Cancer diagnostics firm Neoprobe Corp. (NYSE Amex:NEOP) filed a regulatory document that gives it the right to sell up to $100 million in shares.
However, the Dublin, Ohio-based company has no immediate plans to issue those new shares, CFO Brent Larson said.
“This is just good corporate governance,” Larson said. “There are no plans to sell these shares as of now.”
There’s also no time frame on the offering, Larson said.
By filing so-called “shelf registration statements” like this one, companies can go through the securities-registration process before they actually issue any new shares, which allows them to more quickly pull the trigger once they decide to do the offering.
Neoprobe could elect to use the proceeds from a stock sale to fill its future pipeline, Larson said. As Neoprobe stands now, the company is looking at a fairly dry period between the launches of its two lead radiopharmaceuticals.
Lymphoseek, a tracing agent that helps surgeons identify cancerous lymph nodes in patients with breast cancer or melanoma, appears likely to launch sometime next year. New CEO Mark Pykett said last month that the company would file sometime in this year’s third quarter for regulatory approval to commercialize Lymphoseek. The company estimates Lymphoseek’s market value at $450 million (PDF).
At the other end of the company’s pipeline is RIGScan, a targeting agent used to detect tumors left behind after colon cancer surgery. RIGScan is likely about five years away from commercialization.
Neoprobe said last month it would move forward with manufacturing this year and would begin clinical development of RIGScan next year. The drug has been dormant for more than a decade after the FDA rejected it in 1998, saying it didn’t do enough to benefit patients. Pykett pegged the drug’s worldwide market potential at $3 billion.
So with such a wide gap between potential product launches, Neoprobe could seek to acquire a company or license a drug to fill that gap, and that’s where the new stock sale could come in.
“Our intent is to go out and find pipeline candidates,” Larson said.
The registration statement also covers the right of Neoprobe’s largest shareholder, Platinum-Montaur Life Sciences, to sell up to 12.5 million shares of Neoprobe. Platinum owned about 9.6 million shares as of the date of the filing, a number that amounts to about 10 percent of Neoprobe’s shares outstanding.
