So far this year there have been double the number of diagnostics companies with initial public offerings (IPOs) as there were in all of 2012, bringing the total in the past 12 months to a paltry three IPOs. Experts say that they don’t expect to see any significant uptick in IPO activity in the industry both because of the broader financial market environment and because companies in the space must adapt to changing investor expectations. “The broader perspective is that it is a tough time for any IPO, forget about for diagnostics companies,” says Keith Batchelder, M.D., founder and CEO of the advisory firm Genomic Healthcare Strategies. “I am bullish on diagnostics; however, unless companies can present their case in the context of why there is clinical utility and economic utility it is going to be very tough times in the marketplace.” The three diagnostics companies that have successfully entered the public markets over the past 12 months all did so with markedly scaled back offerings. Cancer Genetics (Rutherford, N.J.) closed its initial public offering of 690,000 shares of common stock at a price to the public of $10 per share with gross proceeds of $6.9 million in the beginning […]