Telecommunications group SoftBank’s Vision Fund will get the chance to exit US-based infectious disease therapy developer Vir Biotechnology after the latter filed for a $100m initial public offering on Tuesday.
Vir is working on treatments for infectious diseases, having created four drug development platforms covering T cells, antibodies, innate immunity and small interfering ribonucleic acid (RNA) respectively.
The IPO proceeds will support ongoing phase 1/2 clinical trials for a prospective hepatitis B virus (HBV) treatment known as VIR-2218 and an influenza-focused candidate called VIR-2482, as well as a phase 1 treatment for a second HBV drug, VIR-3434. Vir is also developing drugs to combat HIV and tuberculosis.
The company said it had raised a total of $500m as of late 2017, but the IPO filing indicates it has since added $14.5m of extra series A-1 funding through July 2018 and $328m of series B financing in January 2019.
The series A-1 round totalled $282m according to the filing, with Vision Fund investing $70m and venture capital firms Arch Ventures Partners $110m and Alta Partners $7.5m, in addition to $35m from an investment group headed by Vir chief executive George Scangos.
Vision Fund provided a further $110m for the series B round alongside $50m from Arch Venture Partners and $5m from Alta Partners.
Vir’s largest investor is Arch Venture Partners, which owns a 27% stake, followed by Vision Fund (21.2%), the Scangos-led investor group (8.5%) and Alta Partners (2%).
The company intends to list on the Nasdaq Global Select Market and has appointed Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Securities, Cowen and Company and Barclays Capital as underwriters for the offering.
