GI Dynamics will officially begin trading as a public stock on the Australian Securities Exchange for the first time tomorrow, following its $86 million initial public offering.
The Lexington, Mass.-based weight-loss device maker plans to open 277 million CHESS Depository Interests, a type of security used by the Australian Stock Exchange to allow international companies to trade on the local market.
The company hit its lower benchmark with $86 million ($80 million AUS) with its recent Australian IPO, although it had hoped for up to $102 million through sales of some 72.7 million CDIs at a price of A$1.10 each, with another 13.6 million shares through an oversubscription of the offering.
If shares open at $1.10 on the ASE, GI Dynamics will have a market capitalization of about $304 million, MSN reported.
GI Dynamics’ flagship device, the Endobarrier, is a plastic sleeve inserted endoscopically into the small intestine, where it slows the uptake of nutrients from food to induce weight loss and help control the symptoms of diabetes.
Read more of MassDevice.com’s coverage of GI Dynamics.
The device can be implanted without surgery, which company president & CEO Stuart Randle views as the next wave for medical devices. "I think the next generation of technologies is going to be combinations of devices, combinations of drugs and combinations of devices and drugs, all focused on effecting multiple mechanisms of action simultaneously — and less invasively than surgery," Randle told MassDevice in a June 2009 interview.
A series of clinical studies in 2009, as well as more recent research, has showed that patients treated with the EndoBarrier reduced their average blood glucose levels and lowered other diabetic factors including fasting blood glucose, and morbidly obese patients lost significant amounts of weight.
The device won Australian approval for treatment of Type II diabetes in June.The device won CE Mark approval in the European Union in Dec., 2009, for six months of treatment.
The Endobarrier has since been approved for 12 months of treatment in the European Union, and is commercially available in Chile, Germany, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands. The company has also received an investigational device exemption approval to commence a pilot trial of the EndoBarrier in the United States.
