Diagnostics company LipoScience went public Friday with a price of $9 each for 5 million shares.
In early trading, shares jumped 10 percent.
By 10 a.m., shares of LPDX were still up more than 6 percent at $9.65.
LipoScience said it expectednet fund raise of around $38,6 million.
“LipoScience (NASDAQ: LPDX) today announced the pricing of its initial public offering of 5,000,000 shares of common stock at a price to the public of $9.00 per share,” the company said in a press release before markets opened.
“The shares are expected to begin trading on The NASDAQ Global Market under the ticker symbol “LPDX” on Friday, January 25, 2013. All of the shares are being offered by LipoScience. In addition, LipoScience has granted the underwriters a 30-day option to purchase an aggregate of up to an additional 750,000 shares at the initial public offering price, less underwriting discounts and commissions, to cover over-allotments.”
The firm “intends to use the net proceeds to hire additional sales and marketing personnel and to support costs associated with increased sales and marketing activities, for capital expenditures, including components of the Vantera® system, to fund its research and development programs, including the expansion of its diagnostic test menu based on the Vantera system, to pay accrued dividends in the amount of $5.2 million on shares of preferred stock that will convert into common stock upon the closing of the offering, and the balance for other general corporate purposes, including general and administrative expenses, working capital and the potential repayment of indebtedness,” LipoScience said.
Just last week in an updated SEC filing, LipoScience said it was hoping to raise between $65 million and $75 million with a share price as high as $15.
The venture capital-backed, privately held firm has mulled an IPO before, aiming as high as $86 million in a June 2011 filing.
If the IPO is successful, LipoScience would trade on the Nasdaq under the symbol LPDX.
The company also will make available a 750,000 over-allotment of shares for the underwriters, which include Barclays, UBS Investment Bank and Piper Jaffray.
Through Sept. 30 of 2012, the company said revenues totaled $27 million.
In all of 2011, revenues reached $37 million. In 2010, revenues were $31 million. In 2009, revenues totaled $27 million, according to the filing.
The IPO comes after the company won FDA approval last September for a new test through its Vantera system. LipoScience received FDA 510(k) clearance on its Vantera Clinical Analyzer. The technology builds on diagnostics technology that LipoScience already has commercialized to assess a patient’s risk of heart disease.
LipoScience’s devices are based on a technology called nuclear magnetic resonance, or NMR. The technology exposes a blood sample to a short pulse of radio frequency energy within a strong magnetic field. LipoScience says its blood analysis can give a better assessment of cardiovascular risks compared to cholesterol tests.
The company’s first blood test, the NMR LipoProfile, received FDA clearance in 2008. While LipoScience was cleared to market that test throughout the United States, the FDA limited the actual testing of blood samples to LipoScience’s facility. That meant that all blood samples had to be sent to the company’s Raleigh laboratory for analysis under the watch of company personnel familiar with NMR technology.
Vantera will allow diagnostic laboratories and health care facilities to do the testing at their own sites. A laboratory technician needs no knowledge of NMR technology to operate Vantera.
Since the NMR LipoProfile test was commercialized, LipoScience says more than 8 million tests have been ordered. With the testing of blood samples no longer restricted to LipoScience’s facility, the company is now making a push to make its tests a clinical standard of care.
The company’s strategy includes placing Vantera systems at high-volume national and regional clinical diagnostic laboratories across and health care facilities across the country.
LipoScience’s venture capital investors include Durham-based Pappas Ventures and Three Arch Partners, a Bay Area venture firm.
