Oric Pharmaceuticals, a US-based cancer therapy developer backed by corporate investors Taiho, Hartford HealthCare and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, went public on Friday in a $120m initial public offering.
The IPO consisted of 7.5 million shares priced at the top of its $14 to $16 range. Oric had initially sought to issue 5 million shares in the offering and had increased the number to 6.3 million last week.
The company’s shares opened at $26.00 each on the Nasdaq Global Select Market on Friday and closed at $25.77m, giving it a market capitalisation of about $740m.
Founded in 2014, Oric is working on oncology drugs designed to combat the body’s resistance to existing forms of cancer treatment.
The company has earmarked $55m of the IPO proceeds for the advancement of its lead drug candidate, a small molecule antagonist called ORIC-101 which is in phase 1b clinical trials in combination with existing medicines for prostate cancer and solid tumours.
Another $15m will support the development of a second candidate, ORIC-533, a small molecule inhibitor intended to reduce resistance to chemotherapy and immunotherapy-based cancer treatments. The offering will come after more than $175m in venture funding.
Oric most recently raised $55.7m in an August series D round featuring cancer researcher Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, Taiho Ventures and Hartford HealthCare Endowment, vehicles for pharmaceutical firm Taiho and health system Hartford HealthCare respectively.
The round was co-led by Arrowmark Partners and Invus Opportunities and also featured investment and financial services group Fidelity, Casdin Capital, TopSpin Partners, OrbiMed, EcoR1 Capital, The Column Group (TCG), City Hill Ventures, Kravis Investment Partners and Foresite Capital.
Taiho Ventures, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, Fidelity, Trinitas Capital, NS Investment and existing investors TCG, Topspin Partners, OrbiMed, EcoR1 Capital, Kravis Investment Partners and Foresite Capital had previously supplied $50m in series C funding for the company in early 2018.
None of Oric’s corporate backers held stakes greater than 5% in size pre-IPO. Its largest investor, TCG, owned a 22.4% stake that was diluted to 16.6%, and its other notable shareholders are TopSpin (11.5% post-IPO), OrbiMed (8.6%) and EcoR1 (4.3%).
Joint book-running managers JP Morgan, Citigroup, Jefferies and Guggenheim Securities have the 30-day option to buy just over 1.1 million additional shares which would lift the size of the offering to $138m.
