Skip to main content
Premium Trial:

Request an Annual Quote

RainDance Files for IPO Targeting $60M

NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – RainDance Technologies has filed a prospectus for an initial public offering of its stock for up to $60 million.

Billerica, Mass.-based RainDance has neither priced its shares nor said how many shares it plans to offer, but said in its Form S-1 filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission that it plans to trade on the NASDAQ under ticker symbol "RAIN."

Merrill Lynch, Cowen and Company, and Evercore ISI Group are listed as the offering's underwriters.

RainDance offers digital PCR and targeted sequence enrichment platforms based on the firm's picodroplet technology, allowing for high speed and sensitivity at low cost per sample. The RainDrop digital PCR system retails for $125,000 and has 90 installations at 62 customers as of Dec. 31, 2014, the firm said in its filing. The ThunderStorm sequence enrichment platform retails for $250,000 and has 52 installations at 22 customers.

According to the filing, the firm's 2014 revenues grew 78 percent to $30.6 million from $17.2 million in 2013 and its net loss decreased 79 percent to $8.8 million from $14.3 million. As of Dec. 31, 2014, it had cash and cash equivalents of $33.6 million.

RainDance said that its revenues for the fourth quarter of 2014 increased 78 percent to $9.8 million from $5.5 million in Q4 2013, while its net loss narrowed to $1.7 million in the recently completed quarter from $3.3 million in the year-ago quarter.

The firm said it has raised $123.6 million from equities sales and $30 million in proceeds from debt facilities from investors, including Mohr Davidow Ventures, Quaker BioVentures, Alloy Ventures, Acadia Woods Partners, Sectoral Asset Management, Northgate Capital, and Capital Royalty Partners. That includes a $5 million investment from Myriad Genetics and a strategic investment from GE Ventures. RainDance said in its filing that sales to Myriad made up 51 percent of its revenue in 2014.

RainDance said it had no specific plan for the proceeds, but that it could be used for general corporate purposes, including the expansion of its sales team and innovation in next-generation systems based on its digital droplet technology platform. 

The Scan

Machine Learning Helps ID Molecular Mechanisms of Pancreatic Islet Beta Cell Subtypes in Type 2 Diabetes

The approach helps overcome limitations of previous studies that had investigated the molecular mechanisms of pancreatic islet beta cells, the authors write in their Nature Genetics paper.

Culture-Based Methods, Shotgun Sequencing Reveal Transmission of Bifidobacterium Strains From Mothers to Infants

In a Nature Communications study, culture-based approaches along with shotgun sequencing give a better picture of the microbial strains transmitted from mothers to infants.

Microbial Communities Can Help Trees Adapt to Changing Climates

Tree seedlings that were inoculated with microbes from dry, warm, or cold sites could better survive drought, heat, and cold stress, according to a study in Science.

A Combination of Genetics and Environment Causes Cleft Lip

In a study published in Nature Communications, researchers investigate what combination of genetic and environmental factors come into play to cause cleft lip/palate.