Bicara Therapeutics (BCAX) increased its IPO’s size at pricing to 17.5 million shares – up from 14.71 million shares – and priced the IPO at $18.00 – the top of its $16.00-to-$18.00 range – to raise $315 million on Thursday night, Sept. 12, 2024. This was the second time that Bicara Therapeutics had upsized its IPO since late Wednesday afternoon, when the deal was increased to 14.71 million shares from its original size of 11.77 million shares. Bicara Therapeutics’ stock jumped to open at $26.25 – up $8.25 or 45.83 percent – at 1:11 p.m. EDT today – Friday, Sept. 13, 2024 – on NASDAQ volume of 823,615 shares. At the close, Bicara Therapeutics’ stock was at $23.41 – up $5.41 or 30.06 percent – in its first day of NASDAQ trading on volume of 5,072,726 shares.
Morgan Stanley, TD Cowen, Cantor and Stifel were the joint book-runners.
Bicara Therapeutics, based in Boston, is developing a drug candidate to treat recurrent or metastatic head and neck squamous cell cancer.
TPG, a private equity powerhouse, is among Bicara Therapeutics’ principal stockholders. TPG, which had a pre-IPO stake of 5.7 percent, will own 4.3 percent of Bicara’s outstanding shares after the IPO, according to the prospectus. Other principal stockholders include RA Capital and Biocon, an Indian pharmaceutical company.
Worth Noting: Bicara Therapeutics plans to launch a Phase 2/Phase 3 clinical trial of its leading drug candidate, ficerafusp alfa, in combination with pembrolizumab (the generic name for Merck’s cancer drug Keytruda), to treat patients with recurrent or metastatic head and neck squamous cell cancer – excluding patients with HPV infection. The Phase 2/Phase 3 clinical trial is expected to start late in the fourth quarter of 2024 or early in the first quarter of 2025, the prospectus says.
Bicara Therapeutics says its Phase 1/1b clinical trial of its leading drug candidate, ficerafusp alfa, in combination with pembrolizumab (the generic name for Merck’s cancer drug Keytruda), in head and neck squamous cell cancer patients in the U.S., achieved a 54 percent overall response rate (ORR) – and in patients not associated with HPV – the ORR was 64 percent, according to the prospectus. (Note: HPV stands for human papillomavirus, which can cause cancer of the mouth and throat, the genitals or the anus, according to the Mayo Clinic.)
Like most biotechs when they go public, Bicara Therapeutics lacks product revenue and profits. For the 12 months that ended June 30, 2024, Bicara Therapeutics reported a net loss of $64.9 million on no product revenue, according to the prospectus.
