ADIA Participates in Moderna’s $500 Million Haul

Posted on 02/03/2018

Since 2010s, sovereign funds have plowed in large amounts of capital to find cures for cancer and fight off diseases, according to data from SWFI. Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Moderna Therapeutics raised US$ 500 million in Series G financing from private investors old and new at a valuation of US$ 7 billion, making it one of the largest unicorns in the pharmaceutical industry that has yet to bring its potentially game-changing product to market. With US$ 1.4 billion in cash and an additional US$ 250 million in grants, Moderna appears to be positioning itself for the final stages of development leading up to what could easily be the largest listing the biotech world has ever seen. At December 31, 2017, Moderna revealed they had roughly US$ 910 million in cash versus US$ 1.306 billion from December 31, 2016.

Series G Investors

New investors in Moderna’s seventh capital-raising effort included a sovereign wealth enterprise (SWE) of the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA), the corporate investment arm of the Singapore Economic Development Board (EDBI), pharmaceutical investor BB Biotech AG, Swiss bank Julius Bär Group Limited, and Silicon Valley’s Sequoia Capital. Participants from previous rounds also joined in, including Fidelity Management & Research Company, Pictet, Denver-based ArrowMark Partners, Alexandria Venture Investments, and Viking Global Investors. Pharmaceutical investors in Moderna include Merck, AstraZeneca, and Vertex Pharmaceuticals.

The influx of fresh capital has bought Moderna time to fine-tune and expand its current roster of 19 messenger RNA-based development candidates (10 of which have proceeded to clinical trials), expand its research and delivery capabilities, and invest in a manufacturing base that it will most certainly need once it finally does go public. Moderna is keen on getting more data from clinical trials, including 10 drugs in human trials. These drug candidates span from battling against spanning infectious diseases, immuno-oncology, rare diseases and cardiovascular diseases.

Advisors

Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC, JP Morgan Securities LLC, and Morgan Stanley Co. LLC acted as placement agents for the funding round, while Goodwin Procter LLP acted as legal counsel.

Keywords: Julius Baer Group.

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