Santhera Pharmaceuticals announces IPO, listing on the Swiss Exchange.

IPO


Santhera has announced plans to raise CHF 83.6 million to CHF 98.4 million (€56.6 million to €61.7 million) through an offering of up to 983,859 new shares. In Switzerland, the shares will be sold through a public offering and outside Switzerland to institutional investors including qualified institutional buyers in the United States via a private placement.

The company is expected to have a market capitalisation of around CHF 250.9 million to CHF 295.2 million on completing the deal.

After the IPO, Santhera Pharmaceuticals Holding AG will have an issued and outstanding share capital of up to 2,951,577. Deutsche Bank is global co-ordinator and lead manager for the offering, and Piper Jaffray Inc, WestLB and Zurcher Kantonalbank are members of the syndicate.

Commenting, Klaus Schollmeier, Chief Executive Officer said, “Santhera has made considerable progress in developing its late-stage clinical pipeline over the last twelve months. We currently have four clinical programs targeting indications of high unmet medical need where at present no or only limited treatment options exist.”

These indications all represent important commercial opportunities, he said. “With the funding from the IPO we are confident that we can build our own US sales and marketing infrastructure and bring our compounds to market and capture their significant sales potential.”

The announcement of the IPO comes less than a month after Santhera, a specialist in neuromuscular diseases raised €10 million with an option to call in a further €5 million, in an oversubscribed private round.

That funding was led by NGN Capital, one of Santhera’s largest current shareholders. New investors included NeoMed Management, Jersey, two equity funds managed by Schroder Investment Management, Luxembourg and BioMedinvest, Switzerland. Existing investors Carnegie Asset Management, GIMV, Dow Chemical, Clariden Biotechnology Fund, 3i plc supported the round.

Santhera currently has two compounds in four indications in mid- to late-stage clinical development and has entered three major partnerships since July 2005. The company plans to use the proceeds to further fund the clinical development programs of its lead compound SNT-MC17/idebenone, which is in Phase III for treating  Friedreich’s ataxia, with an  expected market launch of 2008. The compound is also being tested in Duchenne muscular dystrophy and Leber’s hereditary optic neuropathy, a rare degenerative disorder that affects nerve cells in the retina and optic nerve, leading to rapid loss of central vision and blindness.

Santhera, of Leistal, Switzerland, was formed in September 2004 by the Swiss–German merger of MyoContact AG and Graffinity Pharmaceuticals GmbH. In January 2006 it span Graffinity back out in a management buyout of its drug discovery unit.