Skip to main content
Premium Trial:

Request an Annual Quote

Berkeley Lights to Raise up to $153M in IPO

NEW YORK – Digital cell biology company Berkeley Lights of Emeryville, California, on Monday filed for an initial public offering worth up to $153.2 million.

In a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, the firm said it is offering 7.4 million shares of common stock at an estimated price of $16 to $18 per share. Berkeley Lights has also granted the underwriters a 30-day option to purchase up to 1,110,000 additional shares of common stock at the IPO price.

If the firm sells all its shares at the maximum price and the underwriters exercise their option in full, Berkeley Lights could raise up to $153.2 million. In its SEC filing, the company estimated that it could see net proceeds of approximately $114 million, or $131.5 million if the underwriters exercise their option in full, assuming an IPO price of $17 per share.

JP Morgan Securities, Morgan Stanley, and Cowen are acting as joint book-running managers for the offering.

The company has applied to list its stock on the Nasdaq Global Market under the trading symbol BLI.

As of March 31, Berkeley Lights had cash and cash equivalents of $70.3 million. It expects to use its existing cash, along with the net proceeds from the IPO, for general corporate purposes, including working capital, and to fund R&D and sales and marketing activities.

For the three months ended March 31, the firm reported total revenues of $13.8 million, compared to revenues of $12.6 million in the year-ago quarter. It also reported a net loss of $8.4 million, or $3.02 per share, compared to a loss of $4.2 million, or $1.84 a share, a year earlier.

In 2018, Berkeley Lights raised $95 million in a financing round and struck a collaboration deal with Pfizer. The company has developed a platform, based on opto-electropositioning (OEP) fluidics technology, to capture phenotypic, functional, and genotypic information from thousands of single cells in parallel.