EQS-Adhoc 246 0 Kommentare HBM Healthcare Investments Quarterly Report December 2020 - Seite 2

In the fund portfolio, HBM Genomics' early-stage investment approach was validated for the first time with the IPO of Seer. HBM Genomics is an investment vehicle of HBM Healthcare for investments in emerging companies with new technologies. The California-based company Seer is engaged in proteome research and raised USD 175 million in new capital at its IPO in early December 2020. HBM Genomics was one of the early investors in Seer and has participated in several of the company's financing rounds since December 2017 with a total of USD 2.3 million (at an average price of USD 4.21 per share). In addition, HBM Healthcare Investments directly invested another USD 2.75 million (USD 8.03 per share) in May 2020. By the end of December, the price of Seer shares on the Nasdaq had risen to more than USD 56. As a result, a small investment ended up making a substantial contribution of CHF 34 million to the quarterly profit.

Hedging positions made a positive contribution to profit in the reporting period. While general market hedging had a negative impact on the result, currency hedging, which had been increased by a further USD 200 million to USD 1.2 billion in the reporting period, paid off: a significant portion of the decline in the US dollar against the Swiss franc was absorbed in this way.

New investments in six private companies

In the period, HBM Healthcare Investments invested a total of CHF 66 million in six new private companies. An additional CHF 29 million were invested in existing private portfolio companies as part of follow-on financing arrangements.

A new investment of USD 20 million was made in Ambrx, which is based in San Diego, USA. Ambrx is developing a pipeline of oncology therapies and also has development partnerships with a number of pharmaceutical companies. Its most advanced development programme, ARX788 for the treatment of HER2-positive metastatic breast cancer, recently received the FDA's Fast Track designation, which opens the door for accelerated approval.

A USD 15 million investment was made in Valo Health in Boston. Valo has an integrated platform for drug development that combines human and machine intelligence in order to make the discovery and development of new therapies more efficient.

Further new investments were made in Longboard Pharmaceuticals (USD 10 million, spin-off of Arena Pharmaceuticals with a development pipeline for neurological diseases), River Renal (USD 16 million, thereof USD 10 million already paid in, two development programmes to treat severe chronic kidney diseases), Neuron23 (USD 7 million, pre-clinical development platform for the targeted treatment of neurological diseases) and Werewolf Therapeutics (USD 5 million, immuno-oncology, protein engineering technology to improve activity, stability and tumour selectivity within a single molecule).