NextCure, a US-based immuno-oncology drug developer backed by pharmaceutical companies Taiho, Pfizer and Eli Lilly and insurance group Ping An, has secured $75m in its initial public offering.
The offering consisted of 5 million shares on the Nasdaq Global Select Market priced at $15 each, in the middle of its $14 to $16 range.
NextCure is working on immunomedicines that will treat diseases related to the human immune system such as cancer, by restoring normal immune system functioning.
The company will put $135m in cash on hand together with the IPO proceeds, and spend $113m of that cash on an ongoing phase 1/2 clinical trial for its lead drug candidate, NC318, in advanced or metastatic solid tumours in addition to a planned phase 3 trial.
NC318 is a monoclonal antibody based on research by scientific founder Lieping Chen at Yale University’s School of Medicine. Additional proceeds from the offering will fund a phase 1/2 trial for a candidate called NC410 for metastatic solid tumours.
NextCure raised $67m in series A funding in 2016 from Pfizer, Lilly Asia Ventures and Alexandria Venture Investments, subsidiaries of Eli Lilly and life sciences real estate investment trust Alexandria Real Estate Equities, as well as Canaan, OrbiMed and Sofinnova Ventures.
Pfizer, Lilly Asia Ventures and corporate venturing units Ping An Ventures and Taiho Ventures returned for the company’s $93m series B round, which included $15m from Eli Lilly itself as part of a discovery and development partnership.
The round was co-led by Hillhouse Capital and Quan Capital co-led the round and included Alexandria Venture Investments, Canaan, OrbiMed, Sofinnova Ventures Bay City Capital, Surveyor Capital, ArrowMark Partners and NS Investment, in November 2018.
The company’s existing shareholders bought $32m of shares in the IPO but it has not disclosed which backers bought how many shares, and the share ownership figures in the prospectus do not reflect their purchases.
Eli Lilly and its Lilly Asia Ventures unit jointly own 12% of the company’s shares between them post-IPO, down from approximately 15.6%, while Pfizer’s 10.4% stake was cut from 8.1%.
NextCure’s other notable shareholders include OrbiMed (10.8% post-IPO), Canaan (10%), Sofinnova Ventures (9.7%), Hillhouse and Quan Venture Fund (4.5% each).
The offering’s joint book-running managers, Morgan Stanley, BofA Merrill Lynch and Piper Jaffray, have a 30-day option to buy a further 750,000 shares, which would increase the size of the IPO to approximately $86.3m.
