Two biotech companies completed initial public offerings October 10, both pricing at the top of their range, with Intercept Pharmaceuticals raising $75 million and Kythera Biopharmaceuticals raising $70.4 million. The two deals represent an impressive feat given the tepid market for life sciences IPOs.

Kythera and Intercept both increased the number of shares they offered. Intercept originally planned to sell 4.3 million shares but stepped up the offer with an additional 700,000 shares to raise $11 million more than planned. Kythera, meanwhile, added 10 percent more shares to its offering to raise an additional $6.4 million.

Both companies have lead compounds in late-stage development. For New York City-based Intercept, it is a first-in-class treatment for primary biliary cirrhosis, a rare chronic autoimmune liver disease that can ultimately lead to liver failure. For Southern California-based Kythera, it is an injectable drug that reduces submental fat, otherwise known as a “double chin.”

Both companies filed with regulators under the newly passed JOBS Act, allowing them to first file confidentially so that they could see if there was investor interest. These offerings came less than a week after another biotech, Regulus Therapeutics, slashed the price of its initial public offering to $4, less than half its target range of $10 to $12, in order to get its deal done. The difference between the Regulus offering and Intercept’s and Kythera’s offerings, according to life sciences investors at the just-concluded annual BIO Investor Forum in San Francisco, is that Regulus represented a risky play as a preclinical company, whereas both Intercept and Kythera were already significantly de-risked.

Both companies plan to use the proceeds of their offerings to continue clinical development of their products. Kythera is already conducted late-stage trials in Europe with its partner Bayer, which has rights to the drug outside the United States and Canada. Data from the trial is expected by the middle of next year, and the partners plan to file for approval in Europe next year. Top line data is expected in mid-2013.

Intercept’s lead candidate is also being tested in a late-stage international trial for which data is expected by mid-2014. It has global rights to its drug except for Japan and China, where it has out-licensed the product to Dainippon Sumitomo Pharma.

The biotechs in drug development that have gone public so far this year are doing well in the public markets, with their collective average return at 23.2 percent as of October 12, and all but one are above their IPO price. But they have not yet led to exits for their private investors as all of them involved significant insider participation.