Samsung Bioepis IPO: Samsung Group Enters U.S. Equity Market
Samsung Group plans to enter the U.S. equity market for the first time with the listing of its biotech company Samsung Bioepis. This would be one hot company to watch among upcoming initial public offerings (IPOs). (Source: The Wall Street Journal, last accessed August 24, 2015.)
Samsung Bioepis is a company dedicated to the research, development, and commercialization of biosimilar products.
Biosimilar products are copies of a biological medical products manufactured by a different company. Biosimilar products are approved versions of the original product, and can be produced when the original product’s patent expires.
The company plans to list its shares on the NASDAQ stock exchange, which has a significant amount of biotech stocks and many companies lining up for IPOs. It has not yet released its IPO date, IPO price, or stock symbol. Bioepis has said that it expects the IPO process to complete by June of 2016.
Samsung Group, founded in 1938, is the largest business conglomerate in South Korea. In the late 1960s, it entered the electronics industry. Its subsidiary, Samsung Electronics, is one of the largest tech companies in the world and has significant market shares in the smart phone market and the tablet market.
However, despite the popularity of its products around the globe, none of the companies within the Samsung Group have listed their shares in the U.S. The listing of Samsung Bioepis would be the first one.
The relationship between the companies looks like this: Samsung Electronics, the giant tech company, owns 46% of Samsung BioLogics; Samsung BioLogics in turn owns 90% of Bioepis.
Samsung Bioepis’s IPO in the U.S. would help the company fund a substantial amount of research and development as well as production facilities needed to produce biosimilars.
Samsung Bioepis is well on its way to launch its first product. The company has six biosimilars in development, five of which are in Phase III clinical trials or have already completed it. Recently, it successfully completed Phase III trials of a biosimilar of AbbVie Inc.’s (NYSE:ABBV) Humira. (Source: FiercePharmaAsia, last accessed August 24, 2015.)
According to sources that informed The Wall Street Journal, the company has hired Citigroup Inc. (NYSE:C) and The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. (NYSE:GS) as the lead managers for the offering. Analysts estimated that Samsung Bioepis would raise more than $1.0 billion through the IPO.
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