Even as boom wanes, a new $200M SPAC is still hoping for another big score

The biotech sec­tor has been boom­ing through­out the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic — and while it has slowed down con­sid­er­ably, there are yet more SPACs at work.

Blank check com­pa­ny Bio­Plus Ac­qui­si­tion Corp an­nounced last Thurs­day that it priced its up­sized IPO of 20 mil­lion units at $10.00 per unit — for $200 mil­lion.

The SPAC start­ed trad­ing on Fri­day at $10.02 un­der the tick­er $BIO­SU.

Bio­Plus didn’t wade in­to de­tails about its tar­gets, say­ing on­ly that it planned to merge with ‘Life Sci­ences Sec­tor,’ ac­cord­ing to the com­pa­ny’s S-1 filed back in Ju­ly.

The SPAC’s ‘spon­sor’ — known as Bio­Plus Spon­sor, LLC — owned 100% of the shares avail­able be­fore the IPO, around 6.3 mil­lion shares. Af­ter the of­fer­ing, the plan was for Bio­Plus Spon­sor was go down to about 5.9 mil­lion shares, and much fur­ther down per­cent­age-wise — from 100% down to 21%.

And from the S-1, the spon­sor had three man­ag­ing mem­bers: life sci­ences lawyer Alan Mendel­son, who died ear­li­er this year, Alex Vieux and Steven Fletch­er.

Mendel­son was a for­mer bio­phar­ma lawyer who served as le­gal coun­sel to Am­gen and lat­er Blade Ther­a­peu­tics be­fore his death back in Oc­to­ber. Vieux is the own­er of Red Her­ring, a con­sumer busi­ness por­tal, and Fletch­er is a part­ner with Bro­ken Ar­row Hold­ing, a pri­vate VC firm.

This comes as a late bloom in the SPAC mar­ket — af­ter a mas­sive show­ing from last sum­mer to this year, that mar­ket has start­ed to re­cede. Just a few weeks ago, Flag­ship’s Va­lo Health and Khosla Ven­tures SPAC called off its planned merg­er, cit­ing ‘cur­rent mar­ket con­di­tions.’

Bio­Plus, though, is bet­ting there is still po­ten­tial for SPACs to work. There have been sev­er­al lu­cra­tive ex­am­ples. Cerev­el col­lect­ed $445 mil­lion in a SPAC merg­er last year, and not to be out­done, Gink­go went pub­lic via a SPAC in a merg­er that raised more than $1.6 bil­lion, valu­ing the biotech at $15 bil­lion.

While this SPAC, led by CEO/CFO Ross Haghigh­at and board chair­man/CBO Jonathan Rig­by, seems pret­ty late to the game, they are ev­i­dent­ly bet­ting there are still promis­ing biotechs to take pub­lic.

Haghigh­at is the CEO of VC firm Tri­ton Sys­tems and Rig­by is al­so the group CEO at Revo­lo Bio­ther­a­peu­tics, a biotech for­mer­ly known as Im­mune Reg­u­la­tion that fo­cus­es on au­toim­mune and al­ler­gic dis­eases.

Un­der­writ­ers were grant­ed 45 days in an over-al­lot­ment op­tion to pur­chase up to an ad­di­tion­al 3 mil­lion units.
https://endpts.com/despite-the-boom-waning-a-new-200m-spac-is-still-hoping-theres-a-promising-biotech-to-take-public/