By Diane Alter, Contributing Writer, Money Morning•
CRISPR stock debuts this week in one of the most highly anticipated biotech IPOs of the year.
Here's everything investors need to know now...
The IPO market has picked up steam in the last quarter. During Q3, there were 33 new issues to hit the market, according to Renaissance Capital, a manager of IPO-focused ETFs. And there have already been 11 IPOs in October alone.
This week, a tiny biotech company is in the spotlight. Here's a look behind the hype of the CRISPR IPO and CRISPR stock...
What You Need to Know About the CRISPR Stock Debut
CRISPR Therapeutics is a leading gene-editing company. It develops transformative gene-based medicines with its proprietary gene-editing platform. Its focus is on the treatment of non-germline cells. It's a similar approach to more traditional and established gene therapy methods.
The company has dual headquarters in Switzerland and Cambridge, Mass.
CRISPR is short for "clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats." It is pronounced "crisper." The company's researchers are able to permanently modify or "edit" genes in living organisms. In the future, the company hopes to correct mutations, which would allow it to treat certain genetic diseases.
CRISPR Therapeutics is offering 4 million shares. The CRISPR stock price is set at $14 a share. That's less than the 4.7 million shares originally planned and below the initial price range of $15 to $18.
CRISPR stock will debut Wednesday, Oct. 19. Shares will trade under the ticker CRSP and will be listed on the Nasdaq.
CRSP is expected to raise $56 million in its IPO. Citigroup, Piper Jaffrey, and Barclays are the lead underwriters.
The biotech company had sales of roughly $2 million for the year ending June 30, 2016. But it recorded an operation loss of nearly $30 million for the first half of 2016.
CRSP has collaborations with Bayer AG (OTCMKTS: BAYRY), Vertex Pharmaceutical Inc. (Nasdaq: VRTX), Celgene Corp. (Nasdaq: CELG), and GlaxoSmithKline Plc. (NYSE: GSK). Bayer, Celgene, and Glaxo are key shareholders with stakes of about 8%, 12.4%, and 9.7%, respectively.
CRISPR has been in the spotlight for years since the company has such a revolutionary product.
The company hopes to find cures for conditions like sickle cell disease and better ways to fight certain cancers.
The company is still very early in its development efforts. All of its product candidates are in preclinical development. It will be many years before the company or its collaborators will commercialize a product candidate.
In the meantime, we'll be following up with this company and evaluating CRISPR stock as an investment for our readers at Money Morning.