Coronavirus Vaccine Contender CureVac Files to Go Public in U.S.
Coronavirus Vaccine Contender CureVac Files to Go Public in U.S.
(Bloomberg) -- CureVac, a competitor in the race for a coronavirus vaccine, has filed for an initial public offering in the U.S.
The company in its filing Friday listed the size of its offering as $100 million, a placeholder that will likely change. Terms of the share sale will be disclosed in a later filing.
CureVac, based in Tubingen, Germany, could raise $150 million to $200 million, valuing the company at $1 billion, Bloomberg has reported. That valuation could change depending on whether regulators approve a vaccine.
The filing follows an agreement in June by the German government to acquire 23% of the company for 300 million euros ($349 million) via development bank Kreditanstalt fuer Wiederaufbau, known as KfW.
The offering, confirming the Bloomberg report, is being led by Bank of America Corp., Jefferies Financial Group Inc. and Credit Suisse Group AG. The company, to be renamed CureVac NV and incorporated in the Netherlands, is planning to list its shares on the Nasdaq Global Market under the symbol CVAC.
CureVac, founded in 2000, said in June that it received regulatory approval to begin Phase 1 clinical trials of its Covid-19 vaccine candidate. It said in its filing that it expects the results of those trials in the fourth quarter. This month, GlaxoSmithKline Plc agreed to work with CureVac on as many as five vaccines targeting infectious diseases, spending as much as 840 million pounds ($1.07 billion), including a 130 million-pound equity investment in CureVac.
As the coronavirus pandemic took hold, CureVac became the prize in a transatlantic competition to secure access to a potential vaccine after reports that the U.S. was angling to buy the company or its technology. In March, CureVac denied speculation that the U.S. government tried to buy the business or its technology.
CureVac’s research is focused on messenger RNA, in which the vaccine teaches the body’s cells to identify and attack the virus. Some other companies trying to develop coronavirus vaccines, including Moderna Inc., based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and German rival BioNTech SE, are already public.
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