Silverback Therapeutics, a US-based immuno-oncology therapy developer backed by pharmaceutical firms Celgene and Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMS), went public today in an initial public offering sized at approximately $242m.
The company had upscaled the offering from 10 million shares to 11.5 million and priced them at $21.00 each, above a $19 to $20 range already increased from $17 to $19. It is floating on the Nasdaq Global Market and the IPO price values it at $695m.
Founded in 2016, Silverback is developing targeted therapeutics for cancer and chronic viral infections that will combine linker-payloads with monoclonal antibodies. It will put $70m of the proceeds into a phase 1/1b clinical trial for its lead drug candidate, SBT6050, for solid tumours.
Another $30m will go to the development of a second candidate, SBT6290, that will include a phase 1 dose-escalation trial in tumours expressing the Nectin 4 antibody.
The offering follows $211m in funding including $47.5m in a 2018 series A round led by healthcare investment firm OrbiMed that also featured Celgene and Alexandria Venture Investments, a vehicle for life sciences real estate investment trust Alexandria Real Estate Equities.
Silverback closed a $78.5m series B round in March this year featuring BMS and Alexandria Venture Investments as well as US Venture Partners (USVP), which led the round, OrbiMed, Nextech Invest, Hunt Investment Group, Pontifax Venture Capital, Colt Ventures and NS Investment.
EcoR1 Capital led an $85m series C round six months later, participating alongside investment and financial services group Fidelity, OrbiMed, USVP, Boxer Capital, Nantahala Capital Management, RA Capital, Hunt Technology Ventures, Nextech Invest and Pontifax.
The company’s largest shareholders are OrbiMed (a 22.8% stake post-IPO), USVP (6.6%), Nextech Invest (5%), Hunt Technology Ventures (4.4%), Pontifax (3.8%) and EcoR1 Capital (3.6%).
Goldman Sachs, SVB Leerink and Stifel are joint book-running managers for the offering, while HC Wainwright is lead manager. They have the 30-day option to buy nearly 1.73 million more shares to theoretically lift it to almost $278m in size.
