Drug development company BioLineRx Ltd. (Nasdaq: BLRX); TASE:BLRX) has raised $25 million on Nasdaq. The offering was at $2 per American Depository Share (ADS - a security that tracks a company traded on a foreign stock exchange), compared with $2.81 per ADS on the morning of the announcement, in other words at a 29% discount. The price of the ADS fell to $2.12 following the offering, reflecting a $72.3 million market cap.
The BioLineRx share was down 14% in Tel Aviv Stock Exchange (TASE) trading, as of web posting. The offering follows a 123% surge in the share over three months, due mainly to an announcement of a $10 million investment in the company by pharmaceutical giant Novartis as part of a joint project by the two companies for discovering new drugs.
BioLineRx has other interesting clinical and business developments: positive interim results of its trial of a blood cancer drug, a licensing deal for a product for removal of skin lesions, and completion of patient recruitment for a multi-center trial of a product for reducing heart attack damage that has already been licensed to a partner company, which is likely to provide income from royalties for BioLineRx if the product is approved and marketed.
Of all the biomedical companies dual-listed for trading in the US through ADS in recent years, BioLineRx, managed by CEO Kinneret Savitsky, is the one that has so far taken advantage of the opportunities for raising capital offered by this extremely fruitful instrument. Since its ADS was listed in 2012, the company has raised $72 million, not including the investment by Novartis. Following the current round, BioLineRx has $60 million in cash.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on March 8, 2015
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