Alto Neuroscience (ANRO) priced its upsized IPO at $16.00 – the high end of its $14.00-to-$16.00 range. The company increased the deal’s size to 8.04 million shares – up from 6.7 million shares in the prospectus – and raised $128.64 million on Thursday night, Feb. 1, 2024. The Phase 2 clinical biotech is developing drugs to treat depression. Alto Neuroscience’s stock surged to open at $22.00 – up $6.00 from its IPO price – in its debut today – Friday, Feb. 2, 2024 – on the New York Stock Exchange. The stock later gave up a little of its gain, but was still trading above $21.00 at 1:06 p.m. EST on volume of more than 1 million shares.
Jefferies, TD Cowen, Stifel, William Blair and Baird are the joint book-runners.
This IPO is one of two biotech IPOs launched early Monday. It’s the third biotech deal to get priced in the past two weeks.
IPO investors gave Alto Neuroscience’s IPO a warm reception at launch. The deal followed last week’s pair of successful biotech initial public offerings. CG Oncology (CGON) nearly doubled its IPO price on its first day of trading. ArriVent BioPharma (AVBP) gained 11.11 percent in its first day of trading.
License and collaboration agreements enhanced Alto Neuroscience’s appeal. Alto Neuroscience has license and collaboration agreements with Stanford University and some Big Pharma names, including Sanofi and MedRx.
Alto Neuroscience is developing drugs to treat severe depression – known as major depressive disorder (MDD) – by using brain biomarkers to match patients to the right medication, the prospectus says. The company’s lead drug product candidates, ALTO-100 and ALTO-300, are in Phase 2b clinical trials.
Alto Neuroscience is based in Los Altos, California. The company is building on more than a decade of research by Dr. Amit Etkin, its founder, president and CEO. Dr. Etkin left his tenured position as a professor of psychiatry at Stanford University when he founded Alto Neuroscience in 2019.
The company is not profitable. For the 12 months that ended Sept. 30, 2023, Alto Neuroscience reported a net loss of $32.74 million on no product revenue.
(For more information about these companies, please check the IPO Calendar and the individual IPO Profiles found on IPOScoop.com’s website.)
Note: Never trade on proposed symbols. They have been known to change and you might buy something on the OTC Bulletin Board.
To see what time the NASDAQ IPOs are expected to trade, please log in to: NASDAQTrader.com then scroll down to IPO Message.
Disclosure: Nobody on the IPOScoop.com staff has a position in any stocks mentioned above, nor do they trade or invest in IPOs. The IPOScoop.com staff does not issue advice, recommendations or opinions.
Disclaimer: A SCOOP Rating (Wall Street Consensus of Opening-day Premiums) is a general consensus taken, at press time, from Wall Street and investment professionals concerning how well an IPO might perform when it starts trading. The SCOOP Rating does not reflect the opinions of anyone associated with IPOScoop.com. The SCOOP ratings should not be taken as investment advice. The rating merely reflects the opinion of the professionals at the time of publication and is subject to last-minute changes due to market conditions, changes in a specific offering and other factors, such as changes in the proposed offering terms and the shifting of investor interest in the IPO. The information offered is taken from sources we believe to be reliable, but we cannot guarantee the accuracy.