China’s VC-backed CanSino raises $748m in Star Market IPO
Chinese vaccine developer CanSino Biologics, which counts Lily Asia Ventures (LAV) and Qiming Venture Partners among its investors, has raised RMB5.2 billion ($748 million) in an IPO on Shanghai’s Star Market.
CanSino sold 24.8 million shares at RMB209 apiece, with the portion allocated to public investors in an online subscription nearly 3,000 times oversubscribed. The stock opened at RMB470 on August 13 before falling back to close at RMB393, an 87% premium to the IPO price. The company now has a market capitalization of about RMB86.6 billion.
The company is co-developing a COVID-19 vaccine, Ad5-nCov, with a research unit of the Chinese military. A phase three trial is expected to start in the near term. Last month, it said the results of the a phase two trial, tested on 508 healthy adults, were positive.
According to AVCJ Research, LAV invested $10 million in CanSino in 2013 and then returned, alongside Qiming, with a $30 million commitment two years later. SDIC Fund Management, a GP under China’s State Development & Investment Corporation, led a $65 million round in 2017. Previous backers also include Gopher Asset Management, Fortune Capital, and Goldstone Investment.
CanSino was founded in 2009 by a group of overseas-trained Chinese scientists who had previously worked for the likes of Sanofi Pasteur and Wyeth Pharmaceuticals. The company has been unprofitable for the past three years, with its loss widening 13.3% during 2019 to RMB156.8 million, according to a prospectus.
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