San Diego’s Ambrx Withdraws IPO, Citing Market Conditions

Ambrx logo

Ambrx, a San Diego biotech developing antibody-drug conjugates to treat solid tumors and other diseases, said today it is withdrawing its planned IPO because of current market conditions. The company had planned to raise as much as $86 million in an IPO, according to a confidential filing that was made public in early May.

Ambrx notified the Securities and Exchange Commission of its planned withdrawal in a June 30 letter from the company’s vice president of finance. The 11-year-old biotech has raised more than $106 million from venture investors that include Tavistock BIO, Maverick Capital, Apposite Healthcare Fund, Versant Ventures, 5AM Ventures, Roche, and Merck.

In its IPO filing, Ambrx said it also has raised more than $200 million in non-dilutive funding by collaborating on particular drug development programs with Bristol-Myers Squibb, Merck, Eli Lilly, Zhejiang Medicine, and other strategic pharmaceutical partners.

Ambrx uses recombinant DNA-based protein biosynthesis to insert non-native amino acids at precisely selected sites in native proteins as they are being made within the cells. The company’s new drug pipeline includes a number of anti-cancer compounds, as well as long-acting proteins for growth hormone deficiency, weight management, and other disorders.

Ambrx is one of 21 U.S. companies that have withdrawn their IPOs, according to data available at Renaissance Capital, a Connecticut IPO investment firm that has counted 219 IPO filings so far this year. As of today, Renaissance said it has counted 146 IPOs this year (almost 59 percent more than the 92 IPOs during the first half of 2013) that have raised over $31.4 billion (more than 52 percent than the $20.6 billion raised at this time last year).

 

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.