The FINANCIAL — GRAIL, a healthcare company yesterday, on September 9 announced that it has filed a registration statement on Form S-1 with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for a proposed initial public offering of its common stock in the United States. The number of shares to be offered and the price range for the proposed offering have not yet been determined. GRAIL has applied to list its common stock on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the symbol “GRAL.”
GRAIL is a healthcare company whose mission is to detect cancer early, when it can be cured. GRAIL is focused on saving lives and improving health by pioneering new technologies for early cancer detection. The company is using the power of next-generation sequencing, population-scale clinical studies, and state-of-the-art computer science and data science to overcome one of medicine’s greatest challenges. GRAIL is headquartered in Menlo Park, California, with locations in Washington, D.C., North Carolina, and the United Kingdom. It is supported by leading global investors and pharmaceutical, technology, and healthcare companies.
Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC, and BofA Securities will act as lead bookrunners for the proposed offering. Cowen and Evercore ISI will act as additional bookrunners. A registration statement relating to these securities has already been filed with the SEC but has not yet become effective. These securities may not be sold, nor may offers to buy be accepted, prior to the time the registration statement becomes effective. ”This press release shall not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy these securities, nor shall there be any sale of these securities in any state or jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful prior to registration or qualification under the securities laws of any such state or jurisdiction.” Press release reads.
The California-based company has not yet determined the number of shares to offer or the expected pricing of the IPO. Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs and BofA Securities are the lead underwriters. The company plans to use the proceeds from the IPO to fund research and product development, increase awareness of the company among potential partners and to improve its competitive position. For the six months through June 30, the company recorded a net loss of $136.4 million, on no revenue, after a loss of $117.2 million, on no revenue, in the same period a year ago. The company is looking to go public at a time that the Renaissance IPO ETF IPO, +3.58% has rallied 20.1% over the past three months, while the S&P 500 SPX, +2.01% has gained 3.9%, according to Market Watch.
Grail was spun out of Illumina, a maker of DNA-sequencing machines, in 2015, and it has gone on to raise more than $2 billion in financing from a range of investors including Johnson & Johnson, Arch Venture Partners and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. Prior to the IPO, Illumina held 14.6% of shares, making it the largest single shareholder. The two companies have a decade-long supply and commercialization agreement in place that involves Grail paying Illumina “a high single-digit royalty, subject to certain reductions, in perpetuity on net sales generated by our products or revenues otherwise generated or received by us regardless of whether these products incorporate any Illumina intellectual property, subject to certain exceptions, in the field of oncology,” according to the filing. The company said in the filing that is is planning to ramp up production of its test, dubbed Galleri, in 2021 as a laboratory developed test or LDT. These diagnostic tests are typically less regulated than traditional medical devices. It is prioritizing cancer types that don’t currently have a screening test. Grail will also need to prove to insurers that the test will not add cost to the system by providing people with a flood of false-positive results, which might lead them to seek unnecessary care, as CNBC reported.
Speaking of diseases, it is noteworthy that Pharmaceutical company AstaZeneca said Tuesday that it had paused global trials of its coronavirus vaccine in America as it is investigating one of the volunteers in United Kingdom who had a serious side effect – unexplained illness. It’s a standard precaution in vaccine trials that is meant to ensure experimental vaccines don’t cause serious reactions among participants. AstraZeneca described it as a routine pause in the case of an unexplained illness.
