Diagnostics company LipoScience received some more good news on Monday.
The summary from Bloomberg news said it succinctly:
“LipoScience Inc. was rated new “Buy” at WBB Securities by equity analyst Stephen Brozak.
“The 12-month target price is $12.75 per share.”
LipoScience shares jumped as high as $11.35 on Monday before closing at $10.80.
LipoScience went public Friday with a price of $9 each for 5 million shares and has not traded below $9.43.
The company has said it expected a net fund raise of around $38,6 million from the IPO with shares being offered at one third less than expected.
The venture capital-backed, privately held firm has mulled an IPO before, aiming as high as $86 million in a June 2011 filing.
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.
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.
