US Edition 
Cat allergy group raises £200m in float
Oxford-based Circassia valued at around £581m after floating at top of price range
A British drug maker with a promising new cat allergy treatment has raised £200m on the London Stock Exchange in what is thought to be the City’s biggest biotech float in decades.
Oxford-based Circassia floated at 310p per share, the top of its price range, valuing it at around £581m.
The last major initial public offering in the sector was Ark Therapeutics which raised £55m in London in 2004.
The company’s successful float came as inhaler maker Vectura successfully raised £52m from the London stock market in a special share placing.
The double dose of success has fuelled hopes that investor appetite for biotech companies in the UK is returning to health.
“I’m absolutely delighted by the support we have had and I hope we have shown it can be done,” said Steve Harris, chief executive of Circassia.
He was, however, swift to distinguish current market conditions from the heady days of the dotcom bubble in the 1990s, which devastated many biotech companies when it burst in 2000. “They decide what they want to invest on the fundamentals,” he said. “They look at the business and either invest or not.”
Circassia is in the advanced stages of developing a breakthrough treatment for cat allergies, which was first developed by scientists at London’s Imperial College.
The company expects to report results from a major trial in the first half of 2016 and, if successful, the treatment could be on the market by late 2017. It is also testing the approach on a range of other common allergens, including house dust mites and grass pollen.
It plans to use the proceeds from the float to launch final clinical testing for its ragweed, grass and dust mite products, which cleared key testing milestones in the summer, and to fund the commercial launch of its cat allergy treatment. It also hopes to move forward with its early stage programmes, which include treatments for allergies to birch, Japanese cedar and Alternaria, a common mould.
Steve Bates, chief executive of the BioIndustry Association, said funding conditions for biotech companies at every stage of development — not just those close to commercial launch — had significantly improved in the last year. A number of biotech venture capital groups had completed successful funding rounds this quarter, which “bodes well” for the industry, he said.