Pro­tag­o­nist’s IPO op­tion de­liv­ers a $90M pay­off for ear­ly-stage pep­tide work

A year ago, when I was talk­ing about Pro­tag­o­nist Ther­a­peu­tics’ fu­ture with Di­nesh Pa­tel, the CEO fo­cused in on “op­tion­al­i­ty.” There could be deals, there could be a buy­out, or there could be an IPO.

Not sur­pris­ing­ly, giv­en its in­vestor syn­di­cate at the time, door num­ber three proved to be the next step for this Mil­pi­tas, CA-based biotech. And it worked pret­ty well.

Pro­tag­o­nist $PT­GX man­aged to sell 7.5 mil­lion shares at $12 each, earn­ing $90 mil­lion to help fund the next round of work on new pep­tide drugs. That price fell com­fort­ably in the mid­dle of its range, un­der­scor­ing what ap­pears to be a mod­est im­prove­ment in the biotech IPO mar­ket at the be­gin­ning of H2.

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