SHANGHAI – Cayman-registered Hutchison China Meditech Ltd. has updated its SEC F-1 filing for a third time since it announced its intention to go public in the U.S. under the stock ticker HCM. There is a wealth of financial and scientific data to pore over, as one of China’s first biotechs Hutchison has a multipronged business that includes 19 active studies for seven clinical-stage therapies for oncology and immunological diseases, licensing deals with big pharma and diversified commercial operations for prescription and OTC drugs. But the one item still missing from the prospectus is a share price.

The company has reason to be cautious in setting the price. The U.S. market has taken a tumble and even biotechs, the darlings of the IPO world, have been hard hit. (See BioWorld Today, Feb. 8, 2016.)

The first company to go public on Nasdaq in 2016 was another Chinese biotech, Beigene Ltd., which announced its intention to raise $100 million at the same time as Hutchison back in October.

Beigene listed on Feb. 3 and started strong, closing at $28.32 its first day, an increase of 18 percent, and rising to $33.91 after two more days. But at the close of Feb. 12, the shares had fallen to $23.98, well below the initial price. Beigene’s current market cap is $527.56 million.

In Beigene’s case, the firm had strong insider support with an interest to buy 50 percent or more of the stock. (See BioWorld Today, Jan. 25, 2016, and Feb. 4, 2016.)

But Hutchison may be in a different boat.

Unlike most biotechs in China, Hutchison is not venture capital-backed. Instead, it receives support from its parent, CK Hutchison Holdings, which helps the company to secure loans and is listed on the AIM market of the London Stock Exchange, where it is the fourth largest company by market cap. Hutchison also has a mix of revenue-generating businesses it uses to offset its extensive R&D costs – having invested $330 million in 14 years – that include three joint ventures with a sales force of 1,800 reps selling dozens of lower-cost, higher-volume drugs.

(CK Hutchison Holdings, a recently merged conglomerate listed in Hong Kong with a market cap of $45 billion, owns 64.9 percent of the biotech’s share capital; its chairman, Li Ka-shing, is often referred to as Asia’s richest man.)

Even with a thriving commercial business, the company’s future rests on bringing its pipeline to patients. In describing the pipeline, Hutchison stated, “we believe our current drug candidates, such as savolitinib [targeting c-Met] and HMPL-523 [targeting Syk], have the potential to be global first-in-class therapies, or, as in the cases of fruquintinib [targeting VEGFR1/2/3], sulfatinib [targeting VEGFR/FGFR1], epitinib [targeting EGFRm+ with brain metastasis] and HMPL-689 [targeting PI3K], are sufficiently differentiated to potentially be global best-in-class, next-generation therapies with a superior profile compared to existing approved drugs that act against the relevant kinase targets.”

The liquidity a public listing offers will be important for Hutchison to further finance its extensive clinical trial ambitions.

With 19 studies ongoing, there are plans to initiate a further six trials in the first quarter of this year. The company is currently enrolling patients for three phase III trials, with a fourth phase III trial expected to kick off shortly.

Those trials are being conducted in Australia – Hutchison pioneered the strategy, now frequently adopted by Chinese biotechs, to go to Australia to collect first-in-human data, sidestepping China’s slow approval times – and have expanded to China, the U.S. and globally.

Of the seven clinical-stage drug candidates – focused on kinases believed to be sufficiently differentiated with reduced off-target toxicity and potency to be potentially be best-in-class therapies – five have achieved proof of concept with good outcomes achieved in phase Ib/II studies.

Hutchison has come so far, in part, due to partnerships with global players.

While four candidates are wholly owned, three are partnered, with Astrazeneca plc, Eli Lilly and Co. and Nestle Health Science SA.