Silverback Therapeutics will raise $241.5 million as the Seattle biotech company goes public Friday.
Silverback priced its IPO on Thursday evening at $21 per share, which exceeded the high end of its expected range ($17 to $19). The company is selling 11.5 million shares.
Update: Silverback shares finished Friday up more than 25%, trading at around $27/share.
Founded in 2016, Silverback uses a proprietary technology platform called ImmunoTAC to develop therapies that target specific areas of disease in a way designed to avoid damaging healthy tissue. Its lead product candidate, designated SBT6050, uses monoclonal antibodies to target breast, gastric and lung cancers. It’s currently in Phase 1/1b clinical trials, according to its IPO filing.
Silverback will be the fourth Washington state company to go public this year, following health tech startup Accolade, marketing startup ZoomInfo, and Athira Pharma, another Seattle-based biotech company that went public in September.
A record number of biotech companies are going public this year, according to BioPharma Dive, including 15 since October — and all but one have seen shares rise since their IPOs.
Silverback raised $210 million in venture capital over its lifetime as a private company, including an $85 million round in September, led by EcoR1 Capital; and a $78.5 million round in March, led by U.S. Venture Partners.
The company is led by CEO Laura Shawver, a veteran biotech executive and entrepreneur who joined the company as CEO in April. She was previously CEO of San Diego-based biotech company Synthorx, leading the company through a $2.5 billion acquisition by Paris-based Sanofi. An ovarian cancer survivor, Shawver is also the founder of the nonprofit Clearity Foundation, supporting other women with the disease.
Three of Silverback’s four named executive officers in its IPO filing are women: Shawver; Valerie Odegard, president and chief scientific officer; and Dr. Naomi Hunder, chief medical officer.
Dr. Peter Thompson is Silverback’s chairman, co-founder and former CEO. He is also a private equity partner at OrbiMed and previously co-founded Corvus Pharmaceuticals, Cleave Biosciences, Edgewise Therapeutics, and Trubion Pharmaceuticals.
The company plans to trade on the Nasdaq under the symbol SBTX.
