Sana Biotechnology will sell up to 25 million dollars of common stock from time to time under an at the market agreement with BofA Securities as sole sales agent, according to a prospectus supplement filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on October 15. Shares fell about 10.7 percent as investors priced the coming dilution.
ATM programmes are the biotech sector’s plumbing: they let a company sell small amounts of stock into strength without a marketed offering, at the cost of a permanent overhang. The modest size here, against the cash needs of a company running cell therapy manufacturing, reads as bridge financing while Sana’s hypoimmune engineered cell data, designed to evade the immune system without immunosuppression, build toward a value inflection.
The filing is a reminder of the sector’s two speed financing market on display today: City Therapeutics upsized a 230 million dollar IPO this morning, while a listed platform company with earlier data raises 25 million dollars through the tap.