Finance

After biggest STAR listing yet for a biotech, vaccine developer CanSino posts big gain

Listing is the sixth this year for a Qiming portfolio company

Demand for CanSino’s shares ran high in the company’s first day of trading on Shanghai’s STAR exchange, lifting the company’s market cap to about RMB97 billion ($14 billion) at market close after briefly rising as high as RMB118 billion.

According to BioCentury’s BCIQ database, the offering is the largest yet for a life sciences company on STAR, which the Shanghai Stock Exchange unveiled last year as its board for preprofit companies (see “STAR Rising”).

For the day, shares gained RMB183.40 (87%) to RMB393.11.

Following an offering that raised RMB5.2 billion, or about $750 million, CanSino Biologics Ltd. (HKEX:6185; Shanghai:688185) will be dual-listed on a pair of Chinese exchanges. The vaccine developer sold 24.8 million shares at RMB209.71 to list on STAR; the offering gave it a postmoney valuation of RMB51.9 billion, or roughly $7.5 billion.

The company said it is the first vaccine maker to be listed on those two exchanges. CanSino slipped HK$9 to HK$198.80 in Hong Kong on Thursday.

Among its pipeline of 16 vaccines spanning 13 infectious diseases, CanSino has one traditionally approved product, recombinant vaccine Ad5-EBOV for Ebola; as well as approval for military use in China of its Ad5-nCoV to prevent infection with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19 (see “Pfizer to Promote Vaccine”).

China’s National Medical Products Administration (NMPA) is also reviewing NDAs for two of CanSino’s meningococcal conjugate vaccines; one is under Priority Review.

CanSino said uses of the funds will include R&D, construction of a manufacturing facility, development of logistics, vaccine traceability and general working capital.

The listing is the sixth this year for a Qiming Venture Partners portfolio company.

The other five life sciences companies in the firm’s portfolio that have conducted listings in 2020 are Gan & Lee Pharmaceuticals (Shanghai:603087), Hangzhou Tigermed Consulting Co. Ltd. (SZSE:300347; HKEX:3347), Sanyou Medical (Shanghai:688085), Schrödinger Inc. (NASDAQ:SDGR) and Sinocelltech Ltd. (Shanghai:688520).