Life sciences firm announces £11.4m share placing
Life sciences firm Avacta has announced a proposed share placing and subscription to raise proceeds £11.4m.
The Wetherby-based company is planning to use the £11.4m raised to enter into significant drug development partnerships, develop its Affimer therapeutic pipeline, license Affimer reagents and seek to achieve a clinic ready candidate for first-in-man trials of its bispecific therapy.
It intends to deploy the funds to invest into the therapeutic pre-clinical and clinical programmes and to seek to grow the recurring revenue from the reagents business.
Around £6.2m of the funds will be invested in theraputics, £3.3m in the reagents, £2.6m in research and development and £1m on capex and intellectual property costs.
The placing will be conducted by way of an accelerated bookbuild process and also a placing of ordinary shares to be admitted to trading on AIM on Friday 3 August.
finnCap is acting as Nominated Adviser and Joint Broker, alongside WG Partners and Turner Pope, who will also be acting as joint brokers in connection with the placing.
Richard Naish, Edward Ainscoe and Christopher Stanton from the corporate team at Walker Morris provided legal advice to Avacta. Naish, corporate partner, said: “Avacta is a long-standing client of Walker Morris and we have worked with them on a number of key developments over the years. We are delighted to have been able to work with them on this latest placing which will aim to provide additional funding to support the growth strategy and ensure continued market leading development.”
