IPO roundup: Bioheart, Merrion Pharma in limbo; Reliant vs. Reliant road shows; upcoming offerings

Bioheart’s IPO-related chest pains continue — The week of Oct. 22 has come and gone, and there’s no sign of the scheduled — and already battered — IPO of Bioheart, the Florida company that hopes to treat damaged hearts with patients’ own muscle stem cells. IPO Home now lists the IPO as scheduled on a “day-to-day” basis.

So the jury is still out as to whether the company’s recent halving of its IPO terms will still get it out the gate, but the signs aren’t good. By the way, my last piece on the company — which, admittedly, was a tad on the snide side — drew a critical comment from someone identifying themselves as “Peggy Farley.” According to Bioheart’s latest SEC filing, Peggy Farley is a Bioheart board member, the CEO of Ascent Capital Management and the beneficial owner of 494,410 Bioheart shares. I don’t have any independent confirmation that the commenter and the Bioheart director are one and the same — among other things, the commenter used a Hotmail account — but it’s interesting nonetheless.

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Bioheart isn’t the only life-sciences startup in this pickle. Merrion Pharmaceuticals, an Irish company that rejiggers existing drugs, was scheduled to go out last week and is now also scheduled on a “day-to-day” basis. (Our coverage of the company is here.) Of course, even Merrion’s situation looks good compared to Cumberland Pharmaceuticals, which is still listed as “day-to-day” and has been since mid-August (see, for instance, a mention in the Zars item here).

Reliant vs. Reliant — One of the oddest doppelganger acts in the life-sciences financing world has hit the road. Back in August, I thought it odd when Reliant Technologies — a Mountain View, Calif., medical-laser startup — filed for an IPO just three days after New Jersey-based specialty pharma Reliant Pharmaceuticals had done so. That apparently wasn’t enough, though, as this week both companies set their IPO terms back to back. The companies’ latest SEC filings are here (Reliant Pharma) and here (Reliant Tech).

Can investors keep these road-tripping twinsies straight? Let’s take a look:

Specialty
Reliant Pharma: Cardiovascular disease
Reliant Tech: Skin “rejuvenation”

Maximum IPO take
Reliant Pharma: $364 million
Reliant Tech: $86 million

Proposed ticker symbol
Reliant Pharma: RRX
Reliant Tech: RLNT

Potential Market Capitalization
Reliant Pharma: $1.4 billion
Reliant Tech: $236.6 million

Good luck, investors. We’ll be thinking of you.

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Life-sciences IPOs scheduled this week:

• Akela Pharma
• Genoptix (our coverage)
• Nanosphere (our coverage)