VetMedUni biopharmaceutical spinout Marinomed Biotech has completed its IPO to attain a market cap of $109m.
Marinomed Biotech, an Austria-based biopharmaceutical spinout of University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna (VetMedUni), has completed its initial public offering (IPO) on the Vienna Stock Exchange at a market capitalisation of €95.1m ($109m), MondoVisione reported on Friday.
Shares were priced at $86.40 each, slightly higher than the $85.80 target, which had been expected to raise $25.6m for Marionmed Biotech based on the sale of 299,000 shares. Marinomed’s stock price had risen to approximately $87 per share at the time of writing.
The move was originally announced in November 2018 as a 400,000-share placement targeting $34m to $41m but Marinomed later decided to pause the process in light of global market volatility.
Founded in 2006, Marinomed Biotech designs pharmaceutical drugs for respiratory diseases and allergic conditions based on information from its two drug creation platforms, Carragelose and Marinosolv.
The spinout has already commercialised six medications for viral infections of the respiratory tract by using Carragelose, which is powered by a red seaweed that Marinomed claims can tackle 200 subtypes of virus.
Proceeds from the IPO have been earmarked for clinical studies on drugs resulting from Marinosolv, which targets complications in sensitive tissues including allergic reactions in the eyes, nose and lungs.
Marinomed plans to conduct a phase 3 study on Budesolv, a nasal-administered form of existing medication Budesonide for hayfever, as well as phase 2 and 3 trials of an immunosuppressant called Tacrosolv. The money will also fund upgrades on the Carragelose platform.
The IPO comes on the heels of the spinout agreeing to a strategic partnership with drug producer Link Health in January 2018, consisting of a $3.4m in upfront payment and potential milestone fees in the low eight-digit dollar range for each product commercialised under the collaboration.
Marinomed Biotech has also secured $17m through a research and development brief with the EU-owned European Investment Bank, though details of the project have not been disclosed.
VetMedUni’s commercialisation arm, VetWidi Forschungsholding, owned a 3.7% share in Marinomed Biotech before the IPO. The spinout’s largest shareholder was investment firm Acropora with 33.3% interest, while Hermann Unger, head of VetMedUni’s Laboratory of Tropical Veterinary Medicine, held a 13% stake and Marinomed co-founders Andreas Grassauer and Eva Prieschl-Grassauer each held 12.8%.
Other shareholders in the company included Invest AG, the investment arm of financial services firm Raiffeisenbankengruppe Oberösterreich, (10.3%) and state-owned development bank Austria Wirtschaftsservice (10%).