US-headquartered small molecule drug developer Aligos Therapeutics went public on Friday in a $150m initial public offering representing an exit for pharmaceutical firms Roche and Novo.
The company priced 10 million shares in the middle of the IPO’s $14 to $16 range. Its shares opened at $17.40 on the Nasdaq Global Select Market and closed at $14.85, valuing it at about $550m.
Aligos will direct up to $40m of the IPO proceeds and its cash on hand into a phase 1 clinical trial and drug manufacturing preparations for its lead product candidate, a potential hepatitis B treatment known as ALG-010133.
Up to $38m will be channelled into a phase 1 trial for a second hepatitis B candidate, ALG-000184, and $40m into development of two more candidates, ALG-020572 and ALG-125097, while $12m to $14m will fund work on a candidate for the liver disease non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH).
The company had previously raised $231m in funding, including $101m in a September 2018 series A round featuring Roche subsidiary Roche Finance, Novo, Vivo Capital and Baker Brothers, according to the IPO filing.
Aligos completed a $125m series B that included all the series A investors, Pivotal BioVenture Partners – which is backed by real estate developer Nan Fung – Wellington Management, Versant Ventures, Janus Henderson Investors, Boxer Capital, Cormorant Asset Management and Logos Capital this month.
Roche Finance, Baker Brothers and Versant Ventures each own 8.4% of the company’s shares post-IPO, while Vivo Capital holds 8.1%, Novo 6.6% and Wellington Management 5.2%.
Joint book-running managers JP Morgan, Jefferies and Piper Sandler and lead manager Cantor have the 30-day option to acquire up to 1.5 million additional shares, which would lift the size of the offering to more than $172m.
