A year ago we published the first “Semper Maior” piece, making the case that biotech was on firm ground and ready for a reboot. We put out the second piece last summer, when it felt like the rebound was underway. Had the year ended in October or even November… well, you know. But here we are after a general market and XBI surge feeling like biotech is now truly recovering from its prolonged downturn. So let’s mine the data, as we have before, to get a sense of what happened in 2023 and what lessons to take with us into 2024.

Our January 2023 analysis Semper Maior: Time to Reboot Biotech argued that the development-stage biotech industry had found its footing, following one of the sector’s most sustained and painful drawdowns. Now, in our first update to that analysis, we’re happy to report that development-stage biotech remains on solid ground. In the first half of 2023, biotech investors harvested considerable gains from M&A and have already partially redeployed that capital back into what is now a smaller, slightly more highly valued set of promising development-stage companies.

In today’s FutureCast discussion, RA’s Raj Shah, Jake Simson, Tess Cameron, and Peter Kolchinsky revisit one of our most talked-about articles: Time to Reboot Biotech. Fresh financial analysis and actionable board room advice abound.