NexImmune Inc. has closed its initial public offering.
The clinical-stage biotech, headquartered in Gaithersburg, secured $126.5 million in gross proceeds from its IPO, in which it sold more than 7.44 million shares of common stock at $17 apiece, the company said Wednesday. The underwriters also exercised their option to buy an additional 970,650 shares.
The company initially looked to raise $86.25 million in the offering, according to a preliminary prospectus filed in January with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Then in mid-February it locked in its IPO share price at $17 with an expectation to raise approximately $110 million in gross proceeds.
NexImmune’s (NASDAQ: NEXI) stock was trading down less than 2% to $23.49 per share Friday late morning. Its share price reached a high of $28 Feb. 12, its first day on the Nasdaq Global Market, after opening that day at $23.01.
The Montgomery County immunotherapy company said in its filings that it would devote about $10 million to $15 million of its proceeds from the IPO to advancing Nexi-001, a product candidate the company is now studying in patients with acute myeloid leukemia; and another $10 million to $15 million for Nexi-002, another candidate it’s testing in patients with multiple myeloma.
The business also plans to use roughly $20 million to $25 million for process development and manufacturing for both programs — including future trials and other pipeline programs — and another $20 million to $25 million to move preclinical programs toward clinical trials and support the company’s technology platform. The proceeds would also fund working capital and general corporate purposes, it said.
NexImmune expects net proceeds from the offering and existing cash would fund operations through the second quarter of 2022, it said in its filings. The company closed September with about $2 million in cash and cash equivalents, per SEC filings, and had raised a total $42.77 million in funding as of November 2019, according to PitchBook data.
The local company joins several others to recently debut on the public markets, including Rockville’s Sensei Biotherapeutics Inc. (NASDAQ: SNSE), which also joined the Nasdaq in February. It also includes Viela Bio Inc. (NASDAQ: VIE), which recently reached a deal to be acquired by Dublin’s Horizon Therapeutics (NASDAQ: HZNP) for $3.1 billion; Silver Spring’s Aziyo Biologics (NASDAQ: AZYO), which had its IPO in October; and Reston’s SOC Telemed (NASDAQ: TLMD), which went public in November through a merger with a blank-check company.
NexImmune, whose immunotherapy approach taps the body’s own T-cells, or white blood cells, to spark an immune response, has no products to market or revenue yet — similar to many biotechs in its stage of development. The biotech was founded in June 2011 and acquired in February 2017 by some of the biggest names in the pharmaceutical industry. That group was led by Dr. Sol Barer, chairman of Teva Pharmaceuticals (NYSE: TEVA) and co-founder and former CEO of Celgene.
Scott Carmer has been NexImmune's CEO since March 2018, after joining the company four years prior as its first chief business officer and later shifting to the chief operating officer slot. He’d previously led commercial operations at MedImmune, following posts at Genentech, Amgen (NASDAQ: AMGN) and GlaxoSmithKline (NYSE: GSK).
