Acucela founder and CEO Ryo Kubota is a native of Japan, and now he’s got a lot more investors supporting his work there.
Seattle-based Acucela is selling 9.2 million shares of stock at $17.65 apiece in an initial public offering on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, according to a regulatory filing. The deal is bringing in $162.4 million in total proceeds, and about $148.6 million will go to the company after underwriting discounts and commissions. Mitsubishi UFJ Morgan Stanley Securities is underwriting the offering.
The IPO ended up being even more lucrative than Acucela first imagined, as it sketched out plans for a $125 million offering back in December. Acucela, as I wrote in December, sought the additional capital to advance its pipeline of experimental drugs for eye diseases.
