The rarest IPOs in recent months have been those in diagnostics, with only three completed so far this year. Nonetheless, we wondered how diagnostics companies that received the highest market caps in IPOs over the past two years fared against their smaller-cap counterparts on delivering rates of return to private investors.

Do device start-ups that receive the highest market caps on IPO deliver the biggest rates of return to private investors? An analysis we’ve done (see chart below) seems to answer unequivocally yes.