Helicos BioSciences lowers IPO price, raises $48.6M, then sags further
Helicos BioSciences, a Cambridge, Mass., maker of high-speed genome-sequencing equipment, raised $48.6 million in an IPO, well under the $81 million it had hoped to raise. My earlier item on the Helicos IPO is here.
Helicos is the latest biotechnology company to find itself at the mercy of unforgiving IPO investors. The company cut its estimated per-share offering range to $10 to $11 from its earlier estimate of $13 to $15, then found itself forced to price the shares at $9. It did, however, manage to sell all 5.4 million shares it had intended to offer. Adding insult to injury, the stock has slumped ever since the offering, falling to a recent low of $8.40 earlier today.
Helicos plans to offer its first product, a rapid single-molecule sequencer called HeliScope, later this year. (Hat tip: VentureWire.) The company’s IPO release is here.
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About the Author, David P. Hamilton
David Hamilton has been writing for VentureBeat LifeScience since April 2007. He formerly spent 14 years as a reporter for the Wall Street Journal in its San Francisco and Tokyo bureaus. Prior to that, he spent several years as a reporter at Science Magazine and as a reporter/researcher for the New Republic, both in Washington.