IPO
Santhera Pharmaceuticals has completed its IPO and listing on the Swiss Exchange, raising CHF 98.4 million (€61.7 million) at CHF 90 per share, the lower end of the indicative price range of CHF 85 to 100 per share.
The company, based in Liestal, Switzerland, sold all of the 983,859 new shares on offer, and said the IPO attracted a good geographic spread of institutional investors from the UK and elsewhere in Europe, as well as qualified institutional buyers in the US.
The money will be used for the company’s four ongoing clinical development programmes, to start new clinical programmes and to build a US sales and marketing capability.
Santhera was formed in September 2004 by the all-paper merger of Graffinity Pharmaceuticals AG of Heidelberg, Germany and MyoContract AG, based in Leistal.
The ordinary share capital of Santhera now consists of 2,951,577 shares corresponding to a market capitalisation at the offer price of approximately CHF 265.6 million. The new shares constitute 33.3 per cent of the total equity.
Of Santhera’s four clinical-stage development programs, three are investigating its lead compound, SNT-MC17, in the treatment of Friedreich’s ataxia, Duchenne muscular dystrophy and Leber’s hereditary optic neuropathy. The fourth clinical programme is developing JP-1730 for the treatment of dyskinesia in Parkinson’s disease
The most advanced programme, SNT-MC17 in FRDA, has entered pivotal Phase III clinical development; the others are in Phase II.
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