Just two weeks after Bionano Genomics filed to raise up to $30 million in its Nasdaq IPO, the company is cutting its goal in half to $16 million.
In an SEC filing dated July 31, Bionano said it would offer 5,500,000 shares priced between $5 and $6 per share to reach its $30 million figure. In a new S-1/A, filed Wednesday, the company upped the share price to between $6 and $7, but dropped the number of shares it would offer to just 2,450,000. The move drops its market value from $85 million to $55 million, a 35% dip, according to Renaissance Capital.
Founded in 2003, the San Diego-based company makes DNA analyzers that are currently only available for research use. However, it has plans to chase regulatory approvals or clearances outside of research, including in the sphere of laboratory-developed tests, according to its prospectus, filed in June.
Bionano’s other plans for its IPO haul include boosting its commercial presence, improving and updating its current technology, potentially pursuing deals such as acquisitions, and establishing a direct commercialization foothold in China, where it expects to find “significant market opportunities,” as “adoption of genome analysis technology has been growing [there] at approximately 20% per year.”
Its last fundraise was an expansion of its series C round. It had picked up $53 million in financing at the end of 2014, adding another $15.4 million in February 2015. At the time, its focus was the Irys platform, designed to detect structural variations in a patient's genetic structure—including DNA insertions, deletions and repeats—which often go uncharted by existing mapping tools.
Bionano says its next-generation Saphyr system rivals Illumina’s and other next-generation devices at sequencing longer molecules, and in detecting larger, possibly missed structural variations, ranging from 500 to over 500,000 base pairs for certain deviations.