Medpace Holdings and Protagonist Therapeutics launched initial public offerings Thursday, raising about $250 million between the two companies in a week that saw a trickle of biotechnology companies enter the market.
Motif Bio Tuesday shelved its IPO, while another, AzurRX BioPharma, is on standby to launch this week.
Between the four companies, they had hoped to raise a total of about $290 million by going public.
Medpace, a contract research organization for small and medium-sized biopharmaceutical companies, went public Thursday at the high point of its IPO price range: $23 per share. The company raised $161 million by selling 7 million shares at the $23.
Cincinnati-based Medpace employs 2,300 physicians, researchers and professionals in 35 countries, helping pharmaceutical and medical device companies accelerate their research and product development. The company intends to use net proceeds from the IPO to repay a portion of its outstanding borrowings under its senior secured term loan facility, Medpace said in its shelf-registration documents.
Medpace also granted its stock underwriters an option to purchase up to an additional 1.05 million shares over the next 30 days.
Protagonist Therapeutics, which is developing oral drugs for inflammatory bowel disease, raised $90 million in an IPO Thursday, selling 7.5 million shares at $12 per share.
That was $20 million more than the company had originally planned to raise on the sale of 5.9 million shares after investors showed greater interest in the offering.
The $12 per share launch was the mid-point between a price range of $11 and $13 per share.
The Milpitas, Calif.-based company has had backing from Eli Lilly and Johnson & Johnson to develop peptide-based oral medications to treat Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis where injectable medications are the norm.
With the equity markets approaching all-time highs, the companies were able to go public and raise money to retire debt and fund growth.
Motif Bio, a London, England-based company that develops antibiotics for drug-resistant bacteria, had hoped to raise about $35 million this week through a U.S. IPO of American Depositary Shares that would trade on NASDAQ.
But market conditions prompted Motif Bio to delay the offering, while the company continues to “engage with investors.”
AzurRX BioPharma is hoping to raise about $15 million through an IPO still this week of 2.1 million shares at a price range of $6 to $8.
AzurRX is a development stage company focused on the development of recombinant proteins for the treatment of gastrointestinal diseases and microbiome-related illness.
