BioWorld International Correspondent

PARIS - ExonHit Therapeutics SA became the first French biotechnology company in six years to earn a stock exchange listing.

Its initial public offering on the Alternext market of the Euronext stock exchange in Paris, which closed Nov. 16, was a success - to the extent that the offer price was €2.89 per share, at the top of the €2.50 to €2.89 indicative price range.

All of the about 1.2 million new shares were taken up, with the extension clause being fully exercised. In addition, ExonHit has granted the Paris bank Société Générale an overallotment option of 172,500 new shares, equivalent to 15 percent of the total number offered, to be exercised by Dec. 17.

The IPO generated gross proceeds of €7.3 million for Paris-based ExonHit and gives it an implied market capitalization of €63 million, not counting the greenshoe and any additional new shares issued for the offering to staff. Employees are being offered up to 125,000 new shares at a price of €2.31 per share, representing a 20 percent discount relative to the offer price.

Assuming the overallotment option is fully taken up, about 6.9 percent of ExonHit's capital will be in public hands, while a further 10.4 percent is held by the French diagnostics company BioMérieux, of Marcy L'Etoile, with which ExonHit recently renewed and expanded a research collaboration aimed at developing new blood-based diagnostics for the early detection of cancers.

The last French company to complete an IPO was NicOx SA, of Sophia-Antipolis, in 1999. Two companies have tried IPOs since then. In 2001, Meristem Therapeutics, of Clermont-Ferrand, pulled the plug on a planned IPO after failing to convince enough investors.

And in 2004, Immuno-Designed Molecules SA (IDM) canceled a planned IPO for the same reason. Instead, it merged with San Diego-based Epimmune to form IDM Pharma Inc. That operation was completed in August this year, and the new entity is based in San Diego.

ExonHit previously had raised a total of €48.5 million in three funding rounds since it was founded in 1997. None of its existing investors used the IPO to sell any shares.