Underwriters boost Pluristem offering to $41m

CEO Zami Aberman: We were very lucky to close the offering last week, before the uprising in Egypt.

Pluristem Therapeutics Ltd. (Nasdaq:PSTI; TASE: PLTR; DAX: PJT) signed an underwriters agreement with Oppenheimer & Co. Inc. and Needham & Company LLC to buy 4.4 million shares in the company's secondary offering of 11 million shares. The agreement boosts the gross proceeds of the offering to $41 million from $35.8 million.

Pluristem chairman and CEO Zami Aberman said, "We were very lucky to close the offering last week, before the uprising in Egypt. If we had waited even one day, it wouldn’t have happened."

Aberman added, "We've been asked if we'll use the proceeds to acquire companies or other stem cell capabilities. I'm a strong believer in synergy, but regrettably there are no suitable companies around. In the stem cells field, our method is unique, and we believe it has an advantage over the current techniques that we're aware of. We nevertheless constantly meet other companies to review collaboration."

Pluristem will offer units of shares and warrants at $3.25 per unit, each comprising one share and one warrant for the purchase of 0.4 shares. The unit price was well below the company's share price of $4.20 on the day the offering was announced. The share price subsequently fell to $3.12 by Friday, giving a market cap of $82 million.

The warrants are exercisable at $4.20 per share beginning six months from the issue day for a period of five years.

In a statement to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Pluristem said that it expects to close the offering by February 1, and that it expects $33.16 million in net proceeds.

Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on January 30, 2011

© Copyright of Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd. 2011

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