Structure Therapeutics expects to bring in $161.1 million from an upsized IPO, announced Friday.
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Despite the bear market, Structure Therapeutics announced pricing for its upsized initial public offering Friday, anticipating $161.1 million in return.
Spanning the globe from San Francisco to Shanghai, Structure is developing small molecules with biologic-like capabilities.
Its current pipeline focuses on chronic metabolic and pulmonary diseases. Two assets are in Phase I trials – one for pulmonary arterial hypertension and another for Type 2 diabetes and obesity.
Structure’s announcement represents the first large IPO of the year in the life sciences sector. The company set its IPO pricing at the top end - $15 a pop for the 10.74 million shares being offered. Initial plans had been to offer a little less than $9 million.
Shares will trade under the ticker GPCR, a nod to Structure’s focus on developing drugs targeting the G protein-coupled receptors. GPCRs are the largest family of membrane receptors targeted by currently approved drugs, according to the National Institutes of Health.
Details of plans for the funds raised are absent from the company’s press release. For now, Structure is “in a quiet period” and cannot comment, a company representative told BioSpace.
The move to IPO in the current environment is a bold one, as this particular market has been in a slump since 2022.
The previous two years broke records for IPOs across all sectors – 480 in 2020 and 1,035 in 2021. Those numbers dropped to 181 in 2022.
Of those companies who went public during the pandemic boom, it’s not looking too great right now. Only two of the life science firms that went public since 2020 are trading above IPO price, according to a report from the Philadelphia Business Journal.
So far, only two other life science companies have made the leap to the exchange this year.
Immunotherapy-focused Genelux raked in around $15 million by selling 2.5M of its shares for $6 apiece. The biopharma is developing cancer therapies for aggressive and difficult-to-treat tumor types.
Cadrenal Therapeutics also took the leap of faith in January, offering 1.4M shares for $5 each and garnering $7 million in proceeds.
Cadrenal’s lead asset, tecarfarin, is a cardiorenal therapy in development to prevent blood clots in patients with end-stage renal disease and atrial fibrillation. It’s been granted orphan drug and Fast Track designations by the FDA.
