Sure. Find me one biotech with a bigger partnership and I'll take that one to my boss.
Maybe the difference is not that this is a bad deal for a candidate still in the preclinical phase but that people who were trading on rumors were expecting a buyout of the whole platform (despite what Kim has said on the record about not wanting to sell out yet) or at least a deal on one of the candidates that is further along in development. The further along something is, obviously the more up front cash it will bring as there is correspondingly less risk at that point.
Personally, I think either of those would have been a mistake at this point. I would much rather license a second-stringer candidate as my first deal (where part of the value I am receiving is reputation rather than cash) and leave my star player alone. There could certainly be reasonable differences of opinion there - maybe it is better to make a big splash first.
Nothing that has happened so far makes either of those partnering possibilities less likely to happen, if anything signing one set of turns on the dotted line may make negotiations either for other deals.
I also think that the way this stock has been played with so heavily lately makes it harder to use the current share price as evidence for what "smart money" in the biotech world thinks of the deal. If we want to use sp as a guide, I think we need to wait until things settle out a little longer.
Incidentally, I am not an expert on biotech deals - I have seen a few and did a little reading, but I really am curious to see what comparables others might come up with.
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