Quark Pharmaceuticals this week pulled its planned initial public offering on the Nasdaq, marking the second false start the company has had in attempting to float shares in the US.
Quark said in a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission that it has “determined not to pursue the initial public offering …. at this time.”
The company said that the IPO would have been a “discretionary financing” and that it has decided that the “terms currently obtainable in the public marketplace are not sufficiently attractive … to warrant proceeding with the public offering at this time.”
Quark officials were not available for comment by press time.
Quark's latest attempt to go public began when it filed a preliminary prospectus with the SEC in September 2010. A few months later, the company amended the document to state that it hoped to raise enough funding through the transaction to cover the more than $54 million it needed to conduct phase I and phase II trials for its lead drug candidates (GSN 1/27/2011).
This was the firm's second attempt at an IPO. It had previously tried to do so in 2007, but later that year pulled the plug on the effort amid unfavorable market conditions (GSN 8/2/2007).