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Oxford Nanopore Technologies plc
Oxford Nanopore attracts investment from Novo Holdings and completes Equity Issue of £80 million
01 Aug 2024
Oxford Nanopore announces the successful completion of the bookbuilding process for the placing of new ordinary shares of £0.0001 each in the capital of the Company ("New Ordinary Shares") announced yesterday (the "Placing"). In light of the strong demand from investors, with the transaction multiple times oversubscribed, the Board has decided to increase the size of the Equity Issue from approximately £75 million to £80 million.
A total of 25,000,000 New Ordinary Shares (the "Placing Shares") have been placed by Citigroup Global Markets Limited (“Citi”), J.P. Morgan Securities plc (which conducts its UK investment banking business as J.P. Morgan Cazenove) (“J.P. Morgan Cazenove”) and Joh. Berenberg, Gossler & Co. KG (“Berenberg” and, together with Citi and J.P. Morgan Cazenove, the “Joint Bookrunners”) at a price of 120 pence per Placing Share (the "Placing Price") raising gross proceeds of approximately £30 million.
As a result of the successful placing, the subscription by Novo Holdings A/S ("Novo Holdings") has been reduced from £60 million such that it will subscribe for 41,666,667 New Ordinary Shares (the "Subscription Shares") at the Placing Price, raising gross proceeds of approximately £50 million. Novo Holdings currently intends, subject, inter alia, to availability and price, to add over time to their initial primary investment through further market purchases of up to £10 million.
Therefore, the Placing and Subscription (together, the "Equity Issue") will raise total gross proceeds of approximately £80 million.
Dr. Gordon Sanghera, CEO, Oxford Nanopore said: “We are delighted to welcome this new, strategic investment from Novo Holdings, alongside continuing support from our existing investors. Over recent years, we have further iterated our technology platform and commercial infrastructure and are poised to gain further traction in broad sectors including scientific research, clinical and applied industrial markets. The investment from Novo Holdings reflects our ambition in the biopharmaceutical sector. Our technology platform is uniquely suited to address the needs of this industry where information-rich, rapid and simplified sequencing are critical to developing and delivering biopharmaceuticals faster and with less complexity. We look forward to their support.”
Together, the Placing Shares and Subscription Shares ("New Ordinary Shares") being issued represent approximately 8 per cent. of the issued ordinary share capital of Oxford Nanopore prior to the Equity Issue. The Placing Price of 120 pence represents a discount of approximately 0.7 per cent. to the closing share price of 120.80 pence on 31 July 2024.
As per the new U.K. listing regime, applications have been made for the New Ordinary Shares to be admitted to the "transition" listing segment of the Official List (the "Official List") of the Financial Conduct Authority (the "FCA") and to be admitted to trading on the main market for listed securities of the London Stock Exchange plc (the "London Stock Exchange") (together, "Admission"). Settlement of the New Ordinary Shares and Admission are expected to take place on or around 8.00 a.m. on 5 August 2024. The Placing is conditional upon, amongst other things, Admission becoming effective and upon the placing agreement between the Joint Bookrunners and the Company not being terminated in accordance with its terms.
The New Ordinary Shares, when issued, will be fully paid and will rank pari passu in all respects with each other and with the existing Ordinary Shares, including, without limitation, the right to receive all dividends and other distributions declared, made or paid after the date of issue.
Following Admission, the total number of Ordinary Shares in issue in Oxford Nanopore will be 940,896,164. The Company does not hold any Ordinary Shares in treasury. Therefore, the total number of voting rights in Oxford Nanopore will be 940,896,164 following Admission, and this figure may be used by shareholders as the denominator for the calculations by which they will determine if they are required to notify their interest in, or a change to their interest in, Oxford Nanopore under the FCA's Disclosure Guidance and Transparency Rules.
Citi, J.P. Morgan Cazenove and Berenberg acted as Joint Global Coordinators, Joint Bookrunners and Joint Corporate Brokers in respect of the Placing.
About Novo Holdings
Novo Holdings is a holding and investment company that is responsible for managing the assets and the wealth of the Novo Nordisk Foundation. The purpose of Novo Holdings is to improve people’s health and the sustainability of society and the planet by generating attractive long-term returns on the assets of the Novo Nordisk Foundation. Wholly owned by the Novo Nordisk Foundation, Novo Holdings is the controlling shareholder of Novo Nordisk A/S and Novonesis A/S (Novozymes A/S) and manages an investment portfolio with a long-term return perspective. In addition to managing a broad portfolio of equities, bonds, real estate, infrastructure and private equity assets, Novo Holdings is a world-leading life sciences investor. Through its Seed, Venture, Growth, Asia, Planetary Health and Principal Investments teams, Novo Holdings invests in life science companies at all stages of development. As of year-end 2023, Novo Holdings had total assets of €149 billion.
www.novoholdings.dk