Medical Device Daily Executive Editor

Fluidigm (South San Francisco) has entered this year's shallow initial public offering waters, filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission for an IPO of its common stock.

The number of shares to be offered, all to be sold by the company, and the price range have not yet been determined but set a figure of $86.3 million to calculate a registration fee.

Fluidigm manufactures Integrated Fluidic Circuit (IFC) systems for life science research that integrate liquid handling functions on a nanoliter scale to perform assays with minute volumes of reagents and samples.

The company says that its IFCs "can meter, combine, diffuse, fold, mix, separate or pump nanoliter volumes of fluids with precise control and reproducibility, many thousands of times — all in parallel on a single chip." This allows its customers "to perform thousands of sophisticated biochemical measurements on samples smaller than the content of a single cell, with minute volumes of reagents, in half the area of a credit card."

Product applications include its BioMark system for gene expression analysis, genotyping and digital PCR, and its Topaz system for protein crystallization.

The company said it will use the proceeds from the offering to grow its sales force, commercialize its products, continue R&D, expand its facilities and manufacturing operations and for working capital and other general corporate purposes. It said it may also use some proceeds for future acquisitions.

As of Dec. 29, 2007, the company had an accumulated deficit of $133.8 million, primarily the result of R&D costs. And it says that it expects that "selling, general and administrative expenses will increase due to the additional operational and reporting costs associated with being a public company."

In 2007, Fluidigm's loss widened to $25.5 million, from $23.6 million in the prior year. The company's revenue increased to $7.3 million, from $6.4 million in 2006.

Fluidigm acknowledged that it expects to incur losses for the foreseeable future and that it has identified significant deficiencies in its internal control regarding financial reporting.

Among risks cited by the company in its SEC filing, it cites a slow marketing and sales cycle.

It says that its customers typically get "input from one or more scientific evaluators as well as a review by personnel with finance or operational expertise. As a result, during our sales effort, we must identify all persons involved in the purchasing decision and devote a sufficient amount of time to presenting our systems to those individuals. The newness and complexity of our products often requires us to spend substantial time and effort assisting potential customers in evaluating our instruments including providing demonstrations and benchmarking our products against other available technologies."

Morgan Stanley is serving as the IPO's lead underwriter. UBS Securities and Leerink Swann are also underwriting the offering.

In other financing news:

• BioMed Realty Trust (San Diego) reported the pricing of its public offering of 5.7 million shares of common stock at $25.50 a share, for gross proceeds of about $145.4 million. The offering is expected to close on or about April 22, 2008.

BioMed said it expects to use the proceeds of the offering to repay a portion of the outstanding indebtedness under its $600 million unsecured line of credit and for other general corporate and working capital purposes.

All of the shares are being sold by the company.

BioMed granted the underwriters a 30-day option to purchase up to 855,000 shares to cover any over-allotments.

Underwriters for the offering are Raymond James & Associates, Morgan Stanley & Co., Wachovia Capital Markets, KeyBancCapital Markets, Robert W. Baird & Co., Credit Suisse Securities (USA, RBC Capital Markets and Stifel, Nicolaus & Co.

BioMed Realty is a focused on Providing Real Estate to the Life Science Industry, primarily biotech and pharma companies, scientific research institutions, government agencies and other life science organizations.

• Hercules Technology Growth Capital (Palo Alto, California), a provider of venture debt and equity to technology and life science companies, reported that the U.S. Small Business Administration in March 2008 set a 5.471% rate on its roughly $58 million of borrowing in the preceding six months.

Hercules said it has a total debenture commitment of $127.2 million from the SBA, with the $58 million part of that. Hercules reports about $70 million in total outstanding debt under the program as of March 31, 2007. The rate is fixed for 10 years, or for the remaining period the debt is outstanding.

The funds were accessed through the company's Small Business Investment Company (SBIC) subsidiary, Hercules Technology II. In turn, Hercules Technology Growth Capital uses the SBIC capital to provide growth capital to portfolio companies that qualify under the SBIC program.

Hercules primarily finances privately held companies backed by venture capital and private equity firms. The company has offices in the Boston; Boulder, Colorado; San Diego; and Chicago areas.