It’s (maybe) a big day for IPOs

That late-summer paucity of biotech IPOs gave way to a September boomlet, and now, just in time for a rough week on the market, we’re in for another test of investor appetite for money-losing drug companies.

Three biotechs are expected to begin trading on the Nasdaq today. There’s the immunology startup Viela Bio, seeking a valuations of $1 billion, followed by hearing loss biotech Frequency Therapeutics and the oncology company Aprea Therapeutics, which are aiming a bit lower. In what might be an omen, the cancer-focused ADC Therapeutics, once expected to go public today, withdrew its IPO plans last night.

The biotech bolus arrives amid some macro handwringing about whether private valuations have exceeded public realities, underlined by the real-time cautionary tale that is WeWork. Subleasing commercial real estate is not, so far as we can discern, analogous to developing drugs, but the performance of today’s IPOs could be instructive on whether the long-forcasted unicorn reckoning will apply to biotech.