Tandem seeks $100M IPO amid burgeoning market

Tandem is counting on its t:slim insulin pump to drive sales growth.--Courtesy of Tandem

Tandem Diabetes Care is plotting a trip to Wall Street, filing to raise $100 million in an IPO and join the bevy of biotech companies cashing in on a market revival.

The insulin pump company plans to trade on the Nasdaq under "TNDM," putting its potential haul toward a scale-up in marketing staff, more R&D and a manufacturing expansion. Tandem's preliminary S-1 is light on details, leaving out how many shares it will offer and at what price.

Tandem owes about 93% of its sales to t:slim, the company's tiny touchscreen pump, cleared by the FDA and launched in the U.S. last year. The company pulled in about $11 million in revenue in the first half of 2013, and Tandem expects sales will only increase as it expands its payroll and gets better acquainted with distributors.

In the pipeline is t:flex, a pump with a larger insulin capacity, and t:sensor, which pairs Tandem's slim technology with continuous glucose monitoring. The company has also partnered with the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation to develop t:dual, a two-chamber device that can deliver multiple hormones.

The San Diego devicemaker is yet to turn a profit, swinging to a $26.5 million loss in H1, and the company said it will be a few years before it can work its way into the black. Other financial details are sparse because, thanks to the recently enacted Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act, Tandem and any other company with less than $1 billion in annual revenue doesn't have to get into typical S-1 detail before going public.

Tandem has picked quite a time for an IPO. A total of 38 drug and diagnostics developers have gone public so far this year, raising $2.8 billion amid renewed optimism for life sciences companies. Notably, Tandem is the just the second pure-play medical device outfit to plot a public debut, and the success or failure of its offering could spell whether all that biotech excitement extends to the device world.

- read the S-1

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