Henlius falls short of IPO goal, but still rakes in $410M on HKEX

Last week, Shanghai Henlius Biotech teed up for a $477 million IPO on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. It fell a little short when it priced on Wednesday, ultimately bagging $410 million, but still made the top five biopharma IPOs so far this year. 

It is Hong Kong’s first major listing since that of Jinshang Bank in July, according to Bloomberg, and the first biopharma listing since Hansoh’s $1 billion debut in June. Henlius’ debut also comes amid antigovernment protests over an extradition bill that has since been withdrawn.

The company earmarked 40% of the proceeds for the clinical development, regulatory filing and registration of its “Core Products,” according to a filing with the HKEX. These include HLX02, a Herceptin biosimilar in phase 3 and HLX04, an Avastin biosimilar in phase 3 for metastatic colorectal cancer. Henlius is also testing HLX04 in combination with HLX10, an anti-PD-1 antibody, in non-small cell lung cancer and liver cancer. 

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The rest of the proceeds will support the development of other biosimilars, as well as drug programs discovered at Henlius, including those targeting VEGF, EGFR and PD-L1. 

“We are currently conducting clinical trials of HLX06, HLX07, HLX10 and HLX20 and will further explore immuno-oncology combination therapies using immune checkpoint inhibitor such as PD-1/PD-L1 drugs,” Henlius said in the filing.

“We believe that the successful development and commercialisation of these products and therapies are key to our long-term sustainable development following the expected launch of our Core Products. As all of our CoreProducts have reached late-stage development in Phase 3 clinical trials or later, we believe that it is reasonable to allocate a significant portion of the expected net proceeds to the development of our other pipeline products and therapies,” the company said.