The blank-check acquisition companies Launch One Acquisition and SIM Acquisition went public this week, a signal that the healthcare SPAC trend might not be totally dead.
On Friday, Launch One began trading on the Nasdaq $LPAAU in a $200 million IPO, which will help it bankroll a combination with a healthcare or life sciences company. The special purpose acquisition company’s chair, Ryan Gilbert, has been involved with multiple other SPACs, bringing CERo Therapeutics, eFFECTOR Therapeutics and Psyence Biomedical onto the public markets. Last month, eFFECTOR said it would wind down operations a few months after its cancer drug failed a Phase 2 trial.
Earlier in the week, SIM Acquisition landed on the Nasdaq $SIMAU in a $230 million IPO to start a hunting expedition for a healthcare company to buy. It’s led by Erich Spangenberg, who was recently founder and CEO of IPwe, an IP financial technology company that is in the process of Chapter 7 bankruptcy. He’s also a former partner of the Coalition For Affordable Drugs.
Another healthcare SPAC is in the IPO queue. Voyager Acquisition filed last month for a $261 million listing. Meanwhile, Bihua Chen’s Helix Acquisition Corp. II is seeking a biotech to take public after her prior success with MoonLake Immunotherapeutics. The company closed its $184 million IPO the day before Valentine’s Day.
In their first-half report earlier this week, Oppenheimer bankers wrote that SPACs are the “least attractive path to public listing.” Biopharma SPACs peaked at 21 in 2021, but fell to 15 the following year and were down to nine in 2023, according to the report.
The “market has cratered due to the underperformance of pandemic-era de-SPACs,” the Oppenheimer bankers said in their report, referring to companies that have merged via a SPAC.