Maravai IPO: What Investors Should Know About Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine Partner

Maravai Life Sciences Holdings MRVI will hit the public markets with perfect timing as it sees its mRNA product used by COVID-19 vaccine makers.

The Offering: Maravai Life Sciences plans on selling 50 million shares at a price point of $24 to $27.

About Maravai: The company has over 5000 customers, including the top 20 global biotechnology companies. Maravai operates in the life sciences, development of drug therapies, diagnostics and vaccine markets.

Related Link: 4 Biotech Companies Working on RNA Therapies

MRNA Partner: Maravai’s CleanCap technology is used to stabilize mRNA. The company believes its upcoming plasmid DNA products will be used as a template for the production of its RNA products.

“Our proprietary capabilities and products underpin the value we aim to provide to our customers. We are experts in RNA and mRNA products, which are challenging and often unstable molecules,” the filing said.

CleanCap is the leading solution to ensure stability for mRNA and has over 100 customers. These customers include Pfizer Inc PFE and BioNTech SE BNTX for their COVID-19 vaccine.

Maravai’s CleanCap is also used by Fosun Pharma and CureVac CVAC. The filing says five of the 26 COVID-19 vaccine trials with mRNA use CleanCap.

Financials: For the first nine months of 2020, 64% of revenue came from supporting vaccines and therapies. Thirty-nine percent of the nine-month revenue came from mRNA research.

Total revenue for the first nine months rose 73% year-over-year to $185.7 million. Net income was $64.3 million for the first nine months of 2020.