BG Medicine Inc. (NSDQ:BGMD) entered public trading as the belle of the ball today, after slashing its share price in half earlier in the week.
The Waltham, Mass.-based healthcare diagnostics company’s stock price rose more than 10 percent through late-day trading today, its first, bucking a tepid day for the Dow Jones and NASDAQ exchanges.
The company priced the IPO shares at $7; by the time the markets closed shares were trading at $YY, after hitting a high of $8.38.
The 4.75-million-share offering was BG Medicine’s third attempt to go public, albeit at half the valuation it had looked for in a $71.2 million attempt in December 2010. The company also scrapped plans for a $45 million IPO in 2008 and an $86.3 million offering in January 2010.
BG said it plans to use about $15 million of the proceeds to support the commercial launch of its BGM galectin-3 biomarker test. The test, designed to evaluate patients’ risk of heart attack, won 510(k) clearance from the Food & Drug Administration last month and CE Mark approval in the European Union in October 2009.
Flagship Ventures is the company’s largest backer, owning a 44.4 percent stake. Flagship partner Noubar Afeyan is the chairman of BG’s board, according to the SEC filing. Other investors include Gilde Europe Food and Agriculture Fund BV, GE Asset Management, Humana Inc., Koninklijke Philips Electronics NV, Legg Mason Capital management and SMALLCAP World Fund.
The company has said an automated version of its galectin-3 test is necessary for it to achieve broader market penetration. It’s working with Abbott Laboratories (NYSE:ABT), Alere Inc. (NYSE:ALR) and bioMerieux SA (EPA:BIM) to incorporate the test those companies’ automated lab instruments and it plans file for FDA clearance for the automated test by the fourth quarter of 2011, according to Dow Jones.
