Canada-based antibody drug developer AbCellera floated on the Nasdaq Global Select Market on Friday in a $483m initial public offering representing an exit for pharmaceutical firm Eli Lilly.
The company priced just over 24.1 million shares, upsized from 23 million, at $20.00 each, above the $17 to $18 range it set for the offering. Its shares opened at $61.00 on Friday and closed at $58.90 to give it a valuation of almost $15.7bn.
AbCellera has created an artificial intelligence-powered antibody discovery platform that scans a database of the human immune systems to find antibodies with the potential to form the basis of drug treatments. It made a $1.9m net profit in the first nine months of 2020 from $25.2m in revenue.
The company’s partners include investor Eli Lilly, which is collaborating with it on LY-CoV555, a potential antibody treatment for covid-19. The IPO proceeds will support the further enhancement of its technology and the growth of its business development team and marketing activities.
Eli Lilly took part in AbCellera’s last round, a $105m series B round in May this year that was co-led by OrbiMed and DCVC Bio and backed by Viking Global Investors, Founders Fund, University of Minnesota, Presight Capital, Baker Brothers, Harvard Management Private Equity Corporation and Thiel Capital.
The round came after a $10m series A led by DCVC Bio in 2018 following $820,000 from undisclosed investors the previous year.
The only two investors to hold 5% or more of AbCellera pre-IPO were DCVC Bio, owner of a 12.4% diluted to 11%, and Viking Global, which holds a 7.2% stake diluted from 8%.
The company is also converting the $90m it paid to acquire Trianni, the developer of a system that can isolate monoclonal antibodies, last month, into equity shares.
Joint book-running managers Credit Suisse, Stifel, Berenberg, SVB Leerink and BMO Capital Markets have 30 days to buy approximately 6.22 million shares which would lift the size of the offering to more than $555m, a move that will likely be confirmed today or tomorrow.
