A strong vote of confidence was given to Poolbeg Pharma (POLB ) today by existing distribution in specie shareholders when only 3% of them chose to sell shares following a lock-up period. This followed a prior vote of confidence given to the company by New Investors interested to acquire up to a £1.6m stake.
Distribution in specie shareholders were awarded their shares following Poolbeg's demerger from Open Orphan on June 18th, 2021. After a 9-month lock-up period, they were free to sell their shares. Today Poolbeg announced that only 3% had elected to do so, with the 97% choosing to remain with the company.
A number of New Investors had previously announced their interest to purchase up to £1.6m of shares from distribution in specie shareholders at 5.9p per share. Since only 3% of the latter elected to sell, the New Investors were only able to acquire £366K of shares. Cathal Friel, CEO, hopes that the £1.2m of unrealised demand would manifest on the open market. A prominent life science investor represents a significant portion of the demand from these New Investors.
Listen to CEO Cathal Friel's conversation with Vox's Justin Waite on this morning's Vox Market Podcast here.
The vote of confidence is testament to the success of Poolbeg's unique capital-light clinical model. Since its IPO a year ago, the pharmaceutical company has made significant progress in developing new products within the fast-growing infectious disease market, expected to be worth over £250bn by 2025.
Specifically, the company has made progress in the following areas:
• Development of its POLB 001 programme for severe influenza with the first human challenge clinical trial due to commence in June 2022
• Partnering with two leading AI firms for its RSV Artificial Intelligence Discovery Programme, aimed at using a proprietary databank of disease progression data to identify new treatments. Results are expected in H2 2022
• Obtaining licensed access to use micro and nanoencapsulation technology to develop oral vaccines for multiple disease indications
• In-licencing a first-in-class intranasally administered RNA-based immunotherapy for respiratory virus infections (POLB 002)
• Signing an option to licence a vaccine against the tropical and subtropical disease Melioidosis (POLB 003), while also evaluating a further 5 bacterial vaccine candidates
• Commencing trading on the OTCQB market in the US in March 2022, a first step towards its ambition to dual-list on the NASDAQ and possibly other US exchanges.
Poolbeg was trading up 2.44% as of 2:00 PM today.
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