Fundraise of £13.5 million by way of Subscription

RNS Number : 2493B

e-Therapeutics plc

30 September 2022

 

 

e-therapeutics plc

("e-therapeutics" or "ETX" or the "Company")

Fundraise of £13.5 million by way of a Share Subscription

London, UK, 30 September 2022 - e-therapeutics plc (AIM: ETX; OTCQX; ETXPF), a company integrating computational power and biological data to discover life-transforming RNAi medicines, is pleased to announce a fundraise of £13.5 million before expenses by way of a subscription for new ordinary shares of 0.1p each ("Ordinary Shares") in the Company (the "Subscription") at a price of 20p per Ordinary Share by funds managed by M&G Investment Management Limited ("M&G"), an institutional investor and an existing shareholder of the Company.

 

The fundraise provides ETX with the opportunity to generate value and accelerate the next stage of its growth, advancing the Company's position in creating an entirely new template for drug discovery using computation to capture and model disease complexity, identify novel targets and design RNAi drugs against those targets that can be rapidly progressed to the clinic. 

The net proceeds of the Subscription will be used to facilitate a number of initiatives to accelerate growth, with a focus on expanding the Company's in-house pipeline of first-in-class RNAi candidates derived from ETX's computational platform; further developing cell type-specific computational tools and datasets; and general working capital including additional headcount.

Ali Mortazavi, Chief Executive Officer of e-therapeutics, commented:

"I am pleased to announce the fundraise of £13.5 million and excited by the prospect of being able to accelerate the development of our in-house RNAi pipeline through enhanced investment in our therapeutic programmes, hepatocyte datasets and computational capabilities. This successful fundraise underlines ETX's position at the intersection of computational approaches to drug discovery and genetic medicine, using RNA interference as our drug modality of choice. We are grateful for the support of our shareholders and look forward to delivering value from our platform technologies." 

Michael Stiasny, Head of UK Equities at M&G Investments, commented:

"With the potential to re-shape the conventional drug discovery model, siRNA based therapies represent an extremely exciting new modality in medicine. We believe that e-therapeutics has a unique platform and strategically attractive IP in this space, combined with a strong computational edge, and are delighted to be increasing our long-term support for the Company."

The issue of new Ordinary Shares pursuant to the Subscription will be conditional on (i) the 67,500,000 shares ("Subscription Shares") being admitted to trading on AIM by not later than 8.00 a.m. on 6 October 2022 , or such later time and/or date as the Company may agree (being not later than 8.00 a.m. on 14 October 2022 ) and (ii) the representations and warranties of the Company under the Subscription being true and accurate.

Highlights of the Fundraise

· A total fundraise of £13.5 million before expenses, through the issue of the Subscription Shares at a price of 20p per Ordinary Share (the "Subscription Price"), equating to approximately 13.12% of the existing ordinary share capital

·     The Subscription Price represents a premium of approximately 12% to the closing middle market price of 17.825p per Ordinary Share on 29 September 2022 , being the latest practicable date prior to the date and time of this announcement

· The net proceeds of the Subscription will be used to facilitate a number of initiatives, with a focus on expanding the Company's proprietary drug discovery and development platform capabilities and pipeline of computationally driven first-in-class RNAi medicines

· The issue of the Subscription Shares pursuant to the Subscription will be conditional on (i) the Subscription Shares being admitted to trading on AIM by not later than 8.00 a.m. on 6 October 2022 , or such later time and/or date as the Company may agree (being not later than 8.00 a.m. 14 October 2022) an d (ii) the representations and warranties of the Company under the Subscription being true and accurate

· M&G has the right to nominate a non-executive director to the board of ETX if it so wishes for so long as M&G holds the higher of at least 58,000,000 shares of the Company or 5% of the existing issued share Capital of the Company from time to time

Company Overview

The latest information on the Company and its recent progress is included in its Interim Report for the 6 months to 31 July 2022 which is also being announced today.

ETX is a UK-based company integrating computational power and biology information to discover life-transforming RNAi medicines. The Company's technology uses computation to capture and model human biology, identify novel targets and design RNAi medicines against those targets that can be rapidly progressed to the clinic. 

ETX's proprietary Computational Biology Platform enables the generation and analysis of biological network models, providing a novel and mechanistic approach to drug discovery that explicitly considers the true complexity of biology and makes more reliable predictions from large complex data sets and ETX's proprietary hepatocyte knowledge base, - the world's most comprehensive and integrated hepatocyte-centric data and information resource. The Company generates, prioritises and tests millions of hypotheses in silico to identify better therapeutic targets with higher confidence. 

ETX's proprietary RNAi Platform enables the targeted delivery to hepatocytes in the liver and the specific silencing of novel disease-associated genes, identified by ETX's Computational Biology Platform. The focus on hepatocytes offers the opportunity to work across a wide variety of diseases. The liver is a highly metabolically active organ which performs a key role in many biological processes and vital functions crucial for human health. ETX's GalNAc-siRNA constructs have demonstrated compelling in vivo performance in terms of depth of gene silencing and duration of action. 

ETX is progressing a pipeline of first-in-class pre-clinical RNAi candidates in several therapeutic areas including haematology, cardiovascular disease and non-alcoholic steatohepatitis ("NASH"). ETX has also partnered with biopharma companies such as Novo Nordisk, Galapagos NV and iTeos Therapeutics using its computational network biology approach across a diverse range of drug discovery projects.

Details of the Subscription

The Company has entered into a subscription agreement with an institutional investor, M&G, pursuant to which the Company has agreed to issue the Subscription Shares to funds managed by M&G at the Subscription Price, raising gross proceeds for the Company of approximately £13.5 million.

The Subscription Shares, when issued, will be fully paid and will rank pari passu in all respects with each other and with the existing Ordinary Shares, including, without limitation, as regards the right to receive any dividends and other distributions declared, made or paid after the date of issue.

The Subscription is conditional on (i) the Subscription Shares being admitted to trading on AIM by not later than 8.00 a.m. on 6 October 2022 , or such later time and/or date as the Company may agree (being not later than 8.00 a.m. 14 October 2022 ) and (ii) the representations and warranties of the Company under the Subscription being true and accurate.

M&G currently holds 34,375,000 Ordinary Shares (representing approximately 6.68% of the existing Ordinary Shares) and has agreed to subscribe for a total of 67,500,000 Subscription Shares such that following Admission of the Subscription Shares, M&G's holding of Ordinary Shares will represent 17.50% of the issued share capital of the Company as enlarged by the Subscription.

M&G has the right to nominate a non-executive director to the board of ETX if it so wishes for so long as M&G holds the higher of at least 58,000,000 shares of the Company or 5% of the existing issued share Capital of the Company from time to time .

Admission and Total Voting Rights

An application will be made for the Subscription Shares to be admitted to trading on AIM. It is expected that Admission will take place at 8.00 a.m. (UK time) on or around 6 October 2022 ("Admission").

Following Admission of the Subscription Shares, the Company's enlarged issued share capital will comprise 582,114,982 Ordinary Shares of 0.1 pence each with voting rights in the Company. This figure may be used by shareholders in the Company as the denominator for the calculations by which they will determine if they are required to notify their interest in, or a change in the interest in, the share capital of the Company under the FCA's Disclosure and Transparency Rules.  

The information contained within this announcement is deemed by the Company to constitute inside information as stipulated under the Market Abuse Regulations (EU) No. 596/2014 ('MAR') which has been incorporated into UK law by the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018. Upon the publication of this announcement via Regulatory Information Service ('RIS'), this inside information is now considered to be in the public domain.

For further information, please contact:

e-therapeutics plc
Ali Mortazavi, CEO  James Chandler, VP IR & Communications	Tel: [phone] www.etherapeutics.co.uk
SP Angel Corporate Finance LLP	Tel: [phone]
Nominated Adviser and Broker
Matthew Johnson/Caroline Rowe (Corporate Finance)
Vadim Alexandre/Rob Rees (Corporate Broking)

 

 

 

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