Cybersecurity and Biotech Industries Continue Deal Involvement

Last week, biotech firms Replimune Group, Aquestive Therapeutics, and Liquidia Technologies made public debuts on the NASDAQ, raising $100 million, $68 million, and $50 million, respectively. Further, cybersecurity provider Tenable and digital marketer Aurora had initial public offerings, raising $250 million and $77 million, respectively.

• Replimune Group began trading on the NASDAQ last Monday under the ticker “REPL.” Based in the Boston area, Replimune is developing oncolytic immunotherapies to fight solid tumors. These cleverly designed therapeutics combine multiple mechanisms of action, enhancing the ability of viruses to replicate in and kill cancer cells, generating a powerful patient-specific, systemic immune response. The company raised just over $100 million in a 6.7-million share offering.

• Aquestive Therapeutics, a developer of treatments for diseases affecting the central nervous system (CNS), had its initial public offering Wednesday last week. In its debut on the NASDAQ under the ticker “AQST,” Aquestive raised $68 million. The company’s main focus is to address immediate CNS challenges, and, to answer these challenges, the company has built a robust CNS and complex molecule pharmaceutical portfolio.  Aquestive is also a leader in creating and delivering medications via film with their PharmaFilm technology. Similar in size and thickness to a stamp, PharmFilm can potentially provide faster onset of action, improved dosing accuracy, and can be administered without water.

• Tenable Holdings began trading on the NADAQ last Thursday. The cybersecurity firm raised over $250 million in its debut under the ticker “TENB.” The Columbia, Maryland-based company sells software used by businesses and governments to monitor cyber threats, such as those coming from unpatched software vulnerabilities. It is also a leading provider of Cyber Exposure solutions that help organizations recognize and correct cybersecurity vulnerabilities. Tenable’s flagship platform, Tenable.io®, provides chief information security officers (CISOs) with unified visibility into their organizations' state of security and enables security teams to prioritize and focus remediation efforts.

• Shares of Chinese digital marketer Aurora Mobile debuted on the NASDAQ exchange last Thursday. Aurora is a big data solutions platform based out of China. Using access to 860 million mobile devices, the company aggregates, cleanses, structures, and encrypts device-level behavior data. The company then uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to derive actionable insights for its approximately 318,000 mobile app developers. In its IPO, Aurora raised $77 million.
  

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• Liquidia Technologies, a North Carolina drug devloper, began trading on the NASDAQ exchnage last Thursday, raising $50 million. Founded in 2004, Liquidia is advancing a pipeline of already-approved treatments using its proprietary PRINT technology. PRINT is a particle engineering platform that enables precise production of highly uniform drug particles with independent control over their size, shape and chemical composition. This allows Liquidia to engineer various pharmacological benefits into drugs while overcoming the constraints of conventional formulation and production methods. The company also develops its own drugs, including its lead candidate, LIQ861, to treat pulmonary arterial hypertension.