Hedge Funds Eye Biopharma IPO

These prominent firms previously participated in the company’s financings.

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Illustration by II

For the first time in more than a month, a biopharma company with hedge fund shareholders is gearing up to go public this week.

Boundless Bio disclosed in an updated regulatory filing that it plans to sell 6.25 million shares of common stock for $15 to $17 per share. The company describes itself as a clinical-stage oncology company focused on patients with oncogene-amplified tumors.

By far the largest hedge fund investor is RA Capital Management, which already owns 11.7 percent of the shares and aims to own 8.4 percent of the total after the company goes public. In April 2021, the hedge fund firm bought 20 million shares of Series B convertible preferred stock; two years later, it purchased more than 16.4 million shares of Series C convertible preferred stock. The shares were acquired by RA Capital Healthcare Fund, the firm’s hedge fund, and RA Capital Nexus Fund II, one of the venture capital funds.

One of Boundless Bio’s directors is Fabio Pucci, who worked as an associate and senior associate at RA Capital from October 2019 to September 2021.

Several other hedge funds have previously made investments in Boundless Bio, but they don’t show up on the company list of 5 percent owners in a regulatory filing connected to the offering. They include Surveyor Capital, a Citadel company, and Redmile Group, which both participated in the Series B and Series C financing rounds, according to earlier company press releases.

A handful of biopharma companies have gone public this year, with mixed results.

In early February, Kyverna Therapeutics went public at $22 a share. Since then, the stock is up nearly 7 percent. Several entities affiliated with RTW Investments together owned 5.3 percent of the shares before the offering, per an earlier regulatory filing.

The following day, Telomir Therapeutics went public at $7 a share. The stock has since fallen about 17 percent. The company did not have hedge fund or other outside investors, however.

One of the most successful biopharma IPOs in some time has been CG Oncology. Its shares, which went public in January at $19 a share — above the anticipated price range of $16 to $18 — have doubled, to more than $41. No hedge fund was listed in the offering documents as an owner of at least 5 percent of the shares before the IPO. But RA Capital Management apparently held a smaller stake given that it had participated in CG Oncology’s $105 million financing round back in August 2023 and the $120 million Series E financing round in November 2022. RA Capital also took part in last year’s financing.

ArriVent Biopharma, a Phase 3 biotech developing a novel kinase inhibitor for EGFR-mutated lung cancer, is down slightly since its IPO on January 25, at $18 per share. It had earlier topped out at $22.75.