Iovance Biotherapeutics Inc (NASDAQ:IOVA) saw its shares smacked down Thursday morning, after reporting a $500-million proposed public offering of common stock.
The company, based in San Carlos, Calif., went on to say all of the shares in the offering are to be sold by Iovance. Iovance intends to grant the underwriters a 30-day option to purchase up to $75 million of additional shares of common stock at the public offering price, less the underwriting discounts and commissions.
Iovance intends to use the proceeds from this offering to fund the expansion of its organization to support the potential commercial launch of lifileucel for advanced melanoma and LN-145 for advanced cervical cancer, to initiate a program directed at registration of Iovance’s tumor infiltrating lymphocyte therapies in non-small cell lung cancer, to continue support of ongoing commercial manufacturing activities, and for the development of Iovance’s IL-2 analog, IOV-3001, and for other general corporate purposes.
Additional indications or TIL products may be explored with the use of proceeds.
The company is a late-stage biotechnology company developing novel T cell-based cancer immunotherapies (tumor-infiltrating lymphocyte, TIL and peripheral-blood lymphocyte, PBL).
IOVA shares were pummeled $4.19, or 11%, to $33.90, about an hour into the trading day.
