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e-Therapeutics unveils fundraising plans to enable next stage of growth

Published: 07:32 08 Jul 2020 BST

e-Therapeutics PLC - e-Therapeutics unveils fundraising plans to enable next stage of growth

e-Therapeutics PLC (LON:ETX) has unveiled plans to raise up to £12.4mln to fund its “next stage of growth and value creation” by expanding its drug discovery platform and asset pipeline.

In an announcement after the close on Tuesday, the biopharmaceutical firm said it will raise £6.3mln of the total in a placing through the issue of around 52.8mln new shares at 12p each, a 30% discount to its Tuesday closing price.

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Meanwhile, the company also announced a subscription to raise around £2.8mln through the issue of 23.3mln new shares at the same price and a broker option to raise another £2.5mln.

The group also made a retail offer at the 12p price on the PrimaryBid platform to provide certain existing retail shareholders and other retail investors with an opportunity to participate in the fundraise. In an announcement on Wednesday morning, e-Therapeutics said the retail offer had raised £750,000 through the issue of 6.25mln shares.

e-Therapeutics said the proceeds of the combined fundraising will facilitate a number of initiatives including further development of the company’s informatics platform and building a proprietary platform for its RNAi technology.

The firm also said it plans to build and populate an internal pipeline of two to three early assets over the next 18 months, as well as expanding its team to support a scale-up of the business and relocating its head office in Oxford and opening a new base in London.

"I am excited by the potential of e-therapeutics' proprietary platform technologies to meaningfully transform and accelerate the drug discovery process, increasing the probability of bringing better therapies to market. The proposed fundraise will allow us to further invest in these and to expand our in-house capabilities and team. We believe that this will enable us to forge additional collaborations with leading biopharmaceutical companies”, e-Therapeutics executive chairman Ali Mortazavi said in a statement.

“It will also permit us to begin building our own pipeline against carefully selected targets, which could accrue, over time, significant additional value for the company and generate out-licensing opportunities. In particular, and as we have recently stated, we believe RNAi is a key modality that is well suited to our business and we will use part of the funds raised to explore translating our learnings from GAINs outcomes into targeted therapeutic strategies using this approach. We are grateful for the support of our existing and new shareholders and look forward to delivering value from our platform", the chairman added.

e-Therapeutics present at the Proactive One2One Investor Forum - October 26th

Ali Mortazavi, CEO of e-Therapeutics PLC (AIM:ETX, OTCQX:ETXPF), addressed the challenges of traditional drug discovery, emphasising its high risk, extensive timeline, and considerable cost at the Proactive One2One Investor Forum. Underlining the inefficiencies of this model, Mortazavi posed...

on 1/11/23