Edgewise Therapeutics, a US-based musculoskeletal disease therapy developer backed by pharmaceutical firm Novo, went public on Friday in a $176m initial public offering on the Nasdaq Global Market.
The company increased the number of shares in the offering from 10 million to 11 million and priced them at the top of the IPO’s $14 to $16 range. That price almost doubled to $30.00 at close on Friday to give it a market capitalisation of nearly $1.43bn.
Founded in 2017, Edgewise is working on small molecule therapeutics for a class of severe hereditary musculoskeletal diseases known as dystrophinopathies. Its lead drug candidate, EDG-5506, is being developed to treat Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) and Becker muscular dystrophy (BMD).
Approximately $80m of the IPO proceeds will support the completion of a phase 1 clinical trial for EDG-5506 in BMD and a phase 2/3 clinical trial for DMD. Another $55m will go to research and development for other early-stage programmes.
Healthcare investment firm OrbiMed provided $10m in series A funding for the company in 2018, according to the IPO filing. Novo co-led its $50m series B round with US Venture Partners (USVP) the following year, investing with OrbiMed, Deerfield Management, New Leaf Venture Partners and CureDuchenne Ventures.
All the series A investors returned for a $95m series C round in December 2020 that was led by Viking Global Investors and also backed by Janus Henderson Investors, Surveyor Capital, RA Capital Management, Cormorant Asset Management, Logos Capital and Wellington Management.
Novo’s 13.6% stake in Edgewise was diluted to 10.4% in the offering. Its largest shareholders are OrbiMed (28% post-IPO), USVP (7.3%), Deerfield (7%) and Viking Global (5.7%).
JP Morgan Securities, Goldman Sachs and SVB Leerink are joint book-running managers for the offering while Wedbush Securities is co-manager. They have the 30-day option to buy up to 1.65 million more shares, hypothetically lifting its size to about $200m.
