DoubleTwist withdraws IPO
The announcement coincided with a marked downturn for biotech stocks, which saw the Ames biotech index fall 2.9%.DoubleTwist is the latest in a line long of companies to withdraw or modify planned IPOs. Genometrix, a genomic services and information company, withdrew its IPO last week, and Seattle Genetics, a biotech drug firm backed by Microsoft founders Paul Allen and Bill Gates, announced this week it was lowering the price range of its IPO for the second time.
DoubleTwist's offerings are being used by a number of prominent companies in the industry, including Bristol-Myers Squibb, Chiron, DuPont, Eli Lilly, Hitachi, Hoechst Marion Roussel, Merck, Millennium, Monsanto and SUGEN (both subsidiaries of Pharmacia), and RW Johnson Pharmaceutical Research, a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson.
The company currently offers four products, DoubleTwist.com, Prophecy, Geneforest and Cluster and Alignment Tools, known as CAT.
At the time DoubleTwist announced it planned to file for an IPO, the company acknowledged that it faced a number of major challenges in meeting its goals. These challenges included competition from other companies with similar visions, resistance from potential clients who have invested heavily in building their own capabilities internally, long sales cycles, and uncertainty over how receptive pharmaceutical companies will be to conducting proprietary research online, no matter how secure the system. Funding was also cited as a major challenge.