

But as for de­tails on how it would do so, Macro­Gen­ics is re­main­ing tight-lipped.

A press re­lease put out af­ter Tues­day’s clos­ing bell al­lud­ed to “an­tic­i­pat­ed and po­ten­tial col­lab­o­ra­tion pay­ments” that could al­low the com­pa­ny to “rea­son­ably ob­tain fund­ing” for the Phase II co­hort. Oth­er op­tions in­clud­ed on­ly a vague men­tion of “a com­bi­na­tion of ex­ist­ing fi­nan­cial re­sources, a va­ri­ety of ex­ter­nal fund­ing or po­ten­tial rev­enue sources,” and the dread­ed “pipeline pri­or­i­ti­za­tion.”

Macro­Gen­ics ap­peared to inch to­ward the lat­ter path Tues­day, drop­ping triple neg­a­tive breast can­cer as a planned in­di­ca­tion for the drug.

On the com­pa­ny’s earn­ings call Tues­day af­ter­noon, ex­ecs did not tip their hands any fur­ther. When asked by SVB Se­cu­ri­ties’ Jonathan Chang for more de­tails, Macro­Gen­ics CEO Scott Koenig on­ly re­it­er­at­ed that the com­pa­ny ex­pects to find the mon­ey some­how and isn’t pro­vid­ing a time­line for when the study might be com­plete

[SPCEO1]

Cancer Drug Developers Trade Below Cash With No Respite In Sight   Nearly 200 biotech companies have more cash than market cap   Weak merger outlook, development risk weighs on industry   By Cristin Flanagan   The biotech-stock selloff has run so far that many companies are now worth less than the amount of cash they have in the bank.   Nearly 200 such

[Biobob]

It may seem to be conforting to compare Th to the sector but we must clearly distinguish the fact that Th did not participate in any comparable way to the biotech bubble that went on in the last 2 years... capturing very little of the upside and a lot of the downsine isn't exactly a great acheivement.  Anyway we're better off than 90% of the biotechs thanks to some earnings but after

[SPCEO1]

PSA - TH is not even remotely close to being in a liquidation phase.

[qwerty22]

That's just wrong the stock rose from lows of 1.50 USD in early 2020 to 3.50-4.00 USD. It has since fallen alongside XBI thru 2021-2022. Go compare THTX to XBI over the past 2 years they look similar enough to me. It just all happened at lower market cap than we all would like. That came after the bubble burst on Trogarzo.    

[Wino115]

Cycles...from feast to famine. Let's also think of the upside to this reality. The upside is that if any company shows fairly decent milestones along the way it should attract even more attention than normal from biotech investors. There are actually quite a few healthcare/biotech oriented funds (both mutual funds, hedge, institutional VC, etc..) so there is a very large captive asset base

[Lee430]

Wino, Thanks again for the insight/sanity check...that was a nice momentary break, now back to being frustrated.