Allogene Therapeutics (NASDAQ: ALLO)
Allogene Therapeutics, a clinical-stage biotech firm developing allogenic CAR T cell cancer therapies, filed for an initial public offering with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on September 14, 2018. The company plans to list its shares on the Nasdaq Global Select market under “ALLO” ticker symbol.
The company updated its prospectus on Tuesday saying it intends to raise $272 million by offering 16,000,000 shares at a price of $16 to $18 a piece. According to IPO investment manager Renaissance Capital, the California-based company would command an enterprise value of $1.4 billion and a fully diluted market value of $2.1 billion, at the midpoint of the proposed price range.
Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC, J.P. Morgan Securities LLC, Cowen and Company, LLC and Jefferies LLC are the joint book-running managers for the offering. The underwriters have also been granted an option to purchase an additional 2.4 million shares.
Allogene has already secured $300 million in a series of financing from investors such as TPG Capital, Pfizer Inc., Gilead Sciences Inc., and Vida Ventures. TPG will own about 19.3% of Allogene once it goes public, while Gilead will own 6.6%, with Pfizer taking up 19.8%. Shares of the company are expected to begin trading during the week of October 8 this year.
According to its paperwork with the SEC, the company plans to use proceeds from the offering to fund internal research, build and expand its facilities, as well as develop its pipeline of allogeneic CAR T cell product candidates. The remaining amount will be used for general corporate purposes and working capital.
Its lead product candidate is UCART19, which is being studied in clinical trials in patients with refractory B-cell precursor acute lymphoblastic leukemia. The company expects UCART19 to advance to registrational tests late next year.
Allogene is also planning to file an Investigational New Drug Application with the FDA in the first half of 2019 for ALLO-501, its second allogeneic anti-CD19 CAR T cell product candidate designed to treat relapsed non-Hodgkin lymphoma.
Some of the company’s top competitors include Juno Therapeutics, Mustang Bio and Cellectis. Management is led by president and chief executive officer David Chang, who previously held senior leadership roles at Amgen between 2002 and 2014.
Allogene Therapeutics Company Profile
Allogene Therapeutics is a biotechnology company with a mission to catalyze the next revolution in cancer treatment through the development of allogeneic chimeric antigen receptor T-cell (CAR T) therapy directed at blood cancers and solid tumors.
Allogeneic CAR T therapies are engineered from cells of healthy donors and stored for “off-the-shelf” use in patients. This approach eliminates the need to create personalized therapy from a patient’s own cells, simplifies manufacturing, and reduces the time patients must wait for CAR T treatment. – Crunchbase
