The cancer drug developer and Stanford spinout floated at the top of its range in an offering that could reach $129m.

Forty Seven, a US-based immuno-oncology drug developer spun out from Stanford University, has raised just over $112m in an initial public offering on the Nasdaq Global Select Market. The company priced just over 7 million shares each at the top of the IPO’s $14 to $16 range. It opened at $15.31 on its first day of trading on Thursday before closing at $16.00 the following day. Founded in 2015, Forty Seven is working on checkpoint therapies intended to treat cancer by blocking a signal molecule known as CD47 which is overexpressed in cancer cells. Forty Seven’s lead product candidate, 5F9, is being developed to work on its own or with other treatments, and has entered six phase 1b/2 clinical trials. Between $60m and $65m of the IPO proceeds will fund phase 1 and 2 trials for the drug. Up to $5m more will support trials for an antibody candidate known as FSI-189 with the aim of enabling an investigational new drug application, while $6m will go to licensing costs as Forty Seven looks to access more intellectual property. Forty Seven’s series A round closed at $74.8m in March 2017 according to the IPO filing, and included GV, a subsidiary of internet technology group Alphabet, as well as Lightspeed Venture Partners, Sutter Hill Ventures and Clarus Ventures. Wellington Management Company subsequently led a $75m series B round for the company in October 2017 that included GV and the other series A participants. GV’s stake was diluted from 6.7% to 5.2% in the offering. Lightspeed invested $7.5m in the offering and came out with a 14.8% share, down from 16.8%, while Sutter Hill bought $3m and has a 13.5% stake post-IPO. Clarus Lifesciences bought 200,000 shares and has a 12.7% share, and Wellington Management’s stake was diluted from 8.8% to 6.8%. Morgan Stanley, Credit Suisse Securities (USA), Canaccord Genuity, BTIG and Oppenheimer are the underwriters for the offering. They have a 30-day option to buy almost 1.1 million more shares, taking the size of the offering to more than $129m.

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