Naarden, May 22, 2017
We are pleased to announce that our portfolio company argenx (Euronext Brussels: ARGX) has successfully been listed on the NASDAQ stock exchange, raising well over $100 million from selling 5.9 million new shares at $17.00 per share and from subsequently exercising the underwriters’ overallotment option to purchase 879,750 additional American Depositary Shares (“ADSs”).
This option exercise brings the anticipated total gross proceeds from the Offering to approximately $114.7 million from the sale of an aggregate of 6,744,750 ADSs. Each of the ADSs offered represents the right to receive one ordinary share. The shares are trading on the NASDAQ Global Select Market under the ticker symbol “ARGX”.
Forbion co-led the company’s Series A financing round and is still one of the company’s largest shareholders. In addition, Forbion’s portfolio company Staten Biotech has a strategic collaboration with argenx around ARGX-116, an APOC3 binding antibody targeting dyslipidemia.
Since our original investment in 2009, the company has grown from three to sixty-five employees and currently has a broad pipeline of proprietary (pre-)clinical therapeutic antibody drugs targeting both oncology and severe autoimmune diseases and has several strategic collaborations with among others Abbvie, Shire and Leo. Argenx is a great example of Forbion’s approach of identifying unique platform technologies and helping to build significant companies out of these and maintaining a close relationship with its founders over time.
About Forbion Capital Partners
Forbion Capital Partners is a dedicated life sciences venture capital firm with offices in The Netherlands and Germany. Forbion invests in life sciences companies in the pharmaceutical, as well as the medical device space. Forbion’s investment team has built an impressive performance track record since the late nineties with successful investments in multiple companies. With the new FCFIII fund, Forbion manages well over EUR 700M across six funds, including the new fund FCF III. Its investors include the EIF, through its European Recovery Programme (ERP), LfA and Dutch Venture Initiative (DVI) facilities and the KFW through the ERP – Venture Capital Fondsfinanzierung facility. Forbion also operates a joint venture with BioGeneration Ventures, who manage three separate seed and early stage funds focused on Benelux. www.forbion.com
About argenx
Argenx is a clinical-stage biotechnology company developing a deep pipeline of differentiated antibody-based therapies for the treatment of severe autoimmune diseases and cancer. The company is focused on developing product candidates with the potential to be either first-in-class against novel targets or best-in-class against known, but complex, targets in order to treat diseases with a significant unmet medical need. Its ability to execute on this focus is enabled by our suite of differentiated technologies. It’s SIMPLE Antibody(TM) Platform, based on the powerful llama immune system, allows argenx to exploit novel and complex targets, and its three antibody engineering technologies are designed to enable the company to expand the therapeutic index of its product candidates.
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For further information please contact:
Forbion Capital Partners
Sander Slootweg
Managing Partner
P: +31 (0) 35 699 3015
E: Sander.Slootweg@forbion.com
