H1 analy­sis: The high-stakes ta­ble in the biotech deals casi­no is pay­ing out some record-set­ting win­nings

For years the big trend among deal­mak­ers at the ma­jor play­ers has been cen­tered on ratch­et­ing down up­front pay­ments in fa­vor of big­ger mile­stones. Bet­ter known as biobucks for some. But with the top 15 com­pa­nies com­pet­ing for the kind of “trans­for­ma­tive” pacts that can whip up some ex­cite­ment on Wall Street, with some big biotechs like Re­gen­eron now weigh­ing in as well, cash is king at the high stakes ta­ble.

We asked Chris Doko­ma­ji­lar, the head of Deal­For­ma, to crunch the num­bers for us, look­ing over the top 20 deals for the past decade and break­ing it all down in­to the top al­liances al­ready cre­at­ed in 2019. Gilead has clear­ly tipped the scales in terms of the coin of the bio-realm, with its record-set­ting $5 bil­lion up­front to tie up to Gala­pa­gos’ en­tire pipeline.

Doko­ma­ji­lar notes:

We’re go­ing to need a ‘three com­ma club’ for the deals with over $1 bil­lion in to­tal up­front cash and eq­ui­ty. The $100 mil­lion-plus club is get­ting crowd­ed at 164 deals in the last decade with new deals be­ing added to­wards the top of the chart. 2019 al­ready has 14 deals with at least $100 mil­lion in up­front cash and eq­ui­ty for a to­tal year-to-date of over $9 bil­lion. That beats last year’s $8 bil­lion and sets a record.

Add up­fronts and eq­ui­ty pay­ments and you get $11.5 bil­lion for the year, just shy of last year’s record-set­ting $11.8 bil­lion.

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