Natera Prices $100M Stock Offering

Natera announced recently that it has prices its $100 million common stock offering.

The San Carlos, California-based molecular diagnostics firm is offering 5,263,158 shares of common stock at $19 per share. Gross proceeds from the offering would be $100 million, however, the underwriters of the transaction have a 30-day option to purchase an additional 789,473 shares at the offering price.

JP Morgan, Cowen, and Piper Jaffray are acting as joint book-running managers for the offering. Baird and Canaccord Genuity are listed as co-managers for the offering.

Natera anticipates using net proceeds for working capital and general corporate purposes including continued research and development investments.

The firm noted in a preliminary prospectus earlier this week that it expects revenues for the first three months of 2019 to be between $65 million and $67 million, in line with analysts' consensus estimate of $65.5 million. It further noted that it processed around 200,000 tests in the first quarter.

Natera sells the Panorama non-invasive prenatal test, which it claims is the market leader by volume in the US. It noted that approximately 429,600 Panorama tests were accessioned in 2018.

The firm also makes the Prospera test, a donor-derived cell-free DNA test to assess active rejection in kidney transplant recipients. Medicare contractor Palmetto GBA recently issued a draft local coverage determination for Prospera.

In addition, Natera said this week that researchers from Cancer Research UK, Imperial College London, and the University of Leicester have reported results from a study on its Signatera patient-specific cancer monitoring approach demonstrating that the bespoke panel approach allowed them to detect breast cancer residual disease and relapse up to two years earlier than imaging in a group of patients with early-stage tumors.