Guardant Health, a U.S. oncology company that focuses in cancer detection through blood tests, is hoping to raise $200 million by selling 12,500,000 shares of its common stock at a price range of $15.00 to $17.00. At the midpoint of the proposed price range, the company would command an enterprise value of $944 million and a fully diluted market value of $1.4 billion.
According to its prospectus with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the company plans to list its shares on Wednesday, October 3, 2018, on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the “GH” ticker symbol. BofA Merrill Lynch and JP Morgan are the lead underwriters for the offering, while Williams Blair, Cowen and Leerink Partners are the co-managers.
The company said in its prospectus, “The principal purposes of this offering are to obtain additional capital to support our operations, to create a public market for our common stock and to facilitate our potential future access to the public equity markets. As of the date of this prospectus, we have no specific plan for the net proceeds from this offering, or any significant portion thereof.”
The company offers genomic cancer testing services that match patients with the right treatments. It is also using its tests to find the causes of cancer recurrences and detect the disease in its early stages.
Guardant Health was founded seven years ago and posted revenues of $67 million for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2018. The company recorded sales of $36.1 million in the first half of this year and sales of $49.8 million for the previous year. In the first half of this year, it had a net loss of $35.5 million and a net loss of $83.2 million in fiscal 2017, according to its filing with the SEC.
According to Crunchbase, Guardant has the backing of SoftBank, Sequoia Capital, Lightspeed Venture Partners, OrbiMed, Khosla Ventures, Khosla Ventures, T. Rowe Price, and Temasek Holdings, among others. It is led by a team of successful serial entrepreneurs and thought leaders in rare-cell diagnostics and next-generation sequencing.
The company enjoys the advice of an oncologist-led medical steering committee from top cancer centers in North America and other countries around the world. Guardant Health lists the following companies as its major competitors: Pathway Genomics Corporation, Genomic Health, Foundation Medicine, Inc. and Exosome Diagnostics, Inc.
Guardant Health Company Profile
Guardant Health, Inc., a precision oncology company, provides non-invasive cancer diagnostics. It offers liquid biopsy tests for advanced stage cancer, such as Guardant360, a molecular diagnostic test that measures various cancer-related genes from circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA); and GuardantOMNI, a broader panel measuring various genes from ctDNA.
The company also provides LUNAR-1 for recurrence detection in cancer survivors; and LUNAR-2 for early detection of cancer in higher risk individuals. Guardant Health, Inc. was incorporated in 2011 and is headquartered in Redwood City, California. – Bloomberg
