Moderna, a US-based messenger RNA (mRNA) therapeutics developer backed by pharmaceutical companies AstraZeneca, Merck & Co and Alexion, raised approximately $604m in its initial public offering on Friday.
The IPO, the largest ever for a biotech company, consisted of almost 26.3 million shares issued on the Nasdaq Global Select Market priced at $23.00 each, up from 21.7 million shares when it set a $22 to $24 range late last month. The offering valued it at approximately $7.52bn.
Moderna is working on mRNA drugs and vaccines, and has advanced 21 product candidates into development, 10 of which have gone into clinical studies.
The company will put up to $420m of the proceeds into drug discovery, clinical development and the growth of its manufacturing capabilities. Between $90m and $100m of the IPO proceeds will go to developing its mRNA platform.
The offering came in the wake of almost $1.75bn in funding, with Moderna most recently raising $125m in funding from Merck in May this year, three months after a $500m series G round featuring Alexandria Venture Investments, part of real estate trust investment Alexandria Real Estate Equities.
The round reportedly valued Moderna at $7.5bn and included financial services provider Julius Baer, Fidelity Management & Research, Viking Global Investors, ArrowMark Partners, BB Biotech, Sequoia Capital China, Pictet, EDBI and Abu Dhabi Investment Authority.
Moderna had closed a $474m round in September 2016 that included $140m from AstraZeneca, which followed $450m from AstraZeneca, Alexion, Viking Global, Invus, RA Capital Management and Wellington Management Company the year before.
AstraZeneca’s 8.4% stake was diluted to 7.8% in the offering. Moderna’s other notable shareholders are Flagship Pioneering (17.9% post-IPO), company CEO Stéphane Bancel (9.2%) immunologist Timothy Springer (5.3%) and Viking Global Investors (5.1%).
Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan are joint lead book-running managers for the IPO while BofA Merrill Lynch, Barclays Capital and Piper Jaffray are book-running managers. Oddo BHF, Oppenheimer, Needham & Company and Chardan are co-managers.
The underwriters have a 30-day option to buy an additional 3.94 million shares, which would push the IPO to $695m. Moderna’s shares closed at $18.84 on its first day of trading.
