TB Dx maker Oxford Immunotec prices IPO shares

Oxford Immunotec Global is keeping the IPO boomlet running strong; the U.K./U.S. developer of a tuberculosis blood test has announced its terms in a new regulatory filing.

Plans call for offering nearly 5.4 million shares at between $13 and $15 per share. Additionally, the company granted underwriters the option of snatching up an additional 804,000 shares to cover any overallotments. Assuming the maximum price kicks in and the underwriters grab all of their additional shares, the total offering could surpass $92.4 million, according to the amended S-1 statement.

The IPO will help advance Oxford Immunotec's T-SPOT blood diagnostic test for latent TB infection, for which the company has obtained premarketing approval in the U.S., a CE mark in Europe and regulatory signoffs in Japan and China. The test is designed to be a much more effective update of the 100-year-old tuberculin skin test, with a much higher sensitivity and specificity, and Oxford Immunotec noted in its filing that the test is also easier to give and helps reduce healthcare costs.  To date, it has sold more than 2 million tests, including 1 million through the 12-month fiscal year ending Sept. 30, 2013.

Plans call for using the IPO money to broaden sales, marketing and customer service operations in the U.S. and around the world. IPO funds will also help grow research and development on other immunology-related diagnostics and to repay debt.

Oxford Immunotec launched in 2002 and is headquartered in the U.K. with a lab in Tennessee, following closure of Massachusetts operations.

Oxford Immunotec's planned IPO comes as diagnostics companies including Foundation Medicine ($FMI), Veracyte ($VCYT), CardioDx and Biocept Laboratories have either jumped fully into the public markets or announced plans to do so in recent months.

- read the updated regulatory filing
- and here's FierceDiagnostics' take

Editor's note: This story has been updated to reflect that Oxford Immunotec's lab operations are consolidated in Tennessee, after the company closed its Massachusetts facility.