LipoScience IPO Prices Weak but Debuts Strong

This company claims to be pioneering a new field of personalized diagnostics based on nuclear magnetic resonance technology. The company said that it targets personalize management of risk for heart disease and more than 8 million NMR LipoProfile tests have been ordered to date.

Today’s initial public offering was for 5,000,000 shares of common stock at a price of $9.00 per share. Investors need to know that the price range was $9 to $10 per share, but that was already reduced from $13 to $15 per share.

Net proceeds from the IPO came in at roughly $38.6 million, and LipoScience indicated that it intends to use the net proceeds to hire additional sales and marketing personnel and to support costs associated with increased sales and marketing activities. Other uses of the capital include capital expenditures, to fund its research and development programs, to pay accrued dividends in the amount of $5.2 million on shares of preferred stock that will convert into common stock upon the closing of the offering, and the remaining balance is for other general corporate purposes.

Barclays Capital, UBS Securities and Piper Jaffray were the joint book-running managers for the offering. LipoScience has granted the underwriters a 30-day option to purchase an aggregate of up to an additional 750,000 shares at the initial public offering price.

LipoScience shares opened at $9.97 and shares are currently trading at $9.55 on about 1.7 million shares.