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ASC 805 Valuation Update: Biopharmaceuticals

Accounting Standard Codification Topic 805 (“ASC 805”), Business Combinations, was designed to provide additional transparency in purchase accounting. The biopharmaceutical industry is a clear beneficiary. With significant contingent payouts, the purchase considerations paid for pre-revenue drug development companies are extremely difficult to assess. Under ASC 805, financial statements provide much better information about the values of future milestone payments and of the distinct clinical candidates acquired. We studied how acquisitions of development stage biopharmaceutical companies were reported in the SEC filings.

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