Blue­bird in fundrais­ing mode: A $150M pub­lic of­fer­ing and a deal to get cash ear­ly from gene ther­a­py sales

Fac­ing a fi­nan­cial void it had hoped to be filled by a pri­or­i­ty re­view vouch­er, blue­bird bio is tap­ping two dif­fer­ent sources to bring in up to $250 mil­lion to­tal.

The first is a straight­for­ward, $150 mil­lion pro­posed pub­lic of­fer­ing. The sec­ond is more un­con­ven­tion­al: Blue­bird dis­closed Mon­day that it’s struck a deal with Al­ter­na Cap­i­tal So­lu­tions, which bills it­self as a “spe­cial­ty fi­nance com­pa­ny,” that will give it ac­cess to up to $100 mil­lion. In ex­change, blue­bird will sell Al­ter­na some of its “trade ac­counts re­ceiv­able” — mean­ing the mon­ey it’s due to re­ceive from treat­ment cen­ters that buy its gene ther­a­pies: Skysona, Zyn­te­glo and the most re­cent­ly ap­proved Lyf­ge­nia.

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