Adimmune Corp (國光生技), a Taiwanese vaccine developer, said on Tuesday that it is scheduled to list on the Taiwan Stock Exchange (TWSE) on May 3.
According to a prospectus posted on the exchange’s Web site, the company, which was established in 1965 and is capitalized at NT$1.64 billion (US$55.59 million), is planning to issue 19.53 million shares to raise about NT$976.50 million in working capital.
While Adimmune has set a tentative issue price of NT$50 for the shares, market analysts said the actual price is expected to range between NT$40 and NT$43.
Adimmune, which is the only vaccine manufacturer in Asia to have obtained GMP (Good Manufacturing Practice) certification from the EU, specializes in the development of vaccines for influenza, Japanese encephalitis and tetanus.
Adimmune has teamed up with Dutch-based biotech company Crucell, the world’s sixth-largest flu vaccine manufacturer, for technological cooperation, while it has also partnered with Japan’s largest flu vaccine developer, the Kitasato Institute.
Crucell is one of the company’s majority shareholders, with an 11.39 percent stake, according to the prospectus.
Adimmune chairman Steve Chan (詹啟賢) told investors that the company completed animal testing for an H5N1 avian flu vaccine at the end of last year and is expected to begin human testing this year.
In addition, Chan said the company’s enterovirus 71 vaccine, which is undergoing clinical trials, is scheduled to hit the market in 2017, while a dengue fever vaccine is expected to be launched in 2019.
Last year, the company sold about 1.5 million flu vaccine doses in Taiwan, taking a 55 percent share of the domestic flu vaccine market. The company expects its market share to fall to about 50 percent this year.
In addition, it anticipates it will be granted permits to sell flu vaccine in China at the end of this year at the earliest.
Adimmune posted NT$290 million in sales last year, but incurred a NT$2.87 net loss per share because of an unsatisfactory capacity utilization rate.
However, on the back of rising production, its capacity utilization rate is expected to range between 70 percent and 80 percent in the second half of this year and it is likely to exceed 90 percent next year, which will improve its bottom line, the company said.
Elon Musk’s lieutenants have reached out to chip industry suppliers, including Applied Materials Inc, Tokyo Electron Ltd and Lam Research Corp, for his envisioned Terafab, early steps in an audacious and likely arduous attempt to break into the production of cutting-edge chips. Staff working for the joint venture between Tesla Inc and Space Exploration Technologies Corp (SpaceX) have sought price quotes and delivery times for an array of chipmaking gear, people familiar with the matter said. In past weeks, they’ve contacted makers of photomasks, substrates, etchers, depositors, cleaning devices, testers and other tools, according to the people, who asked not to
Taichung reported the steepest fall in completed home prices among the six special municipalities in the first quarter of this year, data compiled by Taiwan Realty Co (台灣房屋) showed yesterday. From January through last month, the average transaction price for completed homes in Taichung fell 8 percent from a year earlier to NT$299,000 (US$9,483) per ping (3.3m²), said Taiwan Realty, which compiled the data based on the government’s price registration platform. The decline could be attributed to many home buyers choosing relatively affordable used homes to live in themselves, instead of newly built homes in the city’s prime property market, Taiwan Realty
JET JUICE: The war on Iran’s secondary effects have seen fuel prices skyrocket, knocking flight schedules down to earth in return as airlines struggle with costs Airline passengers should brace for more irritation in the next few months as carriers worldwide cancel flights and ground planes to cope with stratospheric increases in jet-fuel prices. Dutch flag carrier KLM is the latest company to cut its schedule, saying on Thursday that it would scrap 80 return flights at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport in the coming month. That puts it in the same league as United Airlines Holdings Inc, Deutsche Lufthansa AG and Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd, which have all pruned itineraries to mitigate costs. Global capacity for next month has been reduced by about 3 percentage points, with all
Taiwan is attracting a growing number of foreign jobseekers as companies increasingly recruit overseas talent to ease labor shortages and expand global reach, recruitment platform 104 Job Bank (104人力銀行) said yesterday. More than 40,000 foreign nationals searched for jobs in Taiwan through the platform last year, a 28 percent increase from a year earlier, the company said. Malaysians accounted for the largest share of overseas jobseekers at 12.2 percent, followed by Indonesians at 11.9 percent and Vietnamese at 10.8 percent. Indonesian applicants surged more than 50 percent year-on-year, while Vietnamese jobseekers rose by more than 30 percent. Applicants from the
RSS