A company that invests in marketed and late-stage drugs and that filed to go public last month is now raising the stakes, aiming for what would be the biggest initial public offering of the year so far.
New York-based Royalty Pharma on Monday filed a Form S-1/A with the Securities and Exchange Commission stating that it plans to raise up to $2.254 billion in its IPO. The company had said in a May S-1 filing that it planned to raise $100 million.
The company, which buys royalties for drugs, would trade on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol RPRX. J.P. Morgan, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America Securities, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, UBS Investment Bank, Evercore ISI, Cowen and Suntrust Robinson Humphrey are the book runners for the IPO.
Royalty’s portfolio includes drugs made by Takeda, Eli Lilly, Novartis, Johnson & Johnson, Gilead Sciences, Roche and also smaller companies like Epizyme, Immunomedics and others. The drugs, which include both approved and pre-approval products, encompass indications across areas like oncology, rare diseases, lysosomal storage disorders, autoimmune disorders and more common ailments like migraine.
The news closely follows the biggest IPO thus far for the year in biotech, Nanjing, China-based Legend Biotech’s nearly $424 million debut on the Nasdaq, which occurred on Friday.
Depositary shares of Legend, under the ticker symbol LEGN, were trading on the Nasdaq at more than $36 each as of Tuesday morning.
Legend’s IPO followed the presentation at the American Society of Clinical Oncology of positive early data from the Phase Ib/II CARTITUDE-1 clinical trial of JNJ-4528, a CAR-T therapy for the blood cancer multiple myeloma. Johnson & Johnson in-licensed the therapy, previously developed under the name LCAR-B38M, and changed its manufacturing process.
Data from the study showed a 100% overall response rate among 29 patients, nearly all of whom achieved at least a very good partial response. Numerous other therapies under development for multiple myeloma using the same antigen target, BCMA, also had data presented at ASCO, including Bristol-Myers Squibb and bluebird bio’s idecabtagene vicleucel, BMS’ orvacabtagene autoleucel and several antibody-based therapies, including from J&J and GlaxoSmithKline.
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