IPO FILING: Codexis Inc. (CDXS, MAXY, RDS-A)

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published
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Codexis, Inc. has filed its paperwork with the SEC for an initial public offering.  The company plans to trade under the ticker “CDXS” on NASDAQ.  Credit Suisse and Goldman Sachs are the joint book-runners, while co-managers are listed as RBC Capital Markets and Pacific Crest Securities.  No financial terms are listed in the IPO filing other than up to $100 million in common stock, but this company touts itself as a provider of “biobased solutions for the low carbon economy.”

Maxygen, Inc. (NASDAQ: MAXY), a biotech company focused on the development of improved versions of protein drugs, is the largest single owner of the company.  On a separate basis, Maxygen recently said that it expected to accept for payment an aggregate of approximately 7,345,103 shares of its common stock at a purchase price of $5.30 per share, for a total cost of approximately $38.9 million in a tender representing approximately 18.5% of its company stock.  Maxygen is listed as a 21.57% holder prior to the offering as follows: James R. Sulat includes 8,935,664 shares and 46,224 shares that may be acquired pursuant to the exercise of a warrant held prior to this offering by Maxygen, Inc. Mr. Sulat is the Chief Executive Officer, Chief Financial Officer and a member of the board of directors of Maxygen and may be deemed to be the beneficial owner of our securities held by Maxygen. Mr. Sulat disclaims beneficial ownership of all our securities held by Maxygen, except to the extent of his pecuniary interest therein. Mr. Sulat will resign from our board of directors in connection with the closing of our initial public offering. Equilon Enterprises LLC, d.b.a. Shell Oil Products US, and tied to Royal Dutch Shell (NYSE: RDS-A) is also listed as a top holder with 19.95% of the company prior to this offering.

Codexis has a proprietary technology platform enables the creation of optimized biocatalysts which is supposed to make existing industrial processes faster, cleaner and more efficient than current methods.  The company also claims that this has the potential to make new industrial processes possible at commercial scale. The company has commercialized its biocatalysts in the pharmaceutical industry and is developing biocatalysts for use in producing advanced biofuels under a multi-year research and development collaboration with Shell. Further, it is using its technology platform to pursue biocatalyst-enabled solutions in other bioindustrial markets, including carbon management, water treatment and chemicals.

The company is not yet profitable, but revenues in grants, collaborative R&D, and products combined was $31.88 million for the first nine months in 2008 and so far it has been $58.67 million for the nine-month period ended September 30, 2009; Its total 2008 revenue was $50.478 million.

JON C. OGG

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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