Agios Pharmaceuticals Raised $294 Million to Fight Cancer and Rare Genetic Diseases: What It Means for Investors
There's an old adage in biotech -- raise capital when you can, not when you have to -- that Agios Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: AGIO) seems to have taken to heart. The biotech ended the third quarter with over $540 million in the bank, which it estimated would last through at least the end of 2020, but this month Agios closed on a secondary offering that added another $294 million to the biotech's coffers.
Agios has two drugs on the market -- Idhifa and Tibsovo -- that treat acute myeloid leukemia (AML), but they're both precision medicines that are designed to treat the subsets of patients with specific mutations, which has limited their potential. Agios also has to share Idhifa revenue with its development partner Celgene, which was recently purchased by Bristol-Myers Squibb (NYSE: BMY).
Third-quarter revenue was just $26 million, including $17.4 million from sales of Tibsovo and $8.2 million in collaboration and royalty revenue for Idhifa. With research and development costs topping $100 million, the two drugs aren't coming close to funding the pipeline and it's pretty clear why Agios was going to have to raise capital eventually.
Source Fool.com
