REG - e-Therapeutics plc - Fundraise of £13.5 million by way of Subscription

E-TherapeuticsAnnouncement

30/09/2022 07:01

For best results when printing this announcement, please click on link below:
http://newsfile.refinitiv.com/getnewsfile/v1/story?guid=urn:newsml:reuters.com:20220930:nRSd2493Ba&default-theme=true

RNS Number : 2493B  e-Therapeutics plc  30 September 2022

 

 

 

e-therapeutics plc

("e-therapeutics" or "ETX" or the "Company")

 

Fundraise of £13.5 million by way of a Share Subscription

 

London, UK, 30 September 2022 - e-therapeutics plc (AIM: ETX; OTCQX; ETXPF), a
company integrating computational power and biological data to discover
life-transforming RNAi medicines, is pleased to announce a fundraise of £13.5
million before expenses by way of a subscription for new ordinary shares of
0.1p each ("Ordinary Shares") in the Company (the "Subscription") at a price
of 20p per Ordinary Share by funds managed by M&G Investment Management
Limited ("M&G"), an institutional investor and an existing shareholder of
the Company.

 

The fundraise provides ETX with the opportunity to generate value and
accelerate the next stage of its growth, advancing the Company's position in
creating an entirely new template for drug discovery using computation to
capture and model disease complexity, identify novel targets and design RNAi
drugs against those targets that can be rapidly progressed to the clinic.

The net proceeds of the Subscription will be used to facilitate a number of initiatives to accelerate growth, with a focus on expanding the Company's in-house pipeline of first-in-class RNAi candidates derived from ETX's computational platform; further developing cell type-specific computational tools and datasets; and general working capital including additional headcount.

 

Ali Mortazavi, Chief Executive Officer of e-therapeutics, commented:

 

"I am pleased to announce the fundraise of £13.5 million and excited by the
prospect of being able to accelerate the development of our in-house RNAi
pipeline through enhanced investment in our therapeutic programmes, hepatocyte
datasets and computational capabilities. This successful fundraise underlines
ETX's position at the intersection of computational approaches to drug
discovery and genetic medicine, using RNA interference as our drug modality of
choice. We are grateful for the support of our shareholders and look forward
to delivering value from our platform technologies."

 

Michael Stiasny, Head of UK Equities at M&G Investments, commented:

 

"With the potential to re-shape the conventional drug discovery model, siRNA
based therapies represent an extremely exciting new modality in medicine. We
believe that e-therapeutics has a unique platform and strategically attractive
IP in this space, combined with a strong computational edge, and are delighted
to be increasing our long-term support for the Company."

 

The issue of new Ordinary Shares pursuant to the Subscription will be
conditional on (i) the 67,500,000 shares ("Subscription Shares") being
admitted to trading on AIM by not later than 8.00 a.m. on 6 October 2022, or
such later time and/or date as the Company may agree (being not later than
8.00 a.m. on 14 October 2022) and (ii) the representations and warranties of
the Company under the Subscription being true and accurate.

 

Highlights of the Fundraise

 

·      A total fundraise of £13.5 million before expenses, through the
issue of the Subscription Shares at a price of 20p per Ordinary Share (the
"Subscription Price"), equating to approximately 13.12% of the existing
ordinary share capital

 

·      The Subscription Price represents a premium of approximately 12% to
the closing middle market price of 17.825p per Ordinary Share on 29 September
2022, being the latest practicable date prior to the date and time of this
announcement

 

·      The net proceeds of the Subscription will be used to facilitate a
number of initiatives, with a focus on expanding the Company's proprietary
drug discovery and development platform capabilities and pipeline of
computationally driven first-in-class RNAi medicines

 

·     The issue of the Subscription Shares pursuant to the Subscription
will be conditional on (i) the Subscription Shares being admitted to trading
on AIM by not later than 8.00 a.m. on 6 October 2022, or such later time
and/or date as the Company may agree (being not later than 8.00 a.m. 14
October 2022) and (ii) the representations and warranties of the Company under
the Subscription being true and accurate

 

·      M&G has the right to nominate a non-executive director to the
board of ETX if it so wishes for so long as M&G holds the higher of at
least 58,000,000 shares of the Company or 5% of the existing issued share
Capital of the Company from time to time

 

 

Company Overview

 

The latest information on the Company and its recent progress is included in
its Interim Report for the 6 months to 31 July 2022 which is also being
announced today.

 

ETX is a UK-based company integrating computational power and biology
information to discover life-transforming RNAi medicines.  The Company's
technology uses computation to capture and model human biology, identify
novel targets and design RNAi medicines against those targets that can be
rapidly progressed to the clinic.

 

ETX's proprietary Computational Biology Platform enables the generation and
analysis of biological network models, providing a novel and mechanistic
approach to drug discovery that explicitly considers the true complexity of
biology and makes more reliable predictions from large complex data sets and
ETX's proprietary hepatocyte knowledge base, - the world's most comprehensive
and integrated hepatocyte-centric data and information resource. The Company
generates, prioritises and tests millions of hypotheses in silico to identify
better therapeutic targets with higher confidence.

 

ETX's proprietary RNAi Platform enables the targeted delivery to hepatocytes
in the liver and the specific silencing of novel disease-associated genes,
identified by ETX's Computational Biology Platform. The focus on hepatocytes
offers the opportunity to work across a wide variety of diseases. The liver is
a highly metabolically active organ which performs a key role in many
biological processes and vital functions crucial for human health. ETX's
GalNAc-siRNA constructs have demonstrated compelling in vivo performance in
terms of depth of gene silencing and duration of action.

 

ETX is progressing a pipeline of first-in-class pre-clinical RNAi candidates
in several therapeutic areas including haematology, cardiovascular disease
and non-alcoholic steatohepatitis ("NASH"). ETX has also partnered with
biopharma companies such as Novo Nordisk, Galapagos NV and iTeos
Therapeutics using its computational network biology approach across a
diverse range of drug discovery projects.

 

 

Details of the Subscription

 

The Company has entered into a subscription agreement with an institutional
investor, M&G, pursuant to which the Company has agreed to issue the
Subscription Shares to funds managed by M&G at the Subscription Price,
raising gross proceeds for the Company of approximately £13.5 million.

 

The Subscription Shares, when issued, will be fully paid and will rank pari
passu in all respects with each other and with the existing Ordinary Shares,
including, without limitation, as regards the right to receive any dividends
and other distributions declared, made or paid after the date of issue.

 

The Subscription is conditional on (i) the Subscription Shares being admitted
to trading on AIM by not later than 8.00 a.m. on 6 October 2022, or such later
time and/or date as the Company may agree (being not later than 8.00 a.m. 14
October 2022) and (ii) the representations and warranties of the Company under
the Subscription being true and accurate.

 

M&G currently holds 34,375,000 Ordinary Shares (representing approximately
6.68% of the existing Ordinary Shares) and has agreed to subscribe for a total
of 67,500,000 Subscription Shares such that following Admission of the
Subscription Shares, M&G's holding of Ordinary Shares will represent
17.50% of the issued share capital of the Company as enlarged by the
Subscription.

 

M&G has the right to nominate a non-executive director to the board of ETX
if it so wishes for so long as M&G holds the higher of at least 58,000,000
shares of the Company or 5% of the existing issued share Capital of the
Company from time to time.

 

 

Admission and Total Voting Rights

 

An application will be made for the Subscription Shares to be admitted to
trading on AIM. It is expected that Admission will take place at 8.00 a.m. (UK
time) on or around 6 October 2022 ("Admission").

 

Following Admission of the Subscription Shares, the Company's enlarged issued
share capital will comprise 582,114,982 Ordinary Shares of 0.1 pence each
with voting rights in the Company. This figure may be used by shareholders in
the Company as the denominator for the calculations by which they will
determine if they are required to notify their interest in, or a change in the
interest in, the share capital of the Company under the FCA's Disclosure and
Transparency Rules.

 

 

The information contained within this announcement is deemed by the Company to
constitute inside information as stipulated under the Market Abuse Regulations
(EU) No. 596/2014 ('MAR') which has been incorporated into UK law by the
European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018. Upon the publication of this
announcement via Regulatory Information Service ('RIS'), this inside
information is now considered to be in the public domain.

 

 

For further information, please contact:

 

 e-therapeutics plc
 Ali Mortazavi,                                                                        Tel: +44 (0)1993 883 125
 CEO

                                                                                     www.etherapeutics.co.uk
 James Chandler, VP IR & Communications

      SP Angel Corporate Finance LLP                                                   Tel: +44(0)20 3470 0470
 Nominated Adviser and Broker
 Matthew Johnson/Caroline Rowe (Corporate Finance)
 Vadim Alexandre/Rob Rees (Corporate Broking)

 
 

 

This information is provided by RNS, the news service of the London Stock Exchange. RNS is approved by the Financial Conduct Authority to act as a Primary Information Provider in the United Kingdom. Terms and conditions relating to the use and distribution of this information may apply. For further information, please contact
rns@lseg.com (mailto:rns@lseg.com)
 or visit
www.rns.com (http://www.rns.com/)
.

RNS may use your IP address to confirm compliance with the terms and conditions, to analyse how you engage with the information contained in this communication, and to share such analysis on an anonymised basis with others as part of our commercial services. For further information about how RNS and the London Stock Exchange use the personal data you provide us, please see our
Privacy Policy (https://www.lseg.com/privacy-and-cookie-policy)
.   END  MSCPPUCABUPPGMB