Moderna Therapeutics files for IPO with $500mn placeholder

Moderna Therapeutics Inc, a biotechnology company valued at $7bn in a private funding this year, has filed to go public in the US.

The Cambridge, Massachusetts-based company listed the size of its initial public offering as $500mn, typically a placeholder amount used to calculate fees.

The company, which plans to list as Moderna Inc, had about 96mn shares outstanding as of September 30, according its filing on Friday with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

Moderna is one of the most highly watched biotech unicorns, having raised more than $2.6bn as a private company and commanding a valuation of $7bn in a $500mn round in February. Startups that study drugs typically have to go public earlier in their corporate life cycles to fund their research operations. Moderna was for years one of the few exceptions to that rule, raising private funding rounds that dwarfed typical financings.

The company plans to use proceeds from a share sale to fund drug discovery and clinical development, according to its filing.

For the nine months ended September 30, Moderna lost $243mn on revenue of $100mn, compared with a net loss of $218mn on $114mn in revenue for the same period last year.

The banks leading the offering include Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs Group Inc and JPMorgan Chase & Co. The company plans to list its shares on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the symbol MRNA.

This year, 75 biotechnology companies have gone public worldwide, raising almost $6.8bn, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

The largest of them was Innovent Biologics Inc’s HK$3.3bn ($421mn) Hong Kong IPO in October. Only four biotech listings in previous years have topped Innnovent’s.

The company is researching how to make personalised cancer vaccines using messenger-RNA, a nucleic acid. Moderna, established in 2010, has one program in the second phase of clinical development, nine in the first phase, and 11 in earlier research stages.

It has strategic alliances with other drugmakers including AstraZeneca Plc, Merck & Co and Vertex Pharmaceuticals Inc, according to its filing.