Shares in Oxford Nanopore Technologies PLC jumped to 610p midmorning after the company began trading on the London Stock Exchange with an initial public offer price of 425 pence per share, giving it a market capitalisation of £3.4bn.
The company, which is developing a new generation of nanopore-based sensing technology, said it plans to issue approximately 82.4mln new shares, raising around £350mln.
Gordon Sanghera, chief executive officer of Oxford Nanopore, said: "We are living on the cusp of the genomic era. I believe that our unique technology will open up many new possibilities for positive impact, both through enabling new discoveries in scientific research, and through more accessible, faster, richer biological insights in health, agriculture, food and understanding environments."
"Our focus remains on continuing to innovate, grow, and working towards our goal of enabling the analysis of anything, by anyone, anywhere. This IPO brings us a step closer to being able to fulfil that ambition."
In a separate statement, Oxford Nanopore backer IP Group PLC (LSE:IPO) said proceeds from the sale of part of its holding in Oxford Nanopore totalled £84mln. IP Group will spend £15mln of these proceeds buy back of its own shares.
Following the sale, IP Group holds 10.3% of Oxford Nanopore, which is the third 'unicorn' with a $1bn-plus valuation to emerge from IP Group’s investments, after Ceres Power and Hinge Health.
Alan Aubrey, IP Group's chief executive, noted that the company helped found Oxford Nanopore in 2005 and he was pleased to see it "has gone from strength to strength”.
Analyst Seb Skeet at Third Bridge said it is "one of the most exciting London IPOs this year".
He said the company’s underlying nanopore technology "works differently to current next-generation sequencing technology" and the accuracy of its long-read technology is fast approaching that of US$60bn Illumina (NASDAQ:ILMN) Inc.
By passing DNA or RNA through electrically charged 'pores' with each combination of bases causing a characteristic electric signal that can be decoded, Oxford Nanopore's process leads to cheaper and faster sequencing and allows for both short-read and long-read sequencing, adaptive sampling and real-time analysis, among other factors, Skeet explains, with the company launching new products and improving accuracy almost on a quarterly basis in recent years.
"The accuracy of Oxford Nanopore’s long-read technology is fast approaching that of Illumina (NASDAQ:ILMN)’s. There are some nuances, especially when considering specific types of variation, but from what we hear from our experts, should their long-read technology become as accurate as Illumina’s short-read, this would be a 'game-changer'. Illumina themselves recognise this as they historically tried, and failed, to acquire Oxford Nanopore’s long-read competitor Pacific Biosciences."