Apparently not everyone is having success pitching a biotech IPO to investors these days.
Basking Ridge, NJ-based Regado Biosciences, the startup developing a two-pronged anticoagulant to be used in coronary procedures, is slashing the price of its IPO considerably. Regado initially aimed to raise $75 million by offering investors 5 million shares at between $14 and $16 apiece. But Regado didn’t find enough people willing to pay that price. According to documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission late Monday, Regado now expects to price its shares at just $5 apiece, and plans to sell about 8.4 million of them, for a raise of about $42 million.
Regado wants financial help from investors bankrolling a big, late-stage clinical trial for a drug candidate known as REG-1 that it is running without the help of a deep-pocketed pharmaceutical company. The drug combines an RNA aptamer—a string of RNA letters that bind to specific molecules—known as anivamersen with an antithrombotic called pegnivacogin, a drug that prevents or dissolves blood clots. Regado says that its drug should enable doctors performing coronary procedures the ability to precisely control, in real time, how effective it is. That should make a procedure such as an angioplasty safer to carry out because an interventional cardiologist can increase or decrease the dose to best fit the situation.
Regado has raised $132 million through five rounds of financing since 2007. Its largest shareholder is former Minnesota state senator and Fastenal founder Robert Kierlin, who holds a 26.6 percent stake. He is followed by Domain Associates (19.3 percent), Rusnano (14.2 percent), Quaker Bioventures (12.7 percent), and Edmond de Rothschild Investment Partners (12.4 percent).
