Health and Healthcare

Bavarian Nordic Files for IPO

Chris Lange

Published: January 4, 2016 12:40 pm

Last Updated: January 13, 2020 3:28 pm

Bavarian Nordic has filed an F-1 form with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) regarding its initial public offering (IPO). No details were given for the pricing of the offering, but it is valued up to $86.25 million. The company intends to list its American depositary shares on the Nasdaq Global Market under the symbol BAVN.

The underwriters for the offering are Cowen, Nomura and Piper Jaffray.

This fully integrated biotechnology company develops, manufactures and commercializes novel vaccines for the prevention of life-threatening infectious diseases and the treatment of cancer. Bavarian Nordic focuses on diseases for which the unmet medical need is high and for which it can harness the power of the immune system to induce a response.

Its live virus vaccine platform that employs poxviruses in a modular approach to create vaccines. This platform has generated one commercial product for smallpox, one Phase 3 immunotherapy candidate for prostate cancer, one Phase 3 candidate for Ebola and several other clinical programs in the areas of infectious disease and oncology.

Bavarian Nordic recognized revenue of $182 million in 2013 and $183 million in 2014, primarily from sales of its commercial smallpox vaccine, Imvaune/Ivanex. This revenue has enabled it to invest significant capital into research and development activities, the expansion of its production infrastructure and the advancement of its clinical pipeline.
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In the filing the company said:

Our vaccine expertise has led to a 10+ year relationship with the U.S. government, pursuant to which we have been awarded approximately $1.2 billion in contracts. To date, we have recognized more than $900 million of revenue from these contracts. We believe that we are well positioned to generate additional revenue from such contracts due to our track record of success, relationships with U.S. governmental agencies and the quality of our live virus vaccines. More recently, we believe our platform has been validated by commercial relationships with two large pharmaceutical companies, Bristol-Myers Squibb, or BMS, for PROSTVAC, our Phase 3 cancer immunotherapy candidate, and the Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson & Johnson, or Janssen, for our Ebola vaccine candidate and additional infectious disease targets. We also work closely with the National Cancer Institute, or NCI, and the National Institutes of Health, or the NIH, towards the development of key technologies underlying our product candidates.

The company intends to use the net proceeds from this offering to accelerate its pipeline and for working capital and general corporate purposes.