After Two Decades in the Making, NGS Oncology Firm Caris Life Sciences Files for IPO

May 26, 2025 08:09 CST Updated 08:09

Caris Life Sciences

Precision Medicine Service Provider

Recently, Caris Life Sciences, which has appeared frequently here, is finally going public.

Let's take a brief look at this company and see if it's worth investing in.

#01

20 Years of Entrepreneurship

David Dean Halbert, the founder of Caris Life Sciences, was born in 1956 (some sources say December 1955). As early as 1987, he founded AdvancePCS, a major U.S. prescription drug benefits management company.

You guessed it right, it's the much-criticized Pharmacy Benefit Manager, PBM.

But that's not the point. The point is that in 2004, another PBM institution, Caremark, acquired AdvancePCS for $5.6 billion (David himself said $7.5 billion).

Subsequently, David founded the investment firm Caris Capital in 2005, which later acquired Pathology Partners, Inc. and renamed it Caris Diagnostics.

If we calculate from that point, David has indeed been in the diagnostics industry for 20 years, haha.

Just kidding, in fact, the most authentic starting point is the acquisition and renaming of Molecular Profiling Institute to Caris Life Sciences in 2008.

Caris Life Sciences has undergone multiple rounds of financing,According to Crunchbase, its total financing amount is as high as 1.9 billion US dollars, with a valuation of over 7.8 billion US dollars.

Investors include institutions such as Sixth Street and OrbiMed.

This IPO will be listed on the Nasdaq, with an expected fundraising of 300 million US dollars.

#02

Homogenization

2024Caris completed the detection of 172,600 samples, a year-on-year increase of 26%.

Revenue for the year was US$412.3 million, a year-on-year increase of 35%.

Net loss for the full year of 2024 was approximately US$282 million, slightly narrowing from a loss of US$341 million in 2023.

This level is somewhat far from Guardant Health, which was established in 2004.

Guardant's revenue for the whole year of 2024 was $739 million, but its market value was only $4.708 billion.

A bit awkward...

And the things they do, the two are almost indistinguishable in essence.

Of course,Caris added A.I., artificial intelligence. These two words together are worth $40 billion, no problem.

Caris Life Sciences was afraid that people might not know that they have A.I., so they deliberately set their stock abbreviation as "CAI," which translates to "Cai (by mistake)" in Chinese.

With the support of A.I., Caris Life Sciences' early screening product ABCDai-MCED performs as shown in the figure above at 99.5% specificity.

Bladder cancer, ovarian cancer, and other sensitivities even soared to 100%. GRAIL is in danger...

Just a joke, this answer is only based on the 2,675 validation sets and cannot be considered accurate.

Anyway... After looking into it, Caris and Guardant and other publicly listed companies don’t have many distinctive features. Even with the addition of A.I., it doesn’t quite have the same authentic appeal as Tempus A.I.

#03

Huge Market

By the way, let's take a look at the U.S. cancer testing market through Caris' eyes.

Among them, early screening is worth $100 billion, medication is worth $8 billion, MRD is worth $28 billion, pharmaceutical company collaborations are worth $4 billion, and data services are worth $10 billion.

Thus, a total of approximately 150 billion US dollars, very tempting.

After watching, I think everyone should invest in the early screening market (mistake).

From the data, the revenue for Q1 2025 has already broken through 120 million US dollars, and it will basically have no problem exceeding 400 million US dollars for the whole year.

At this rate, it seems pretty good, but of course, it's just good.

#01

Finally

Finally, let's summarize.

First, the revenue level of Caris Life Sciences is a bit high compared to its valuation;

Second, the technology owned by Caris Life Sciences is homogenized compared to currently listed companies;

Third, if I have to add one more advantage, it seems that the CEO is not short of money.

In 2024, the salary I set for myself was only $750,000, and even with bonuses, it amounted to just $2.25 million.

Tempus CEO Eric Lefkofsky is pretending to be modest by not taking a base salary, how hypocritical~

The above is just a joke, please don't take it seriously...

Whether to invest or not, you decide.

END