Pacific Edge shareholder rights offer closes

Pacific Edge shareholder rights offer closes

Pacific Edge’s 2 for 15 pro rata renounceable rights offer of new Pacific Edge shares (“New Shares”) closed yesterday.

The offer sought to raise approximately $20.5 million. Valid acceptances were received (including under the Oversubscription Facility) in respect of approximately 52.5 million New Shares (approximately $28.9 million).

Pacific Edge Chief Executive Officer David Darling says shareholders clearly understand the potential of the Company’s highly effective bladder cancer diagnostic technology, Cxbladder, now being made commercially available in the United States, Australia and New Zealand.

“Revenues are starting to progress as we penetrate those markets,” David Darling says.

“Many of our shareholders have consistently supported the Company through the research and product development phases and are now stepping up to make sure that the commercialisation programme has the resources to achieve the target of $100 million of annual revenue from Cxbladder within five years of commercial trading.”

The success of the offer provides Pacific Edge with the funding to deliver further products to the market and to step up the rate of implementation and rollout of its US sales force to target integrated healthcare providers and urology groups. Agreements have been signed in recent weeks with three national provider networks making Cxbladder available to a significant number of Americans.

“The endorsement of these agencies provides a clear commercial process linking providers and payers and signals to clinicians across the United States the availability of Cxbladder,” David Darling says.

“Cxbladder and its positive benefits as a quick, cost effective, non-invasive and highly accurate cancer detection test are particularly appealing to healthcare professionals, patients, and insurers alike in the US. Those attributes are now being recognised by clinicians and District Health Boards in New Zealand who see Cxbladder as offering significant clinical and patient benefits over the alternative of cytology.” Cxbladder is also being made available to clinicians in Australia by leading healthcare provider Healthscope and in 2014 is expected to be marketed by Oryzon to clinicians in Spain, which is the country with one of the highest incidences of bladder cancer in the world.

Under the terms of the pro rata renounceable rights offer a total of 2.0 million New Shares were available for subscription in the Oversubscription Facility. Valid applications were received for 17.2 million New Shares under the Oversubscription Facility. Accordingly Pacific Edge will not offer any New Shares for sale under a shortfall bookbuild. Eligible Shareholders who subscribed for New Shares under the Oversubscription Facility will be allocated the lesser of:

a. The number of additional New Shares applied for under the Oversubscription Facility; and
b. The number of additional New Shares applied for under the Oversubscription Facility, scaled in proportion to their Entitlement.

New Shares taken up under the entitlement offer are expected to be issued, and commence trading on the NZX, on 4 December 2013.

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