Clearside Biomedical Closes in on Secondary Offering

Health and Healthcare

Published: December 9, 2016 10:15 am

Last Updated: January 12, 2020 4:56 pm

Clearside Biomedical Inc. (NASDAQ: CLSD) has updated its amended S-1 form with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) regarding a secondary offering. It is worth noting that as Clearside Bio has gotten closer to this offering, the expected price and number of shares have dwindled. The company expects to price its 4.0 million shares at $9.00 per share, with an overallotment option for roughly an additional 600,000 shares. At this price the entire offering is valued up to about $41.4 million.

The underwriters for this offering are JPMorgan, Cowen, Stifel and Wedbush PacGrow.

The company is a late-stage clinical biopharmaceutical that is developing first-in-class drug therapies to treat blinding diseases of the eye. The current product candidates focus on diseases affecting the retina and choroid, especially diseases associated with macular edema, and are injected into the suprachoroidal space (SCS), adjacent to the choroid, using the proprietary SCS Microinjector.

With the SCS injection, Clearside’s product candidates are more directly administered to the retina and choroid, as compared to other ocular drug delivery techniques, such as intravitreal injections. The company believes SCS injection may provide a number of benefits, including lower frequency of necessary injection and faster onset of therapeutic effect.

Clearside holds the exclusive rights to develop and commercialize drugs for injection into the SCS. Its most advanced product candidates, CLS-1001 and CLS-1003, are based on commonly used ophthalmic drugs, which it believes will allow it to more efficiently and predictably pursue the regulatory approval of these product candidates under the U.S. Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act.

It is estimated that there are nearly 5 million people in the United States diagnosed with these target indications, and that worldwide annual sales of drugs to treat these indications were roughly $7 billion in 2015.

In the filing, the company described what it intends to use the net proceeds for as follows:

We anticipate that the majority of the net proceeds from this offering will be used to complete our pivotal Phase 3 clinical trial of Zuprata for the treatment of macular edema associated with non-infectious uveitis, to initiate our Phase 3 clinical program of Zuprata for the treatment of macular edema associated with RVO, to complete our ongoing Phase 1/2 clinical trial of Zuprata for the treatment of DME and to initiate and complete a planned Phase 1/2 clinical trial of axitinib for the treatment of wet AMD. The remainder may be used to fund continued research and development of our earlier-stage programs, including drug discovery for potential new applications for our suprachoroidal microinjection technology, and for working capital and other general corporate purposes.

Shares traded down more than 20% to $9.12 on Friday, with a consensus analyst price target of $25.00 and a post-IPO trading range of $5.65 to $25.08.

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