San Diego’s Ambit Biosciences cut the share price of its planned IPO by nearly half yesterday, but still managed to raise about $65 million by increasing the number of shares in its debut offering. Shares of the biopharmaceutical company began trading this morning on the Nasdaq under the symbol AMBI.
The company, with a lead drug candidate under development for treating acute myeloid leukemia (AML), adjusted its IPO to offer 8.1 million shares at $8 a share, according to an amended IPO filing yesterday. Ambit had planned to offer 4.6 million shares at a price between $13 and $15 per share, according to previous filings.
The company granted underwriters a 30-day option to purchase up to 1.2 million additional shares to cover any over-allotments. Ambit also had plans to raise an additional $25 million from a concurrent private placement.
Ambit was founded in 2000, and has focused on discovering and developing molecules that block the cellular pathway for certain kinases—enzymes that activate cellular functions. Some kinases have been identified as key drivers of cancer, autoimmune, and inflammatory diseases. Ambit’s lead drug candidate, quizartinib (AC220), is a once-daily, orally-administered, potent and selective inhibitor of FMS-like tyrosine kinase-3 (FLT3) and is under clinical development for patients with an aggressive form of AML.
Author: Bruce V. Bigelow
In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here.
Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University.
Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.
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