A weak financing climate for Canadian public healthcare companies continued in the second quarter. Excluding financings by profitable companies and unique situations, development stage companies raised $72.7 million in Q2.

For the first half of 2010, financings totaled $187.9 million, only 78% of the funds raised in the first half of 2009 and less than one third of the first half average from 2005 to 2007.

As in the first quarter, the events for the sector were largely positive.

Two new chemical entities received positive regulatory recommendations: an FDA advisory committee voted unanimously to recommend the approval of Theratechnologies’ tesamorelin (Egrifta), and a committee of the European Medicines Agency recommended approval of Cardiome’s BRINAVESS (iv vernakalant).

In the largest M&A transaction by a Canadian therapeutics company since Shire acquired BioChem Pharma almost ten years ago, the Biovail name will be replaced by Valeant after the merger of the two companies is completed. M&A activity was also prominent amongst the private companies in the Canadian sector during the second quarter, with three announcing they will be acquired:  Toronto-based VisualSonics, Montreal-based Resonant Medical and Ottawa-based Verio Therapeutics. Subsequent to the quarter, Sentinelle Medical of Toronto also announced its acquisition in early July.

For more insight on how Canada’s public healthcare companies fared in the second quarter, please check out Equicom’s Q2 2010 Canadian Healthcare Review

The public companies in the Canadian healthcare sector endured the first quarter of 2010 with a modest infusion of capital. Excluding the largest financing, $86.3 million by profitable Extendicare, the sector raised $149.7 million. Based on historical financing trends, the sector needs more than $1 billion in annual financing to grow rather than just survive.

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Equicom’s review of the Canadian healthcare sector in 2009 is titled ‘Survival, Success, and Surrender’. Most of the public companies we track focused on survival, a few were able to celebrate successes and some of our friends did not survive the year.

These public companies raised a total of approximately $654 million from equity and convertible debt financings despite a difficult financial environment in 2009, excluding large financings by Biovail and SXC Health Solutions. The healthcare environment has been particularly brutal for the pharmaceutical companies with FDA tightening safety requirements, legislators attacking them over pricing and marketing, and a patent cliff for their biggest products in clear sight. For the smaller companies, this created an opportunity for increased partnering and acquisition activity, which many Canadian companies are pursuing and some completed in 2009.

The average share price return in 2009 for a group of 32 larger Canadian healthcare companies was +100%, easily outperforming the TSX Composite Index, but investors’ perception of the sector may not match this performance. Good events outnumbered the bad events, but product failures make headlines whereas good data can get ignored.

The sector needs to catch the attention of investors in 2010 and their attention will be captured by positive events. Companies with revenues and earnings need to show continued growth in their quarterly results. Ongoing partnership discussions need to be turned into a couple partnerships with major pharmaceutical companies and large upfront payments, or turned into acquisitions. The sector could also use a little luck in 2010 - a few positive clinical and regulatory events early in the year would help attract the attention of risk-tolerant investors.

Read the full report here: http://bit.ly/7ieuu2