In what is shaping up to be a solidly better year for initial public offerings than the disastrous 2022 campaign, a fledgling biopharma company backed by several hedge fund investors has filed plans to go public.
Apogee Therapeutics on Friday filed preliminary plans for a public offering. The company didn’t specify the number of shares it plans to offer or a hoped-for price range. So far this year, 46 IPOs have priced, an increase of 21.1 percent from last year, according to Renaissance Capital.
Apogee said in its prospectus that it is seeking to develop differentiated biologics for the treatment of atopic dermatitis, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and related inflammatory and immunology indications with a high unmet need. “Our antibody programs are designed to overcome limitations of existing therapies by targeting well-established mechanisms of action and incorporating advanced antibody engineering to optimize half-life and other properties,” it added.
According to the company, Apogee currently has two advanced programs — APG777 and APG808 — which it is initially developing for the treatment of AD and COPD, respectively.
Apogee was founded in 2022 by healthcare investors Fairmount Funds and Venrock Healthcare Capital Partners. In December 2022, the company was spun out from Paragon Therapeutics, a biotechnology company founded by Fairmount Funds in 2021 that is dedicated to discovering and developing best-in-class biologics for a range of diseases with high unmet need.
At that time, Apogee closed on a $149 million Series B financing, which was co-led by RTW Investments and Deep Track Capital. Another new investor included Perceptive Xontogeny Ventures Fund II, a VC fund managed by life sciences giant Perceptive Advisors and RA Capital Management.
Altogether, Apogee has raised a total of $169 million. In the offering prospectus, only RTW is listed among the investors that own at least 5 percent of Apogee’s common stock ahead of the IPO.
If the IPO is completed, it will be one of just a handful of new offerings this year with hedge fund investors. Most recently, in early May, Acelyrin, a late-stage clinical biopharma company focused on the development and delivery of transformative medicines in immunology, priced its shares at $18 apiece, the upper end of its anticipated range. The offering was also upsized to 30 million shares.
The stock jumped 30 percent on the first day of trading but subsequently slipped back. On Monday, however, the stock surged more than 35 percent to close at $23.90. There was no apparent news connected with the stock move.
Before the offering, two hedge fund firms held stakes exceeding 5 percent. Several Orbimed Advisors entities together owned 6.5 percent of the shares, while Citadel Multi-Strategy Equities Master Fund owned 6.4 percent of the shares.
