Crisis, what crisis? Biocorp happy with IPO which it says will help win Big Pharma customers
The French delivery technology firm said the initial public offering (IPO) on Paris’ Alternext exchange had attracted both institutional and private backers. Investors paid €9.25 euros per share for a total of 957,867 shares.
A spokeswoman told us the “economic uncertainty” comment referred to the Greek crisis's impact on the European markets, explaining that: “Definitely, the crisis impacted the market and more money would have been raised without the crisis but Biocorp wanted to raise €8m”
She contrasted this with poorer results of "other companies on the IPO ramp at the same time" which she said indicated that "the BioCorp story is solid.”
Big Pharma
When Biocorp CEO Jacques Gardette announced the firm's intention to list last month he said going public would help attract Big Pharma drug delivery technology customers, citing the DataPen platform for diabetes drugs as a likely beneficiary.
“One to two years ahead of its competitors, DataPen has all the necessary qualities to convince pharmaceutical laboratories to sign partnership agreements and then impose itself as a reference in the treatment of chronic diseases” Gardette said in June.
A company spokeswoman reiterated this in the context of the IPO, telling us “Biocorp’s development model is based on in-house innovations, which are later subject to commercial agreements of pharmaceutical laboratories or from their suppliers” adding that the firm “intends to keep intellectual property and manufacturing.”
Biocorp already counts Sanofi Pasteur – the vaccines development unit of French drug firm Sanofi – as a customer and has also recently signed contracts with Nuova Ompi, a subsidiary of the Italian group Stevanato and the Japanese company Nipro.
The firm's shares will begin trading on the Alternext exchange on Friday.