What happened
Mere days after enjoying a major stock price pop, Intellia Therapeutics (NTLA -0.84%) had another good day on Wednesday. The gene-editing specialist's shares closed almost 7% higher on news of its latest capital-raising move.
So what
Intellia announced after market close on Tuesday that it is floating a public offering of nearly 4.14 million shares of its common stock. These are to be priced at $145 per share. The issue's underwriters have been granted a 30-day option to buy up to an additional 620,689 shares.
Intellia said the offering should close on or about this Friday, July 2.
Image source: Getty Images.
In a regulatory filing, the company wrote that, "We intend to use the net proceeds from this offering to advance the clinical development of our lead programs, other pipeline candidates and the continued investment in our modular platform as well as for working capital, and other general corporate purposes."
All told, the company should earn gross proceeds of over $600 million from the issue. As of the end of March, it had approximately the same amount of cash, equivalents, and marketable securities on its books.
Now what
Intellia is a healthcare sector darling at the moment, thanks to the highly promising interim clinical trial results of its pioneering gene therapy treatment NTLA-2001 that were published last week. With the capital raise -- which, by the way, isn't overly dilutive -- the company is sensibly riding its recent popularity and share-price surge to raise some ever-needed cash.
