Morphic Holding IPO: What You Need To Know

A biotech with licensing agreements with some of the big-name pharma companies such as AbbVie Inc ABBV and Johnson & Johnson JNJ's Janssen unit is testing the IPO waters this week.

IPO Terms

Waltham, Massachusetts-based Morphic Holding is offering 5 million shares in an IPO, with the price per share estimated in the range of $14-$16, according to its S-1/A filing dated June 14.

The size of the offering would be $75 million, assuming it is priced at the mid-point of the estimated price range.

The company has applied for listing its shares on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol MORF.

Jefferies, Cowen BMO Capital Markets and Wells Fargo Securities are the joint book-running managers for the offering.

The Company

Morphic, founded in August 2014, is a biopharma company developing a pipeline of oral small-molecule integrin therapeutics. Its Morphic integrin technology platform, or MInT Platform is used to develop novel product candidates designed to achieve the potency, high selectivity and pharmaceutical properties required for oral administration.

The company is advancing its preclinical pipeline, including:

• Lead wholly-owned program for alpha4beta7 specific integrin inhibitors affecting inflammation, into clinical development for treating inflammatory bowel disease
• Its most product candidate, MORF-720 into clinical development for the treatment of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis in collaboration with AbbVie

Morphic is planning to file an IND for its alpha4beta7 program and MORF-720 by the middle of 2020 and as early as the end of 2019, respectively.

The Finances

Morphic reported collaboration revenues of $3.36 million in fiscal year 2018 compared to no revenues in 2017. The company's net loss widened from $16.92 million to $23.83 million.

For the three months ended March, 2019, the company reported collaboration revenues of $6.07 million and a loss of $5.2 million.

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