Finch Therapeutics, the Somerville, Mass. startup founded in 2014 to address a wide variety of diseases with microbiome treatments, has raised $128 million in its first day of trading on the Nasdaq.
In mid-day trading, shares of the company (Nasdaq: FNCH) were trading over $19, up from the offering price of $17. The company sold 7.5 million shares in the offering — 1.3 million more shares than it had anticipated.
Finch had initially filed to raise $100 million, with BofA Securities, Jefferies and Evercore ISI backing the listing.
Finch is testing microbiome therapies to treat to recurrent C. difficile, Autism spectrum disorder, ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease. The company's primary method involves repurposing donated fecal samples from a nonprofit stool bank its CEO, Mark Smith, co-founded, then growing specific microbes through fermentation. The resulting bacteria are then dried, ground into a powder and placed into a pill capsule to be swallowed — the method by which Finch's lead drug candidate, CP101, is meant to treat C. difficile.
Phase 2 trials for CP101, which will ultimately include about 70 participants, are expected to conclude next month. Finch plans to enter Phase 3 trials for the drug in mid-2021, fueled by a $90 million Series D round it closed in September.
Finch is the fourth Massachusetts biotech to go public this year. Decibel Therapeutics, Vor Biopharma and Cullinan Oncology all made their stock market debuts in January and February. Cullinan Oncology, which was the first of those to go public, was trading at $42 in mid-day trading on Friday, twice what shares were initially priced at in its Jan. 12 IPO. Cullinan has a market cap of $1.814 billion.
Vor has also doubled the price of each share since it began trading on Feb. 9; Decibel shares, by contrast, have declined by 16 percent since the company's Feb. 12 IPO.
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