Carmat artificial heart funding guaranteed up to European market launch

CARMAT, designer and developer of the world's most advanced total artificial heart, announces the success of its capital increase with preferential subscription rights (PSRs) for existing shareholders which took place between 13 July and 29 July 2011.

This rights issue, managed by DEXIA SECURITIES FRANCE and BNP PARIBAS Joint Lead Managers and Bookrunners and by PORTZAMPARC as Co-Lead Manager, saw total demand for 306,488 shares (compared to a total of 240,617 offered before the triggering of the extension clause), representing over-subscription of 27.4%, or total demand of €32.5m.

Given this achievement, CARMAT's Board of Directors decided to exercise the extension clause in full, bringing the total number of shares issued to 276,709 and the total raised to €29.3m.

The exercise of irreducible preferential subscription rights covered 228,322 new shares, or 82.5% of the new shares to be issued after exercising the extension clause. Subscriptions for 78,166 shares on a reducible basis were received and will therefore be only partially satisfied by the issue of 48,387 new shares.

The rights issue was underwritten for a total of €10.5m by Truffle Capital. Given the success of the rights issue, it was not necessary to call on this commitment. The incumbent shareholders - Truffle Capital, EADS and Marie Lannelongue surgical centre - subscribed €3.5m to the capital increase.

The proceeds of this rights issue will be used to finance the conduct of clinical trials in France and in Europe, the industrialisation of the CARMAT artificial heart project, up to its launch on the European market, as well as the accelerated development of its portable external system components (batteries, connectivity, monitoring unit, etc.), with a view to having them on the market in 2013.

Thanks to the success of this rights issue, CARMAT is now one of the best capitalised European companies in the medical devices sector and can plan its strategic and industrial development with confidence.

Marcello Conviti, CEO of CARMAT, comments: "We are extremely pleased with the success of this rights issue, which reflects the strong support for our project from the financial community, in spite of very difficult market conditions, and the expectations which the CARMAT project addresses. The funds raised will allow us to finance the development of our total artificial heart and its external elements through to approval for sale in Europe, and in particular will help fund initial clinical trials in man, which are expected to begin at the end of 2011, after approval from the regulatory authorities. We would like to thank all of our core shareholders and the thousands of individual shareholders for their commitment, their confidence, their loyalty and their support, which allowed this rights issue to be such a success and will allow us to make rapid and concrete progress on our unique project."

Issuance, settlement and delivery, and commencement of trading in new shares on NYSE-Alternext Paris took place on 10 August 2011. From 10 August 2011, the total number of shares constituting CARMAT's capital has been increased to 4,126,595.