Centessa Pharmaceuticals to Go Public This Week—IPO Date and Price

Centessa Pharmaceuticals is poised to go public on the Nasdaq Global Select Market this week. This clinical-stage company in the pharmaceutical industry aims to discover, develop, and deliver new medicines to help patients.

Centessa Pharmaceuticals is a holding firm for programs developing various treatments. It owns ten asset-centric companies that are developing treatments in oncology, hematology, immunology/inflammation, neuroscience, hepatology, pulmonology, and nephrology. Its companies have issued a total of 173 patents.

Centessa Pharmaceuticals is going public with an IPO on the Nasdaq Global Select. Its offering is for 1.5 million more shares than originally planned at the beginning of the week. The company is being priced at the high end of the proposed $18 to $20 price range.

The lead book runners on the Centessa IPO transaction are Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, Jefferies, and Evercore ISI, according to BusinessWire.

According to a Fierce Biotech report, the largest portion of the proceeds ($110 million) of the Centessa IPO and cash will go towards developing lixivaptan, which will undergo a Phase 3 safety study and pivotal trials. The drug will be used to treat autosomal dominant polycystic kidney disease. It's the drug that has progressed the farthest among Centessa’s clinical programs.

The Phase 2 clinical trials for a skin cancer treatment, imgatuzumab, will receive about $60 million of the funds.

Medicxi formed Centessa Pharmaceuticals in October 2020 to be a holding company of multiple “pre-revenue, development-stage biotech companies.” In the company’s SEC filing, it noted that it might not be able to secure enough funding to fully develop the treatments and products in its pipeline.

According to Fierce Biotech, Centessa had $320 million in total assets as of March 31. The net proceeds of the IPO combined with the IPO proceeds are expected to bring the company through its operations until the midpoint of 2023.

Centessa is offering 16.5 million of its ADS (American depositary shares) at a stock price of $20 apiece on the public market. According to Renaissance Capital, this represents the pricing at the high end of the company’s original proposed IPO price range to raise $330 million.

Since the company offered 1.5 million more shares than anticipated, Contessa’s proceeds from the offering were 16 percent higher than anticipated. The net proceeds were originally expected to be $256.4 million on 15 million ordinary shares. Contessa Pharmaceuticals will now have a fully diluted market valuation of $1.9 billion.

The listing date for Centessa Pharmaceuticals is May 28. This is when Centessa will commence trading on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the new ticker symbol "CNTA." The closing date for the IPO will be June 2.

After Centessa is fully listed on the Nasdaq Global Select Market, interested investors will be able to buy shares of its ADS using the ticker symbol “CNTA.”