Firm will focus on inking more collaborations next year to achieve goal of breaking even by 2011.
Compugen reports raising gross proceeds of $20 million and will realize about $19 million. Under the controlled equity offering facility, a total of approximately 4.1 million ordinary shares were sold at a weighted average price of approximately $4.91 per share.
These shares were sold in the open market at prevailing prices during the period November 13 to December 29. The money is intended for general corporate purposes.
“Including the net proceeds from this offering, we expect to have cash resources at year-end 2009 of approximately $23 million, not including the approximately $4 million market value of our holdings of Evogene Ltd. ordinary shares,” remarks Dikla Czaczkes Axselbrad, CFO.
“We anticipate maximum gross cash usage of $8.5 million for 2010, which would be reduced by any revenues or other cash sources including government or other grants in calculating 2010 net cash usage. In view of the fact that we anticipate that our major source of revenues in the short term will likely be research revenues, licensing fees, and milestones, we do not plan on providing guidance for revenues during 2010.
“However, as previously stated, a short-term financial target is to achieve cash-flow breakeven by year-end 2011, based largely on research revenues under milestone and revenue-sharing collaboration agreements. Achieving this target is of course subject to success in entering into additional collaborations during 2010, which is now a primary focus of our business development efforts. Longer term, we expect that the major components of our revenues will be milestones, royalties, and other revenue sharing amounts.”
Compugen is a drug and diagnostic product candidate discovery company with a number of platforms based on in silico prediction and selection. In 2002, Compugen established an affiliate, Evogene, to utilize some of its in silico predictive discovery capabilities in agricultural biotechnology. The company has partnerships with various companies including Bayer Schering Pharma, Merck & Co., Merck Serono, Ortho-Clinical Diagnostics, Pfizer, Roche, and Teva Pharmaceutical.
