REGULATED INFORMATION
GHENT, Belgium – Ablynx [Euronext Brussels: ABLX], the biopharmaceutical company focused on the discovery and development of Nanobodies®, announces today that it has raised €31.5 million through a private placement of new shares via an accelerated bookbuilding procedure announced on Wednesday 27 February 2013 after the market closed.
The private placement has allowed Ablynx to place 4,377,919 new shares with a range of domestic and international institutional investors and qualified institutional buyers in the United States at a price of €7.2 per share, a 6.7% discount on the previous closing price. This represents 10.0% of the current number of outstanding shares and will bring the total number of shares after the issue to 48,157,116. The new shares will be admitted to trading on NYSE Euronext Brussels following their issuance, which is expected to take place on 5 March 2013.
The private placement was oversubscribed and certain pre-IPO shareholders and warrant holders sold 1,872,081 shares at the same price in conjunction with this transaction.
The funds will be used by Ablynx to:
- maintain the momentum of ALX-0061 and review paths (e.g. co-development, fund additional clinical trials, retain (co-) promotion rights) which could allow the value of this asset to be maximized;
- allow flexibility in the structure and timing of any potential deals to license clinical assets such as caplacizumab (anti-vWF) and ALX-0171 (anti-RSV);
- initiate, advance and/or accelerate the pre-clinical development for wholly- and co-owned programmes with a broad range of risk-return profiles; and
- for general corporate purposes.
KBC Securities NV acted as Global Coordinator. KBC Securities NV, Bryan, Garnier & Co. Limited and Nomura Code Securities Limited acted as Joint Bookrunners for the placement.
Dr Edwin Moses, Chairman and CEO of Ablynx commented:
“We are very pleased to announce the successful completion of the private placement which we believe reflects the strong progress made at Ablynx over the past year. The new funds will give us increased flexibility to invest in our Nanobody pipeline and in particular to build on the successful Phase II results of our rheumatoid arthritis product, ALX-0061, announced earlier this month. We are grateful to our existing shareholders for their continuing support and welcome our new investors. We believe that Ablynx is well placed to deliver significant value to shareholders in the coming years and we look forward to updating them on our progress during 2013.”
About Ablynx
Ablynx is a biopharmaceutical company engaged in the discovery and development of Nanobodies®, a novel class of therapeutic proteins based on single-domain antibody fragments, for a range of serious human diseases, including inflammation, haematology, oncology and pulmonary disease. Today, the Company has approximately 25 programmes in the pipeline and five Nanobodies at clinical development stage. Ablynx has ongoing research collaborations and significant partnerships with major pharmaceutical companies including Boehringer Ingelheim, Merck Serono, Novartis and Merck & Co. The Company is headquartered in Ghent, Belgium. More information can be found on www.ablynx.com.