Syncona Ltd (LON: SYNC), a leading healthcare company focused on founding, building and funding global leaders in life science, has noted that its portfolio company, Autolus Therapeutics plc today announced the pricing of its underwritten public offering in the United States of 7,250,000 American Depositary Shares representing 7,250,000 ordinary shares, at a public offering price of $11.00 per ADS, for total gross proceeds of approximately $80.0 million (£60.7 million). All ADSs sold in the offering were offered by Autolus. Autolus also granted the underwriters a 30-day option to purchase up to an additional 1,087,500 ADSs at the public offering price, less underwriting discounts and commissions.
Syncona Ltd has agreed to invest $15.0 million (£11.4 million1) in the offering. Following the offering, Syncona retains a stake of approximately 28.3% in Autolus (amounting to 15,955,734 ordinary shares) which was valued at £151.4 million at close of business on 22 January 2020.
Martin Murphy, Chief Executive Officer of Syncona Investment Management Limited and Director of Autolus, said, “Autolus has delivered promising data in its AUTO1 adult ALL programme and we are delighted to continue to back the business as it looks to commence its pivotal programme in this indication in the first half of 2020 and deliver on its ambition to take product to market. We believe the business is well positioned to continue to develop its exciting pipeline of next generation T cell therapies and look forward to seeing further data from the AUTO3 programme in DLBCL in H2 2020, which will enable Autolus to make its decision on further clinical development, including Phase 2 initiation.”
