Peregrine Ventures launches new $300 million fund to focus on late-stage life science companies
Peregrine Ventures, an Israeli venture capital firm today announced the launch of a new growth fund, Peregrine Growth, which focuses on late-stage life science companies.
Peregrine closed $101 million of the planned $300 million fund, with participation of leading Israeli institutional investors. Currently, the firm aiming to raise additional funds from institutional investors and family offices worldwide.
The 2019 report of the Israeli Advanced Technology Industries (IATI) notes that Israel, with a population of around 9 million, has “a robust, growing and increasingly integrated ecosystem of biopharma, medtech, digital health, and healthcare sectors which have merged into a “single bio-convergent industry.”
The report refers to 1,600 life science companies employing nearly 85,000 people. A majority of them are in the R&D stage (51%), though 547 firms (34%) are generating initial revenues; and 64 firms (4%) are in revenue growth mode.
Peregrine Growth will invest $20 to $30 million per funding round, with a strong emphasis on companies that are on the verge of an IPO or M&A. Peregrine invests in sectors such as medical devices, pharma and digital health.
Peregrine Growth is Peregrine Ventures’ fifth fund and first growth fund. It follows Peregrine IV, which closed in December 2019 after raising $115 million. The performance of Peregrine’s portfolio places the firm in the upper quartile of IRR results for all venture capital firms in global benchmarks.
“Peregrine has nearly 20 years experience in life science investing at all stages, on companies that are at an incredibly exciting time: on the cusp of an IPO or M&A,” said Eyal Lifschitz, managing partner, and co-founder at Peregrine Ventures.
“With the renewed focus on biotech, health, and life science in the wake of the COVID-19 crisis, the potential of Peregrine Growth is great. Many industry executives are aware that insufficient funds have been invested in healthcare and pharma technologies, and therefore expect that the life science sector will experience significant growth over the next decade. Institutional investors are taking note of the trend and will be allocating a larger percentage of their investments toward life science,” said Lifschitz.
Peregrine’s portfolio companies completed exits totaling more than $2 billion to date, among them Valtech and Neovasc, among the largest exits in the field of medical devices in Israel’s history.
Additionally, Peregrine’s portfolio includes mature growth companies worth hundreds of millions of dollars. The fund has invested in and helped develop numerous successful companies in the MedTech field, including medical devices, biotech, pharma, esthetics, and digital health, such as Memic, CartiHeal, Cordio, and Magneto.
A number of Peregrine’s current portfolio companies have pivoted to use their technologies to combat the coronavirus. Among them, Cordio’s noninvasive technology is able to remotely monitor and diagnose the status of COVID-19 patients based on the analysis of their speech pattern sampled with the use of a cellular application.
After the establishment of Peregrine, the co-founders were joined by partners Tamir Tal Lior Shahory, David Eldar and Tal Carasso. The firm has become a prominent investor in Israel’s medical, life science and biotech sectors with a specific focus on medical devices.
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