San Diego’s Celladon Postpones IPO, Cites “Poor Market Conditions”

Maybe that IPO wasn’t such a good idea after all.

San Diego’s Celladon, on the fast track to advance clinical development of its first-in-class gene therapy for patients with systolic heart failure, postponed its IPO Wednesday, according to Renaissance Capital, an institutional research firm that specializes in IPOs.

The company cited poor market conditions.

Celladon set the terms for its IPO in a Nov. 1 filing that set a price range of $14 to $16 per share. The initial stock offering of 5 million shares was intended to raise about $75 million.

The company’s decision to postpone its offering came on the same day that Tandem Diabetes Care, a San Diego medical device company, completed a bigger-than-expected IPO at the top of its price range. Life sciences companies represent the biggest segment of IPOs this year, which have been happening at a near-record pace. Tandem Diabetes was San Diego’s seventh life sciences company to go public this year.

On the other hand, Palo Alto, CA-based CardioDx, which sells a diagnostic test for coronary artery disease, also postponed its planned IPO, according to Renaissance Capital. CardioDx also cited poor market conditions. Redwood City, CA-based Relypsa, which is developing a treatment for hyperkalemia, reduced the terms of its IPO, which was planned for today.

Celladon initially filed confidentially for its IPO in early September. J.P. Morgan and Barclays were set to be the joint bookrunners on the deal.

 

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.