Israeli cellular and immune therapeutics company Gamida Cell (GMDA) completed its IPO on Nasdaq on Thursday. The company set out to raise $50-60 million at a valuation of $275 million before the money. In the event, it raised $50 million, but at a lower valuation - $165 million before the money. The company offered an upsized 6.25 million shares, 75% more shares than expected, at $8, below the range of $13 to $15. Novartis, which owned 21% of Gamida Cell before the offering, invested $7.5 million in it, and now owns 15% of the company. Len Blavatnik's Access fund invested $30 million of the $50 million raised.
Gamida Cell granted the underwriters a 30-day option to purchase up to 937,500 additional ordinary shares.
BMO Capital Markets and RBC Capital Markets acted as lead managers on the deal. Needham & Company and Oppenheimer & Co. acted co-lead managers.
Novartis, which in the past sought to acquire Gamida Cell but withdrew, has taken care to boost its holding, probably in order to maintain the possibility of a future acquisition.
Gamida Cell is a clinical stage biopharmaceutical company leveraging its proprietary technology to develop cell therapies that are designed to cure cancer and rare, serious hematologic diseases. Gamida Cell leverages its nicotinamide-, or NAM-, based cell expansion technology to develop a pipeline of products designed to address the limitations of cell therapies. Gamida Cell's most advanced product candidate, NiCord, is a NAM-expanded cord blood cell therapy which has the potential to serve as a universal curative stem cell graft for patients who need a hematopoietic stem cell transplant, or HSCT.
Gamida Cell is currently enrolling patients in a Phase III clinical trial in 120 patients with various hematologic malignancies, including high risk leukemias such as acute myeloid leukemia, or AML, acute lymphocytic leukemia, or ALL, chronic myeloid leukemia, or CML, myelodysplastic syndrome, or MDS and lymphomas.
Before the IPO, Gamida Cell had raised over $130 million including $40 million in June 2017 at a company value of $160 million. Gamida Cell's CEO is Julian Adams.
Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on October 28, 2018
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