(By Balaseshan) Aegerion Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ:AEGR), a biopharmaceutical company, said it has priced an underwritten public offering of 3.4 million shares of common stock at $14.75 per share, a 10.8% discount to Wednesday's close.
The net proceeds to Aegerion from this offering are expected to be about $47.3 million, after deducting underwriting discounts and commissions. The offering is expected to close on June 19, 2012, subject to customary closing conditions.
Aegerion has granted the underwriters a 30-day option to purchase up to an aggregate of 510,000 additional shares of common stock.
Jefferies & Co. Inc. and J.P. Morgan Securities LLC are acting as joint book-running managers in the offering. Leerink Swann LLC, Canaccord Genuity Inc., and Needham & Co. LLC are acting as co-managers for the offering.
Aegerion anticipates using the net proceeds from the offering to fund activities directed at gaining approval of its New Drug Application submission with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and Marketing Authorization Application submission with the European Medicines Agency for lomitapide as a potential treatment for homozygous familial hypercholesteremia (HoFH).
The net proceeds would also be used to fund for pre-commercial and commercial activities related to launching lomitapide in the United States, the European Union, in each case, if approved, and in any other countries where lomitapide is approved as a treatment for HoFH, expansion of operations in certain countries, and advancement of the clinical development of lomitapide as a potential treatment for pediatric and adolescent patients with HoFH and of adult patients with familial chylomicronemia.
Aegerion expects any balance net proceeds from the offering to fund working capital, capital expenditures and to be used for general corporate purposes.
The total number of shares of common stock to be outstanding immediately after this offering assumes no exercise of the underwriters' option and is based on 21.57 million shares of common stock outstanding as of March 31, 2012.
The company's authorized capital stock consists of 125 million shares of common stock and 5 million shares of preferred stock, all of which preferred stock are undesignated.
AEGR is trading down 10.47% at $14.80 on Thursday. The stock has been trading between $11.75 and $18 for the past 52 weeks.