The clock might be ticking for biotech unicorns

Why did Moderna Therapeutics finally decide to go public? Perhaps because its odds of making a decent return are getting longer.

Evaluate Pharma dug into the numbers on recent biotech IPOs and spotted a trend unfriendly to VCs: Across the industry, the median difference between a company’s most recent private share price and its price at IPO is on the decline after years of ascendance.

That means, basically, that the public markets are getting less excited about what private investors are pouring money into. If the trend persists, it could go beyond hurting VC returns and signal that biotech’s IPO boom is coming to an end.