NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – Diagnostics firm OncoCyte announced today that it has received approximately $2 million through the early exercise of 625,000 common stock purchase warrants by certain warrant holders.
"The capital provided to us increases our resources as we prepare for CLIA certification of our laboratory and the hiring of our launch team," OncoCyte President and CEO William Annett said in a statement."The warrant exercise and commensurate purchase of shares results in BioTime's ownership of our company falling below 50 percent. This is an important step in OncoCyte's evolution into an independent company."
OncoCyte was spun off BioTime about a year ago, and aims to launch a lung cancer test later this year that predicts which patients with positive imaging have benign versus malignant nodules.
The warrants were exercised to purchase one share of OncoCyte common stock at $3.25 per share, and were issued issued in August through a private placement of roughly 3.2 million units consisting of one share of common stock and one warrant.
In consideration for the early exercise, OncoCyte said that one warrant holder received one new warrant with an exercise price of $3.25 for every two warrants exercised, while the other warrant holders received one new warrant with an exercise price of $5.50 for each warrant exercised.
Following the exercise of warrants, OncoCyte has about 29.4 million shares of common stock outstanding and an aggregate of about 3 million warrants outstanding with exercise prices ranging from $3.25 to $5.50.
During late morning trading on the New York Stock Exchange Tuesday, shares of OncoCyte were up about 2.5 percent at $4.97.