BioNTech set the terms of its Nasdaq IPO. If BioNTech hits the midpoint of the range, it will raise $251 million (€228 million) at a $4.5 billion valuation, giving it the financial might to fund its broad clinical development pipeline.
The valuation is in line with figures quoted earlier in the year in reports in Bloomberg and Reuters, which respectively said BioNTech would achieve a market capitalization of $5 billion and $4 billion. What has changed is the amount BioNTech plans to raise, which is well down on the $800 million forecast by Reuters.
Despite that, BioNTech still stands to exit the IPO with a considerable sum of money in the bank. In between the Reuters report and IPO filing, BioNTech raised another $325 million privately, lessening its need to reel in a huge sum from public investors.
At the midpoint of the range, BioNTech would exit the IPO with $742 million in cash and equivalents. BioNTech has earmarked $100 million of the IPO haul for clinical development of three wholly owned off-the-shelf shared antigen immunotherapies and its share of the R&D budgets for candidates it is developing with Genentech, Sanofi and Genmab.
BioNTech has allocated $35 million to take CAR-Ts, T-cell receptors and mRNA-encoded antibodies and cytokines through phase 1 and set aside $20 million for preclinical work on other programs. Finally, BioNTech plans to use $15 million to add to its manufacturing and laboratory capacity.
The update to the IPO paperwork features new information on the situation with a Hong Kong investor that was revealed in the original filing. The investor committed to buy $88 million of BioNTech stock in the series B but never transferred the money. The situation was in flux at the time of the original IPO filing but has now been resolved by BioNTech retaking ownership of the shares.