Tularik: Unique Enough?

Flush with cash and cachet, Tularik is the highest-valued still-private firm in the biotech industry--worth some $434 million at its last round of financing. To go public, it needs investors to give it a valuation beyond $500 million to launch it into the rarified realm of tradable biotech stocks. Its current investors hope the public will appreciate it for more than its marquee-value CEO, ex-Genentech R&D chief David Goeddel, but an integrated research infrastructure, a strong cash position and its ability to raise more non-equity cash by selling European and American rights to programs already financed by Japanese partners.