The company’s board of directors hasn’t made a final decision to proceed with the listing.
Genmab A/S, located in Copenhagen, Denmark, filed its intention to launch an initial public offering (IPO) with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The company plans to trade on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol GMAB. The plan is to raise up to $500 million through the IPO, if it does actually launch.
The company’s ordinary shares are currently listed on Nasdaq Cophenhagen under the GEN symbol. The company’s board of directors hasn’t made a final decision to proceed with the listing.
The company was founded in 1998 and reported $440 million in sales for the 12 months ending March 31, 2019. The company’s portfolio includes two marketed drugs developed with partners. The first is Darzalex (daratumumab), a human CD38 monoclonal antibody approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for multiple myeloma. It was developed and marketed with Johnson & Johnson’s Janssen Biotech.
The second commercial product is Arzerra (ofatumumab), developed and marketed with Novartis, for specific indications of chronic lymphocytic leukemia.
“Our vision is to transform cancer treatment by launching our own proprietary product by 2025 and advancing our pipeline of differentiated and well-tolerated antibodies,” the company stated in the SEC filing.
That pipeline includes five product candidates in clinical development and about 20 proprietary and partnered preclinical programs, including two of its internal product candidates. Genmab has either submitted or plans to submit an IND to the FDA or a clinical trial application (CTA) to the European Medicines Agency this year for these candidates.
The company dosed its first patient in a Phase I/II clinical trial in May 2018 for HexaBody-DR5/DR5 and DuoBody-CD3xCD20 in a Phase I/II trial for B-cell malignancies in July 2018.
Genmab also has a proprietary candidate Enapotamab vedotin (HuMax-AXL-ADC) in Phase I/II development for multiple solid tumors including ovarian, cervical, endometrial, thyroid, non-small cell lung cancer, melanoma and sarcoma. It is an antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) that targets Axl and uses technology licensed from Seattle Genetics. An ADC is an antibody for a specific target that is attached by molecular linker to a chemotherapy drug. It allows for more specific delivery of the toxic chemical.
Seattle Genetics is also a development partner with Genmab for tisotumab vedotin, currently in Phase II in cervical cancer, ovarian cancer, and solid cancers. It is an ADC targeted to tissue factor (TF), which is involved in tumor signaling and angiogenesis.
The company also has partnerships with ADC Therapeutics, BioNTech, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Lundbeck and Horizon Pharma.
If Genmab goes through with this IPO, along with the numerous clinical trials it is running this year, it will come out of the launch a mid-sized biopharma company. The company has shown it can work with bigger partners to take drugs onto the market, and part of this new strategy is to fund internal programs.
The big product, Darzalex, was launched in the U.S. in 2015. Darzalex-related royalties and milestone fees from Janssen made up 75.8% of Genmab’s revenue last year, down some from 90% in 2017. Genmab’s royalties last year on Darzalex came to $262 million and they also received $90 million in milestone payments. Darzalex hit $2 billion in net sales in 2018, an increase from $1.2 billion in 2017.
