Avacta Group
plc
("Avacta"
or the "Group" or the "Company")
Issue of Equity and Total
Voting Rights
LONDON and PHILADELPHIA - Jan 21 2025 - Avacta Therapeutics
(AIM:AVCT), a life sciences company
developing innovative, targeted oncology drugs, today announces it
has issued and allotted a total of 6,663,568 new ordinary shares of
10 pence each in the Company ("New Ordinary Shares").
The New Ordinary Shares are being
issued in settlement of the quarterly principal of £2.55 million
and interest repayment of £0.50 million in respect of the Company's
unsecured convertible bond.
After settlement of the quarterly
repayment, the principal remaining under the convertible bond will
be reduced by £2.55 million to £28.05 million.
As communicated previously the
Company originally issued the unsecured convertible bond in October
2022 to fund the acquisition of a diagnostic business, provide
additional funding for a diagnostics roll-up strategy and provide
working capital for the Group. More recently the Board has
also consistently communicated its strategy to become a pure play
biotechnology company and focus its resources on its drug
development activities. Maintaining an appropriate level of cash on
the balance sheet is fundamental for biotechnology companies at
Avacta's stage of development.
The Board carefully considers each
payment separately as it arises and took the following additional
factors into account when determining to settle this quarterly
payment via the issue of New Ordinary Shares: the stage of the
process to divest of the Group's Diagnostics Division (which
continues to progress) and shareholder dilution.
The Avacta management team and Board
continue to explore all available pathways to provide optionality
for financing its clinical therapeutics programs over the longer
term, including divestment of the Diagnostics Division, partnering,
attracting global specialist biotechnology investors and
potentially a NASDAQ dual listing, on which further updates will be
provided in the coming months.
Application has been made to AIM for
the admission to trading of the 6,663,568 New Ordinary Shares
resulting from the conversion, which is expected to occur at or
around 8.00 am on 23 January 2025 ("Admission"). The New Ordinary
Shares will rank pari passu with the existing Ordinary Shares of
the Company.
Following Admission, the Company's
enlarged issued share capital will be 376,216,957. This figure may
be used by shareholders in the Company as the denominator for the
calculations by which they will determine if they are required to
notify their interest in, or a change to their interest in, the
share capital of the Company under the Financial Conduct
Authority's Disclosure Guidance and Transparency Rules.
For
further information from Avacta Group plc, please
contact:
About Avacta
- www.avacta.com
Avacta Therapeutics
is a clinical-stage life sciences company expanding the reach of
highly potent cancer therapies with the pre|CISION®
platform. pre|CISION® is a proprietary warhead
delivery system based
on a tumor-specific protease (fibroblast activation protein or
FAP) that is designed to concentrate highly potent warheads in
the tumor microenvironment while sparing normal tissues. Our
innovative pipeline consists of pre|CISION® peptide
drug conjugates (PDC) or Affimer® drug conjugates
(AffDC) that leverage the tumor-specific release mechanism,
providing unique benefits over traditional antibody drug
conjugates.
