Investors in NasVax Ltd. (TASE: NSVX) can breathe a sigh of relief. The drug development company has avoided its own small fiscal cliff, after raising NIS 4 million, just a few days after announcing that it would have to freeze operations if it could not raise capital.
The investment was made at a company value of NIS 5 million, after money, a 20% discount on the company's market cap at the opening on Thursday. The share price rose 7.9% yesterday. Three men made the investment: Dr. David Naveh, who has held positions at Bayer AG and Schering Plough; Avi Meizler, who has an extensive pharmaceutical import and distribution business in South America; and serial entrepreneur Asher Shmulevich, a cardiologist and physicist, who has founded several companies, including Labcoat Ltd., which was sold to Boston Scientific Corporation (NYSE: BSX) for $100 million.
The new investors intend to apply NasVax's leading anti-inflammatory drug for the treatment of orphan disease primary sclerosing cholangitis (PSC), a cause of fatty liver disease, to other liver diseases. Naveh says that the cost of development up to commercialization of the product with a big pharma company could reach $10 million. "It is premature to say where the additional money will come from," he says.
Investment bank Ethos Capital initiated and advised on the deal.
How did Naveh get to know NasVax? "When my daughter married, I invited many guests from foreign pharma companies, and I decided to take the opportunity to hold a kind of small investors' conference," he says. "12 Israeli pharmaceutical companies made presentations to me and my guests. We carried out due diligence on 6-7 of them, and NasVax stood out."
Meizler, Naveh, and Shmulevich have begun operating as an investor group, and are now seeking more investments in Israel, including in private companies. "We believe that Israel's medical devices industry is waning, and that pharmaceuticals is waxing," says Naveh.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on January 7, 2013
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