BG Medicine (NASDAQ:[[ticker:BGMD]]) took the long road to becoming a public company, scrapping its first attempt in 2008 and then spending just more than a year to wrap up its second IPO campaign this past February.
In a recent interview, Pieter Muntendam, the CEO of the Waltham, MA-based medical diagnostic company, told me how BG Medicine weathered the rough IPO climate and shared the company’s outlook for its main product: a test that assesses the prognosis of heart failure patients.
The public markets seem loath to buy into a life sciences company IPO. The select few firms that have actually completed an IPO have typically had to drop the asking price for their shares before buyers would commit. BG Medicine was no exception. The firm settled for $7 per share in its public debut in February, roughly half of what the company had previously sought for its stock, according to regulatory filings.
There was also some confusion about BG Medicine’s IPO plans in December when the company failed to price its shares on schedule. That sparked at least one media report that BG Medicine had again withdrawn its IPO.
In fact, the company never withdrew its IPO. Muntendam explained that the company decided not to price its IPO in December because of timing, with many people closing their books toward the end of the year.
“The biggest surprise for us was when
