Back on March 30th I wrapped-up a Deseret Business Watch feature story this way:
“… congrats to CEO, Chris Gibson and the entire Recursion team for its forthcoming IPO.
“Should be a fun ride!”
Turns out I was right — it was a half-a-billion-dollar ride!
Two weeks ago today, shares of Recursion Pharmaceuticals began trading on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the stock symbol RXRX.
Including the underwriters’ option of 3.6 million shares, Recursion sold 27.878 million shares at $18/share, raising nearly $502 million in the process (before IPO expenses).
However, Recursion shares opened at $26.32 when actual trading began on April 16th, not at $18, a nearly 50% pop.
And as of market close today, Recursion stock was priced at $33.40/share, giving the company a current valuation of over $5.5 billion (based off of 153 million shares outstanding).
As explained in the March 30 write-up,
“Recursion has developed what it describes as the Recursion Operating System (Recursion OS) to allow it to achieve what it claims is a faster and faster flywheel effect for drug discovery and development.”
According to the company’s website, Recursion has
- Four compounds in Phase I Clinical Trials,
- Two compounds in Pre-Clinical Development, and
- An additional 29 diseases where it has identified (and is developing) targeted compounds to address these disease states, with said compounds in Early Discovery through Pre-Clinical Development.
By my calculations, Recursion has close to $750 million in the bank post-IPO, giving it a solid runway to get its most promising drug candidates close to market clearance by the U.S. Food & Drug Administration.
Congrats, Recursion. Congrats indeed.
NOTE: This article represents a portion of a Week-in-Review article that was originally published by Deseret Business Watch. A few minor editorial changes have been made with this version to better match the current Silicon Slopes writing style.
