On April 21, 2023 PharmaEssentia Corporation (TPEx:6446, LuxSE: PHECA, PHECR), a leading fully integrated biopharmaceutical company in Taiwan, reported the closing of its Global Depositary Receipt (GDR) offering of 34,000,000 shares of common stock at US$13.61 per share, generating US$462.7 million (Press release, PharmaEssentia, APR 21, 2023, View Source [SID1234630392]).
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"This marks the largest global health care GDR offering to date in 2023 and reflects confidence in the market opportunity for our approved product and the potential of our pipeline," said Ko-Chung Lin, Ph.D., Founder and Chief Executive Officer, PharmaEssentia.
The 34,000,000 Global Depositary Shares (GDS) represented approximately 10% of total issued and outstanding shares of PharmaEssentia after the offering and were priced at a 5.8% discount to the closing price on the Taipei Exchange (TPEx) of NT$440.5 on April 13, 2023. The GDS were listed on the Luxembourg Stock Exchange (LuxSE) under the ticker symbols PHECA and PHECR.
"PharmaEssentia is pursuing growth in four areas: further penetration of BESREMi (ropeginterferon alfa-2b-njft) in key global markets, including the United States, Japan, South Korea and Europe; geographically expanding BESREMi beyond the countries where it is currently approved; developing additional indications for BESREMi in solid tumors; and advancing a pipeline of new long-acting cytokines, immunotherapy candidates and innovative cell therapies," added Dr. Lin. "This strategy coupled with the company’s strengths in R&D, production, manufacturing, and global commercialization proved attractive to many foreign investors. Demand for PharmaEssentia’s GDS was three times greater than the number of shares offered. The success of our oversubscribed offering will fuel our growth strategy and position us to pursue critical development efforts over the next several years. We believe the strong interest in our offering affirms our strategy and potential."
About BESREMi (ropeginterferon alfa-2b-njft)
BESREMi is an innovative monopegylated, long-acting interferon. With its unique pegylation technology, BESREMi has a long duration of activity in the body and is aimed to be administered once every two weeks (or every four weeks with hematological stability for at least one year), allowing dosing that helps meet the individual needs of patients. BESREMi has orphan drug designation for the treatment of polycythemia vera (PV) in adults in the United States. The product was approved by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) in 2019, in the United States in 2021, and has recently received approval in Japan. The drug candidate was invented by PharmaEssentia and the drug substance is manufactured in the company’s Taichung plant, which was cGMP certified by TFDA in 2017 and by EMA in January 2018. PharmaEssentia retains full global intellectual property rights for the product in all indications. BESREMi was approved with a boxed warning for risk of serious disorders including aggravation of neuropsychiatric, autoimmune, ischemic and infectious disorders.
Please see full Prescribing Information, including Boxed Warning.