C4X Discovery IPO: Healthcare firm set to debut £31m City listing

University of Manchester spin-out C4X Discovery will this morning announce its intention to raise £11m through listing nearly 36 per cent of the business on London’s Alternative Investment Market on Thursday.

 

The float will give the Manchester-based business, which develops technologies to improve the discovery process for small molecule drugs for diabetes and substance addiction, a valuation of £30.9m. Zeus Capital has acted as nominated adviser and broker on the fully subscribed float.

 

“C4X is based in the north west and has a disruptive technology to allow the development of small molecule drugs safer, better and faster than currently available to the pharma industry and at significantly reduced cost,” Zeus Capital’s head of Plc advisory Ross Andrews told City A.M.

 

The float is Zeus Capital’s second completed in the past week, with energy efficiency and home improvement group Entu closing its book last week, amid volatile market conditions that have seen a number of firms including Miller Homes and Aldermore recently failing to close their books.

 

Life sciences investor Aquarius Equity Partners is the firm’s largest shareholder with three of the investor’s funds controlling a combined 41.76 per cent of C4X’s shares prior to the float.

 

 

1 Wilson joined Zeus as head of healthcare sales in September 2013 from Nomura Code Securities where he specialised in healthcare.

 

2 He has 30 years’ experience in biotechnology, specialty pharma and medtech, having previously worked at Arden Partners, Piper Jaffray and Nomura International.

 

3 In June Wilson worked on the £21.5m fundraise for 4d Pharma, which reached a market valuation of £65m upon placing and has since soared to over £170m.

 

Wilson led the team from Zeus, which acted as nominated advisers and brokers to C4X on its fundraise. The team also included director of corporate finance Dan Bate, research director Gary Waanders and executive Jonny Sharpe.