Cellectis, a France-based gene editing technology developer backed by pharmaceutical company Pfizer, priced its initial public offering yesterday and will make more than $228m when it goes public.
The company will issue 5.5 million shares on Nasdaq priced at $41.50 each. The underwriters have a 30-day option to buy a further 825,000 shares, which would raise the proceeds from the IPO to $262.5m.
The pricing and number of shares is a sizeable jump for Cellectis, which set an initial target of $115m in late February before announcing last week it planned to issue 3.5 million shares priced similarly to its share price on the Alternext market, which then stood at about $36.80.
Cellectis will use $64m of the proceeds to advance four of its immune-oncology drug candidates through Phase 1 clinical trials, and to begin Phase 2 trials for one of them.
Additional money will go to research and development of the company’s manufacturing processes and cell engineering technologies, as well as therapeutics outside its central area of oncology, and its agricultural technology business.
Pfizer is Cellectis’ second largest shareholder, owning a 9.5% stake that will be diluted to 8.15%. BPIfrance’s share will be cut from 10.35% to 8.9%.
BofA Merrill Lynch, Jefferies and Piper Jaffray are serving as joint book-running managers for the IPO, while Oppenheimer and Trout Capital are the co-managers. Founded in 1999, Cellectis originally floated on the Alternext market in Paris in 2007.