Safeguard's next money-losing bio firm IPO
Will NuPathe Corp. do any better than Clarient or Tengion have so far?
Remember Safeguard Scientifics? The Wayne investment firm, run by Warren "Pete" Musser from the 1950s into the early 2000s, exploiting with varying degrees of success the eletronics, industrial-conglomerate and Internet stock bubbles, has in the past few years built a list of 17 mostly life-sciences and software plays, where it's "deployed" more than $130 million in major ownership stakes. Check it out in Safeguard's new earnings statement here.
Safeguard's next chance to score big gains through an IPO will be Conshohocken-based NuPathe Corp., which is developing a severe-migraine-headache patch.
Like Safeguard's last two IPOs, human-bladder-regeneration developer Tengion and molecule-tester Clarient, NuPathe is what venture capitalists used to call a "pre-profit" company.
Both Tengion and Clarient shares have fallen since they went public. Will NuPathe be any different?