NovoCure Gears Up for IPO

The underwriters for the offering are JPMorgan, Deutsche Bank, Evercore ISI, Wells Fargo, JMP Securities and Wedbush PacGrow.

This is a commercial-stage oncology company developing a novel, proprietary therapy called Tumor Treating Fields, or TTFields, for the treatment of solid tumor cancers. TTFields is a low-toxicity anti-mitotic treatment that uses low-intensity, intermediate frequency, alternating electric fields to exert physical forces on key molecules inside cancer cells, disrupting the basic machinery necessary for normal cell division, leading to cancer cell death. Physicians have typically treated patients with solid tumors using one or a combination of three principal treatment modalities: surgery, radiation and pharmacological therapies. Despite meaningful advancements in each of these modalities, a significant unmet need to improve survival and quality of life remains.

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The company received FDA approval for Optune, its first TTFields delivery system, in 2011 for use as a monotherapy treatment for adult patients with glioblastoma brain cancer (GBM) following confirmed recurrence after chemotherapy. NovoCure has built a commercial organization and launched Optune in the United States, Germany, Switzerland and Japan.

In November 2014, the Phase 3 pivotal trial of Optune in combination with chemotherapy for patients with newly diagnosed GBM met its endpoints and was halted after a protocol prespecified interim analysis showed significant improvements in both progression free and overall survival. In April 2015, the company filed a premarket approval supplement application with the FDA for the treatment of newly diagnosed GBM based on its Phase 3 data and the application was granted priority review status.

In the filing, the company described its finances as follows:

To date, substantially all of our revenues have been derived from patients using Optune in our currently active markets. Our net revenues for the year ended December 31, 2014 were $15.5 million and $11.8 million for the six months ended June 30, 2015. However, we have incurred significant costs in connection with our pre-clinical and clinical trial programs, commercial launch efforts and general and administrative costs. We had net losses of $77.4 million for the year ended December 31, 2013, $80.7 million for the year ended December 31, 2014 and $52.6 million for the six months ended June 30, 2015, and we have an accumulated deficit of $329.1 million as of June 30, 2015. We expect to continue to incur significant expenses and operating losses for at least the next several years.

As for the net proceeds, the company intends to use them for clinical trials, research and development, commercialization and general corporate purposes.

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