Icosavax, a US-based vaccine developer backed by pharmaceutical firm Sanofi, floated in a $182m initial public offering on Thursday on the Nasdaq Global Select Market.
The company issued some 12 million shares having priced them in the middle of the IPO’s $14 to $16 range. They opened at $29 each before closing at $35, representing a 133% increase.
Spun out of University of Washington’s Institute for Protein Design, Icosavax is developing vaccines for respiratory illnesses using virus-like particles. Its candidates include IVX-A12 and IVX-411, which respectively work against human respiratory syncytial virus and Sars-CoV-2.
The company has secured more than $150m in funding since it was founded in 2017.
Icosavax most recently completed a $100m series B round in April this year led by RA Capital Management that included Janus Henderson Investors, Perceptive Advisors, Viking Global Investors, Cormorant Asset Management, Omega Funds, Open Philanthropy and Surveyor Capital.
The series B investors were filled out by participants in a $51m series A round closed in 2019 – Sanofi subsidiary Sanofi Ventures, Qiming Venture Partners USA, Adams Street Partners and ND Capital (previously called NanoDimension).
The father of Icosavax chief scientific officer Douglas Holtzman had bought series 1 convertible stock in 2018 that was converted to series A shares the year after.
After the offering, Qiming US Healthcare Fund II remains the largest shareholder in Icosavax with an 8.8% stake, followed by Adams Street Partners (8.7%), RA Capital Management (8.3%), Sanofi-owned Aventis (8.2%) and ND Capital’s NanoDimension III unit (7.3%).
Bookrunners Jefferies, Cowen and Company, Evercore Group and William Blair and Company have a 30-day option to buy about 1.8 million more shares, potentially lifting the IPO to nearly $195m.
