Acacia Pharma, a UK-based nausea and vomiting treatment developer backed by pharmaceutical firms Novo and Lundbeck, raised €40m ($49.6m) in an initial global offering on the Euronext Brussels market on Monday.
The company had issued approximately 11.1 million shares priced at €3.60 each to institutional investors in the US, the UK and Europe. The share price briefly rose to €3.80 post-offering and the shares are trading at €3.61 at the time of writing.
Founded in 2007, Acacia is working on intravenous therapies for postoperative nausea and vomiting (PONV), a condition that affects approximately 30% of patients and as many as 80% of high-risk patients that use anaesthetic gases and opioid painkillers.
The company is also developing intravenous treatments for chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting (CINV), which affects between 30% and 90% of cancer patients, depending on the kind of cancer. In severe cases CINV can result in delay, reduction or withdrawal from chemotherapy.
Acacia’s lead product candidate, a PONV treatment called Baremsis, has successfully completed four phase 3 clinical trials and is under review for approval by the US Food and Drug Administration, with a decision expected by early October 2018.
A treatment for CINV, APD403, has completed two phase 2 trials and is set to enter a phase 3 trial once it has completed an acute phase, dose-ranging phase 2 trial. Baremsis and APD403 are both based on amisulpride, which is currently used as a treatment for psychoses such as schizophrenia.
Acacia relaunched its plans for an initial global offering last month, having previously withdrawn plans for a $230m initial public offering on the London Stock Exchange in 2015 due to unfavourable market conditions.
Proceeds from the offering will allow Acacia to strengthen its sales and marketing activities as it prepares to launch Baremsis by early 2019, once it has secured regulatory approval. The capital will also go towards further development of APD403.
Lundbeck’s corporate VC arm, Lundbeckfonden Ventures, joned Novo, F-Prime Capital Partners Healthcare Fund III, managed by financial services group Fidelity, and funds advised by Gilde Healthcare Partners to subscribe to a total of approximately 3.17 million shares for €11.4m in the offering.
Lundbeckfonden held a 27.4% stake ahead of the offering which has been diluted to 23.1%, while Novo’s 16.4% stake has been reduced to 14.1%. Gilde remains the largest external shareholder, with 31.4% (down from 37.8%), while F-Prime’s stake has dropped from 11.2% to 9.3%.
Acacia had secured approximately $53.6m in total capital ahead of the offering, most recently closing a $23.5m series B round in 2013 co-led by Novo and F-Prime Capital Partners that also featured Lundbeckfonden Ventures and Gilde Healthcare.
The latter two had already supplied $10m in series A funding for Acacia in 2011, after Gilde had provided an undisclosed sum in 2008.
Bank Degroof Petercam and RBC Europe Limited were joint global coordinators and joint bookrunners for the offering, and Bank Degroof Petercam was also stabilisation manager. The underwriters have been granted an over-allotment option of approximately 1.1 million shares, worth €4m.