Another fledgling biopharma company with hedge fund and other venture capital investors is planning to go public in what is otherwise a very quiet initial public offering environment. It is not clear, however, when the company will follow through on the offering.
BioAge Labs is gearing up for its IPO in the face of the stock market’s huge, broad selloff on Tuesday and heightened volatility since mid-July. The company is a clinical-stage biopharmaceuticals company developing therapeutic products for metabolic diseases like obesity by targeting the biology of human aging, according to the offering. “Our technology platform and differentiated human data sets enable us to identify promising targets based on insights into molecular changes that drive aging,” it states in its public filing. BioAge has not disclosed the number of shares it is seeking to sell or the stock price it hopes to secure.
Several blue-chip VC names are significant investors in the company, including Andreessen Horowitz, Khosla Ventures, and Kaiser Permanente. Two hedge funds also own more than 5 percent of the shares before the offering: RA Capital Management (5.8 percent) and Cormorant Asset Management (5.22 percent).
Both hedge fund firms invested in just one financing round, which took place in February. They participated in the company’s oversubscribed Series D financing round of $170 million, led by Sofinnova Investments, according to a press release at the time. Other investors in the deal included hedge fund RTW Investments, which is not a 5 percent owner.
In the Series D financing, RA Capital shelled out about $20 million for 5,848,636 shares of Series D preferred stock and Cormorant paid about $18 million for 5,263,772 shares. The firm’s hedge fund and VC fund participated in the deal.
BioAge is the second biopharma company in the past week to file plans to go public. Institutional Investor reported last week that Bicara Therapeutics, a clinical-stage biopharmaceuticals company focused on transformative therapies for patients with solid tumors, disclosed in a regulatory filing its intention to go public. RA Capital is by far the largest hedge fund investor in the company, holding 15 percent of the shares before the offering, per the filing.
Just seven companies went public in August, according to Renaissance Capital. Four are currently in the black, led by JBDI Holdings, a Singapore-based supplier of new and reconditioned steel and plastic drums. It is up about 150 percent since its IPO.
Biopharma Actuate Therapeutics is essentially flat since going public. The three companies in the red are each down between 15 percent and 40 percent, Renaissance says.