Ever wondered how well the (bio)pharmaceutical IPOs of the 21st century have performed since going public? We have compiled the data on all 86 drug developers who have joined the U.S. stock markets via the IPO route* since 2000.

And the results? Not pretty. Despite a few success stories, these 86 drug developer IPOs are down an average of 44% through the first quarter of 2009. Ouch!

Here is the data:

• 86 total (bio)pharma IPOs from 2000 through Q1 2009

• 15 of these IPOs are trading above their IPO price

• 5 of these IPOs have seen their share price more than double since going public

• The two highest returns are from Acorda Therapeutics (Nasdaq: ACOR) which is up 230.2% since it 2005 IPO and Auxilium Pharmaceuticals (Nasdaq: AUXL) which is up 229.6% since its 2004 IPO

• The average returns from these 86 IPOs based upon each of their IPO offer prices until March 31, 2009 is –43.7% (ouch) and even if Dendreon’s post Q1 09 share price trebling is included, the average IPO returns from the drug developers is still –42.0%.

• 18 of the drug developer IPOs are down at least 90% and 34 are down more than 80% through the first quarter of this year.

• The last drug developer to do an IPO was Biohart (OTC: BHRT) in February 2008

Below you will find charts of the performance of biotech and pharmaceutical company IPOs organized by IPO year (click on each image for a larger version)**

2009: 0 IPOs (through the first quarter)

2008: 1 IPO

2007: 17  IPOs (see two charts below)

Molecular Insight Pharmaceuticals, Synta Pharmaceuticals, 3SBio, Optimer Pharmaceuticals, Tongjitang Chinese Medicines, Orexigen Therapeutics, Pharmasset, NeurogesX, Biodel

Eurand, Amicus Therapeutics, Jazz Pharmaceuticals, China Shenghuo Pharmaceutical Holdings, Sucampo Pharmaceuticals, MAP Pharmaceuticals, NovaBay Pharmaceuticals, ARYx Therapeutics

2006: 14  IPOs (see two charts below)

Altus Pharmaceuticals, Acorda Therapeutics, Alexza Pharmaceuticals, Targacept, Cleveland BioLabs, Osiris Therapeutics, Warner Chilcott

Trubion Pharmaceuticals, Cadence Pharmaceuticals, Achillion Pharmaceuticals, Catalyst Pharmaceutical Partners, Emergent BioSolutions, Obagi Medical Products, Affymax

2005: 8 IPOs (see one chart below)

ICAgen, Threshold Pharmaceuticals, Xenoport, Gentium, Advanced Life Sciences Holdings, Sunesis Pharmaceuticals, Avalon Pharmaceuticals, CombinatoRx

2004: 16 IPOs (see two charts below)

Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, Inhibitex, Metabasis Therapeutics, Momenta Pharmaceuticals, Idenix Pharmaceuticals, Auxilium Pharmaceuticals, MannKind, Theravance

2003: 3 IPOs (combined into 2001 chart below)

2002: 3 IPOs (combined into 2001 chart below)

2001: 2 IPOs (see one chart below)

Seattle Genetics, ZymoGenetics, Alcon, BioDelivery Sciences, MiddleBrook Pharmaceuticals, Micromet, Nitromed,

2000: 22 IPOs (see three charts below)

Antigenics, InterMune, Sangamo, Lexicon Pharmaceuticals, Exelixis, Dendreon, Pain Therapeutics

Decode Genetics, Arena Pharmaceuticals, Keryx Biopharmaceuticals, Inspire Pharmaceuticals, Medicines Co., Telik, Dyax

ISTA Pharmaceuticals, Durect, Pozen, Crucell, Adolor, Array BioPharma, Rigel Pharmaceuticals, GenVec

A note about how we calculated returns:

Our program calculated IPO returns based upon their IPO offer price and not the IPO’s (often inflated) first day of trading share price. For example, the first biotech IPO of the 21st century was Antigenics (Nasdaq: AGEN). It had an IPO offer price of $18.00 a share but opened its first day of trading (February 04, 2000) at $45.00 a share according to Hoovers or $41.00 a share according to bigcharts.com.

Antigenics ended the first quarter of 2009 trading at $0.49 a share and our program calculated Antigenic’s returns based on its $18.00 a share offer price and not its $45.00 or $41.00 a share first day of trading open price. This is an important distinction because the vast majority of drug developers opened their first day of trading at or above their offer price and only at this point could most retail investors have bought their shares. If we had used the first day’s open price for our returns calculation, drug developer IPO returns would be worse looking.

Also, our program does not calculate dividends, which only a few of these drug developers like Alcon (NYSE: ACL) pay. It does account for the special case of Abraxis (Nasdaq: ABII), which spun-out APP Pharmaceuticals and the fact that APP was subsequently acquired (although the final acquisition value of APP won’t be fully determined until a possible special $6.00 a share dividend to APP shareholders in 2011)

*This list does not include reverse mergers, which has been another common route for new drug developers to enter the stock market.

** One note of caution, we used Yahoo Finance to create these charts because they look nice visually but Yahoo Finance does not calculate a company’s historical returns exactly right so (for example the year 2000 chart with InterMune in it only has InterMune returns starting from June despite the fact that InterMune started trading on the Nasdaq in March of that year) use these charts as general visual guides only.