Publicly traded, formerly traded and about to go public. The latest CataloniaBio & HealthTech Lessons Learned session, held online on 3 December, brought together financial directors from Atrys Health, AB Biotics, Oryzon, Mabia and Vytrus Biotech to share their experiences on the trading floor with other start-ups and companies in the healthcare and life sciences sector in Catalonia.

The stock market is now the second most popular source of funding among companies in the sector, according to theBioRegion of Catalonia Life Sciences and Healthcare Outlook 2020, and the main publicly traded companies rate the results positively.

The session was introduced by Melqui Calzado, general secretary of CataloniaBio & HealthTech.

Josep Maria Huch, CFO of Atrys Health, explained that, due to Covid-19 “some sectors are not investable and that reduces competition on the markets. This is an opportunity for companies in the healthcare sector.” Atrys, which provides diagnostic services and medical treatments, is one of the most promising companies on the BME Growth (formerly the Spanish Alternative Stock Exchange). The company went public in 2016, with a market cap of €16 million. This year it has continued growing through new acquisitions in Latin America and Spain, and successfully completed a capital increase for €35 million and 56% cumulative revaluation (August).

The main differences experts see between the main equity market and the BME Growth market are liquidity and regulation. “If you can, try to go public on the main Spanish or European equity markets, as this is of greater value to institutional investors,” noted Enric Rello, CFO and COO of Oryzon. "We know that the first division for a biotech is the Nasdaq, where valuations are between 4.5 and 6 times more than in the Spanish equity market, but it is a more expensive market that needs a minimum valuation of 300 million euros,” he added.

AB Biotics, which left the MAB in 2019 after Japanese company Kaneka acquired 86.6% of its share capital, chose the stock market at that time because “we wanted the most freedom possible for ourselves and our shareholders. If it were up to me, all companies would be publicly traded because it gives them value. And the smaller the company, the better, because this leads to revaluation and gives investors better returns,” noted Miquel Bonachera, co-founder and CEO of the biotechnology firm that specialises in probiotics and genetic analysis.

To go public you need to “be in good company”, added Rello. The key professional profiles you need are an adviser and a lawyer with experience with public traded companies, a reputable auditor and a communication agency to help boost visibility in the media. Miquel Bonachera noted that “having a good investor communication strategy is one way to safeguard liquidity.”

In terms of the time and cost of an initial public offering (IPO), according to Josep Maria Huch, “it took roughly six months and cost around €200,000, plus the fee for the underwriting bank, which was 3%-4% of the amount raised.”

Jordi Rovira, founder of Mabia and CFO of Vytrus Biotech, moderated the session and also explained that Vytrus is compiling these lessons to decide soon whether to go public on the BME Growth or Euronext. “We have an industrial business model and we value the independence the stock market can give us in terms of management. It’s a good alternative to venture capital,” he explained during the session. Rovira founded Mabia in 2014 and it is now the benchmark firm in analysing companies traded on the BME Growth and Euronext.

The event finished off with a networking session.

For months now, CataloniaBio & HealthTech has been hosting gatherings with experts to delve deeper into the various sources of funding of interest to companies in the sector: CEO Council with Jesús González Nieto-Márquez of the MAB, CEO Council with Borja Carsi of the European Investment Bank (EIB) and Luis Sánchez Álvarez of the European Innovation Council (EIC) and CEO Council with Susana de Antonio of the Euronext.

Subscribe to Directory
Write an Article

Recent News

El diagnóstico genético neonatal mejor...

Un estudio con datos de los últimos 35 años, ind...

Más de 1.500 cambios epigenéticos en e...

Un equipo de investigadores de la Universidad Juli...

Tuneable reverse photochromes in the sol...

A new technique allows the design of solid materia...

Highlight

Eosinófilos. ¿Qué significa tener val...

by Labo'Life

​En nuestro post hablamos sobre este interesante tipo de célula del...

Un estudio de INCLIVA muestra el efecto ...

by INCLIVA

Han desarrollado un estudio para evaluar la correlación entre el teji...

Photos Stream