Forbion Announces Closing Of Initial Public Offering Of Portfolio Company arGEN-X
From early investment to exit, arGEN-X another Forbion portfolio success story
Naarden, The Netherlands, 9 July 2014 - Forbion Capital Partners, the leading Dutch Venture Capital firm investing in world-class healthcare technologies, is proud to announce that its portfolio company arGEN-X N.V. (arGEN-X or the company), a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company focused on creating and developing differentiated therapeutic antibodies for the treatment of cancer and severe autoimmune diseases, has successfully completed its Initial Public Offering, which was launched on 23 June 2014 (“IPO” or the “Offering”). arGEN-X shares will be listed on Euronext Brussels and begin trading on an “if-and-when-issued-or-delivered” basis on Thursday 10 July 2014 under the symbol “ARGX”.
The Offering was priced at €8.50 per share (the “Offer Price”). arGEN-X will issue 4,705,882 new shares equivalent to €40 million. Additionally, an over-allotment option to subscribe to up to 470,589 additional new shares at the Offer Price, equivalent to €4 million, has been granted to cover over-allotments or short positions, if any. If the over-allotment option is exercised in full, the total amount of the capital increase will amount to €44 million. The approximate market capitalization of arGEN-X at listing will be €131.7 million. In connection with the pricing of the IPO, a pricing statement has been deposited with the Dutch Authority for the Financial Markets (Stichting Autoriteit Financiële Markten), which will be electronically available on the website of arGEN-X (www.argen-x.com) or on the website of Euronext Brussels. Printed copies are available at the registered office of arGEN-X.
The order book has been built with high-quality demand from corporate and institutional investors in Europe and the United States of America, as well as demand from Belgian retail investors. Among these investors, Shire purchased shares at the Offer Price for a total of €12 million representing 9.1% of the capital of arGEN-X (excluding the over-allotment option). In addition, certain existing investors purchased shares for a total of approximately €7.2 million at the Offer Price.
KBC Securities and Kempen & Co acted as Joint Global Coordinators and Joint Bookrunners, Petercam as Co-Lead Manager, and Wedbush PacGrow Life Sciences as Selling Agent.
Tim Van Hauwermeiren, CEO of arGEN-X, said: “The funds that we have raised through our successful IPO from investors in Europe and the US will enable arGEN-X to advance the clinical development of our differentiated therapeutic antibody candidates, ARGX-110, ARGX-111 and ARGX-113 in orphan diseases. This strategy is designed to yield clinical data demonstrating their therapeutic utility for treating cancer and severe autoimmune diseases, and this data will be leveraged to partner these therapeutic antibodies for development and commercialization across a number of major indications in these areas. The funds will also allow us to further develop and enhance our SIMPLE Antibody™ platform and suite of complementary antibody technologies on which our pipeline of differentiated therapeutic antibodies has been created. We believe that this approach will allow arGEN-X to become an important player in the fast growing therapeutic antibody market and to generate significant value for its shareholders in a timely and efficient manner.”
Christina Takke, Board Member of arGEN-X and Partner at Forbion Capital Partners, added: “Forbion has actively supported the company since co-leading its Series A funding round in 2009. We were closely involved in its evolution from a research-driven private venture to a product-focused, clinical-stage public company. It’s exciting to see that the combination of excellent management, powerful technology and outstanding development expertise can lead to such value creation in a short time frame, when coupled with intelligent financing.”
Notes To Editors
About Forbion Capital Partners
Forbion Capital Partners is a dedicated Life Sciences venture capital firm with offices in Naarden, The Netherlands, and Munich, Germany. Forbion invests in life sciences companies in drug discovery & development as well as medical device companies addressing substantial unmet medical needs. Forbion’s investment team of nine investment professionals has built an impressive performance track record since the late nineties with successful investments in Rhein Biotech, Crucell, Neutec, Glycart, Borean, Impella, Alantos, Acorda, Fovea, PanGenetics, Argenta Discovery and most recently Biovex, Pathway Medical and Circulite. Current assets under management exceed $550m, split between four active funds and comprising some 29 promising portfolio companies. Forbion Capital Partners Fund II is supported by the European Investment Fund through its ERP and LfA facilities. Forbion co-manages Biogeneration Ventures, an early stage fund focused on (academic) spin-outs and seed investments in the Netherlands. For more information, please visit www.forbion.com.
About arGEN-X
arGEN-X is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company focused on creating and developing differentiated therapeutic antibodies for the treatment of cancer and severe autoimmune diseases. arGEN-X has generated a pipeline of differentiated clinical and preclinical antibody candidates using its SIMPLE Antibody™ discovery platform. SIMPLE Antibody™ has a particular strength in addressing novel, complex disease targets that are difficult to access using established antibody technology platforms. Proprietary Fc engineering technologies (NHance® and ABDEG™) and POTELLIGENT® technology (licensed from BioWa, Inc.) further enhance the therapeutic properties of SIMPLE Antibody™ leads in terms of tissue penetration/residence time in the body, ability to clear disease targets or pathogenic antibodies and cell-killing potency through Antibody-Dependent Cell-mediated Cytotoxicity (ADCC), respectively. arGEN-X has leveraged its suite of antibody technologies in forging strategic collaborations with pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies to provide new approaches to diseases with unmet medical needs.
www.arGEN-X.com
SIMPLE Antibody™, NHance® and ABDEG™ are trademarks of arGEN-X NV
POTELLIGENT® is a trademark of BioWa Inc.
Issued for and on behalf of Forbion Partners by Instinctif Partners.
For more information please contact:
Christina Takke
Forbion Capital Partners
+31 35 699 3021
christina.takke@forbion.com
Melanie Toyne Sewell
Instinctif Partners (on behalf of Forbion)
+44 7890 022 814
forbion@instinctif.com
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