NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) - Pressure BioSciences said today that it has raised $1.8 million in a private placement that closed on Thursday, Feb. 12.
The company expects the financing to keep it afloat through mid-2010. In December, the firm said that it only had enough cash to last until the middle of this year and laid off eight staffers in a restructuring in order to cut costs.
In last week's private placement, the company sold 156,980 units priced at $11.50. Each unit included one share of non-voting Series A convertible preferred stock; a warrant to purchase either 10 shares of common stock at $1.25 per share or one share of preferred stock at $12.50 per share; and a warrant to purchase 10 shares of common stock at $2.00 per share.
Each share of preferred stock is convertible into 10 shares of common stock at a conversion price of $1.15 per common share, the company said.
The 30-day average closing price of the company's shares at the close of business on Feb. 11, the day before the placement, was $.82 per share. The company's shares were trading at $.85 as of mid-afternoon today.
In connection with the placement, the company received $200,000 to be held in an escrow account, which will be used as payment for anticipated future purchases of the Company's pressure cycling technology instrument and consumables products, and not for an investment in the private placement, Pressure BioSciences said.
"We believe that we now have the financial resources to continue to aggressively address our clearly stated business goals throughout all of 2009, and into mid-2010," said Richard Schumacher, president and CEO, in a statement.
Schumacher added that these goals include "a sharpened focus on the large mass spectrometry market," and a sales strategy that is focused on markets for its PCT technology "where market penetration and customer purchases have begun, primarily in biomarker discovery, soil and plant biology, counter-bioterror applications, and tissue pathology."