Israel’s life sciences companies said to raise record $1.5 billion in 2018

IATI’s 2019 Israeli Life Sciences Report was released at the opening of the 2019 MIXiii Biomed conference and exhibition taking place on May 14-16 in Tel Aviv. Of the total $1.5 billion that was invested in life sciences companies in 2018, as much as $619 million (41%) came from local investors. This is “significantly higher” than the five-year average of $435 million in 2013-2017, the report said.

Over the last five years, Israeli life sciences companies raised more than $2.7 billion on the Nasdaq exchange in the US. More than half of this amount was raised between 2014 and 2015, in which there was a window of opportunity for life sciences IPOs, a window that opened again in 2018 and is expected to continue in 2019, the report said.

Sixteen of the 38 Israeli life sciences companies traded on Nasdaq raised $568 million in initial and follow-on offerings in 2018, while on the other hand, investors on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange (TASE) remained cautious, with only four companies raising $7 million.

2018 was “another remarkable year” for merger and acquisition deals for Israeli life science companies. Four of the 10 largest high-tech deals in Israel in 2018 were life sciences companies. Mazor Robotics Ltd., acquired in 2018, was the first to reach the $1.5 billion milestone, surpassing the previous largest exit, by NeuroDerm in 2017. Mazor was the third-largest tech deal in Israel in 2018.

Medical equipment exports totaled more than $2 billion for the first time in the last decade, though exports of pharmaceuticals fell by more than 22% to $5.8 billion, the lowest export volume in the last decade, from an all-time annual high of $7.5 billion.

Total pharmaceutical and medical equipment product exports represents approximately 7% of the total exports of goods and services from Israel and 36% of the total industrial high-tech exports, the report showed.

Shoshanna Solomon