Canada-based biopharmaceutical company Zymeworks has raised $58.5m in an initial public offering that gave exits to pharmaceutical firms Celgene, Eli Lilly and EMS.
The company issued 4.5 million shares on the New York Stock Exchange priced at $13.00 each, at the low end of the $13 to $16 range it had previously set, and is seeking approval to list additional shares on the Toronto Stock Exchange in Canada.
Some of the company’s existing investors, including Eli Lilly and Celgene, bought a total of $39.2m of shares in the offering. Celgene and Eli Lilly both initially invested in Zymeworks as part of licensing and collaboration deals.
Zymeworks is developing biotherapeutics to treat cancer, and will invest between $20m and $30m of the IPO proceeds to advance its lead drug candidate, a bispecific antibody called ZW25, through phase 1 clinical trials.
A second candidate, ZW33, will be supported through phase 1 trials with $5m of the proceeds, while $7.8m will be used to repay interest on a loan and up to $12m will go to developing additional product candidates.
Zymeworks had raised upwards of $134m in funding, $61.5m of which came in a January 2016 round backed by Eli Lilly, Celgene and EMS, the latter investing through its Brace Pharma Capital fund.
BDC Capital and Lumira Capital co-led the round, which included CTI Life Sciences Fund, Fonds de solidarité FTQ, Perceptive Advisors, Teralys Capital, Northleaf Venture Catalyst Fund and Merlin Nexus.
Eli Lilly bought more than $3.7m of shares and remains the company’s largest shareholder, though its stake was cut from 17.6% to 15.9%. Celgene invested $3.5m in the offering to maintain its 6.2% share.
EMS holds a share of the Zymeworks sized at less than 5% but the company’s other notable investors include CTI Life Sciences Fund, which bought $1m of shares, and which had its stake cut from 14.4% to 12.1%.
Citigroup Global Markets Canada, Barclays Capital and Wells Fargo Securities are joint book-running managers for the IPO, while Canaccord Genuity is lead manager, Cormark Securities co-manager and MTS Securities financial advisor to Zymeworks.
The underwriters have a 30-day option to buy another 675,000 shares, which would boost the size of the offering to approximately $67.3m.