AbCellera Biologics Inc., which is developing an antibody treatment for Covid-19 with Eli Lilly & Co., tripled at the opening of trading after its initial public offering.
Shares of the Vancouver-based company opened at $61 after being priced at $20 in the offering. The offering raised $483 million before commissions and expenses, making it the biggest Canadian pharmaceuticals IPO on record and the second-largest Canadian initial offering announced this year, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
AbCellera is riding a wave of interest in companies whose products may be used to combat the pandemic. The firm is co-developing a monoclonal antibody treatment that U.S. regulators authorized last month as a therapy for people with mild-to-moderate Covid-19 symptoms.
Lilly anticipates manufacturing 1 million doses of the treatment, known as bamlanivimab, before the end of the year and has reached a deal with the U.S. government for 300,000 doses. AbCellera is entitled to receive a specified percentage of proceeds that Lilly receives from these sales.
The firm attracted the attention of Peter Thiel, the billionaire venture capitalist who co-founded PayPal Holdings Inc. and is now chairman of Palantir Technologies Inc. and a Facebook Inc. board member. Thiel was named to AbCellera’s board last month and acquired a small stake earlier in the year, according to people with knowledge of the matter.
In its first day of trading on Friday, the shares rose as high as $71.91. They were at $53.51 as of 12:55 p.m. in New York, giving the company a market value of about $14.1 billion.
AbCellera uses what it calls “lab-on-a-chip” technology to help biopharmaceutical companies identify new drug candidates. Using a blood sample from one of the first patients in the U.S. to recover from Covid-19, AbCellera screened more than 500 antibodies before zeroing in on one that Lilly used to develop the treatment in less than three months.
AbCellera has a portfolio with hundreds of programs and posted net income of $1.9 million on revenue of $25 million in the nine months ended Sept. 30, according to its IPO filing.
AbCellera had initially sought to sell 23 million shares at $14 to $17 apiece, but later boosted the price range to $17 to $18 before ultimately offering 24.2 million shares at $20 each.
The offering was led by Credit Suisse Group AG, Stifel, Berenberg, SVB Leerink, BMO Capital Markets.
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.
