NEW YORK — Twenty seven venture-backed initial public offerings (IPOs), 23 of them U.S. firms, raised $3.4 billion during the second quarter of 2015, a 59 percent increase in offerings over the first quarter this year. The IPOs raised more than double the level of dollars raised during the previous three-month period, according to the Exit Poll Report by Thomson Reuters and the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA).

Eighteen of the 27 companies brought to market this quarter are currently trading at or above their offering price.

Bobby Franklin, president and CEO of NVCA said in a statement, “After moderating in the first quarter following a blistering pace in 2014, venture-backed IPO activity picked up some steam in the second quarter, delivering 27 high-growth companies to the public markets for investors to stake their claim to innovation economy,”

He added, “As has been the case over the last several quarters, life sciences companies continue to lead the way, representing 70 percent of total public offerings for the quarter with biotech companies alone accounting for 14 of the quarter’s venture-backed IPOs. On the heels of FitBit’s successful IPO, we will be watching to see if there is increased parity between the number of life sciences companies and technology companies making public offerings as the year progresses.”                

The information technology sector led the venture-backed M&A landscape with 54 of the 70 deals of the quarter and had a disclosed total dollar value of $2.5 billion. Within this sector, Computer Software and Services and Internet Specific deals accounted for the bulk of the targets with 34 and 13 transactions, respectively, across these sector subsets.

Quarterly volume increased 59 percent from the first quarter of this year and registered a triple-digit percentage increase, by dollars, compared to the previous quarter.

Led by the biotechnology sectors, 19 of the 27 offerings during the quarter were life sciences IPOs, representing 70 percent of total listings in the second quarter.

San Francisco-based health and fitness tech company Fitbit Inc. (FIT) chalked up the largest IPO of the quarter, raising $841.2 million when it began trading on the New York stock exchange June 17. It is currently trading at 90 percent over its offering price.

For the second quarter of 2015, 70 venture-backed M&A deals were reported, 14 of which had an aggregate deal value of $4.1 billion. Venture-backed M&A activity during the quarter fell to its lowest levels, by number of deals, since the first quarter of 2003 as disclosed deal value increased 86 percent compared to the first quarter of 2015.