Cellectis reaps $175M in follow-on

Cellectis S.A. (Euronext:ALCLS; NASDAQ:CLLS) raised $175 million through the sale of 5.6 million shares at $31 in a follow-on underwritten by Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Barclays, Nomura, Oppenheimer and Ladenburg Thalmann. The price is a 20% discount to Cellectis' NASDAQ close of $38.53 on Tuesday, when it proposed the offering after market hours.

On Tuesday, Cellectis gained 14% in Paris and 25% on NASDAQ on news that newly launched Allogene Therapeutics Inc. (South San Francisco, Calif.), a company created to house off-the-shelf CAR T products discovered by Cellectis, had raised $300 million and forged a deal with Pfizer Inc. (NYSE:PFE). Allogene assumed rights to 16 preclinical programs from Pfizer, which had obtained a license to them in a 2014 deal with Cellectis; the biotech remains eligible for $2.8 billion in milestones, plus royalties. Pfizer also granted Allogene U.S. rights to commercialize clinical stage candidate UCART19, which Cellectis originally developed (see BioCentury Extra, April 3)...