Glaucoma drug developer Aerie Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ:AERI) is now a public company, raising $67 million in an initial public stock offering that the company plans to use for clinical trials of its leading drug candidates.
But at $10 per share, the IPO was below the stock range of $12 to$14 per share that the company had set last week. The New Jersey company, which operates its R&D labs in Research Triangle Park, also had to sell more shares to reach that $67 million mark. On Thursday, the company filed to add 1.69 million shares to the 5.25 million shares it planned to sell in the stock offering.
Aerie opened at $10.40 per share and throughout the day traded in a range of $10.25 and $10.86 cents per share. The stock closed at $10.61, up 6 percent from the offering price.
RBC Capital Markets and Stiefel are joint-book running managers for the offering. Canaccord Genuity Inc. and Needham & Company are co-managers. The offering is expected to close on Oct. 30. Underwriters have a 30-day option to purchase 1 million additional shares of common stock to cover any over-allotments.
Aerie, whose technology is based on research originally developed at Duke University, has two clinical-stage compounds focused on glaucoma. The company’s lead candidate, a “dual-action” product, has completed phase II clinical trials and is ready to start phase III studies. A second candidate approaches glaucoma with a “triple action” mechanism. That compound is advancing to phase II studies.
In other Triangle life sciences financial news, investors in Durham biopharmaceutical company Chimerix (NASDAQ:CMRX) are cashing out some of their holdings. Chimerix said it has completed an offering of more than 2.4 million shares of stock at $16.50 per share. The company said the purpose of the offering was to facilitate an orderly distribution of shares and to increase the amount of shares that are in the hands of the public.
All of the shares were sold be certain existing stockholders and Chimerix said it did not receive any proceeds from that stock sale. Morgan Stanley & Co. and Cowen and Company are joint book-running managers for the offering. William Blair & Company and Canaccord Genuity Inc. are co-managers for the offering. Selling stockholders have granted underwriters 30 days to purchase up to 371,549 additional shares to cover over-allotments.
Chimerix’s lead antiviral compound is in late-stage clinical trials as an experimental treatment for deadly diseases in patients whose immune systems have been compromised.
