Cibus, a US-based plant-breeding technology developer backed by life sciences real estate manager Alexandra Real Estate Equities, has withdrawn its proposed initial public offering.
The company did not offer a reason for its decision. It filed for an offering on the Nasdaq Global Select Market in November 2018 and planned to issue approximately 6.67 million shares priced at $14 to $16, according to a securities filing in February 2019.
Founded in 2001, Cibus has developed a gene-editing platform called RTDS to breed agricultural crops with beneficial agronomic and consumer traits without relying on foreign genetic material. Its first commercial product is a herbicide-tolerant canola called Falco.
The company is also working on rice, flax, potato, wheat, corn, peanut and soybean crops. It had hoped to use more than $55m of proceeds from the IPO to drive further development of all its existing programs.
The offering would have followed approximately $189m in funding, Cibus most recently collecting $70m in series C funding in June 2018 from investors including Alexandria’s venture capital unit, Alexandria Venture Investments.
Financial services and investment group Fidelity Management and Research led the series C round, which also featured hedge fund sponsor Cormorant Asset Management. BV Partners held a 10.9% stake in Cibus as of February 2019 and Fidelity owned 8.2%.
Morgan Stanley and BofA Merrill Lynch were book-running managers for the IPO while Piper Jaffray was a passive book-running manager.
