The recession will surely kill off some biotech companies that lack hard cash and the hard data that shows their experimental drugs can improve patients’ lives. But after I heard Seattle Genetics CEO Clay Siegall tell the story of how his company raised $55.8 million last week, I had to conclude it’s still possible to raise money in biotech as long as you have a drug that represents a big advance against a deadly disease.
Seattle Genetics (NASDAQ: [[ticker:SGEN]]) pulled off this small miracle on Jan. 27. How unusual is it for a money-losing development-stage biotech company to sell 5.74 million shares to raise $55.8 million? It was the first underwritten stock offering in the biotech industry since Aug. 7, according to data from Deloitte Recap. (Although Portland, OR-based AVI Biopharma was able to raise $16.5 million a couple days later as well.)
Siegall gave me this account of how the improbable deal went down. Seattle Genetics was in a strong position after having released stellar clinical trial results for SGN-35, the “empowered antibody” it is developing against Hodgkin’s disease and related lymphomas. It had just agreed with the FDA on the final-stage clinical trial design, which provides a clear path so Seattle Genetics bring it to the market in 2012. But the company was bound to burn significant cash over the next three years, and it was sitting on a thinning stockpile of only about 20 to 22 months of cash reserves, Siegall said.
Siegall, who had just gone through a marathon of 50 meetings during the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference in San Francisco, sensed there was demand for his company’s shares. He also felt a secondary offering wouldn’t flood the market and drive down the price. So without even bothering to go on a traditional road show, UBS Investment Bank “made a very reasonable offer” Siegall says, to buy all the shares in a single block purchase, at 4:01 pm Eastern time on Jan. 27. The deal was struck. After about two hours of putting UBS traders to work on the phones, they made a slight profit for their firm by selling all of the shares at a 7 percent discount to the $10.46 market closing price that day. The press release announcing the deal crossed the wire the next morning.
“I was thrilled,” Siegall says.
Seattle Genetics could still pocket another $11.5 million by May if shareholders approve a related transaction that allows Baker Brothers Life Sciences, one of the company’s largest shareholders, to buy another 1.18 million shares at the same price.
The company plans to discuss its fourth-quarter financial report after markets close today, and it will provide guidance to investors on how this financing changes its outlook, Siegall says. But essentially, it adds another eight months of cash to its bank account, assuming shareholders approve the Baker Brothers deal.
But what’s even more interesting is what has happened to Seattle Genetics’ stock since this deal was done. Since secondary offerings increase the supply of available shares, they usually dilute the value of existing ones, and depress the price. Instead, Seattle Genetics stock has actually climbed
