The plan to make another 23m shares available was announced in a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing on Friday with Catalent proposing a minimum price of $23.36 per new share made available.
The follow-on comes less than a year after the New Jersey-based CMO listed on the New York Stock Exchange through an $872m initial public offering.
Unlike an IPO where shares are priced by the company involved, the share price in a follow on offering is determined by the price of shares already on the market. In Catalent’s case this is $29.19, an increase of 45% on the $19.85 per share price when it went public.
The S1 does not detail what Catalent plans to do with the money raised, although the firm does say “we will not receive any proceeds from the sale of shares of our common stock by the selling stockholders, including from any exercise by the underwriters of their option to purchase additional shares.”
Proceeds
So if the follow-on offering is not about cashing in, are more acquisitions likely?
When Catalent listed on the NYSE last year CEO John Chiminski told Outsourcing-pharma.com the contract manufacturing sector was “ripe for consolidation.”
And since going public Catalent has been investing in tech as part of its “follow the molecule” strategy. In November it bought particle engineering firm Micron Technologies, in a move that analysts said would allow the CMO to start competing for preclinical development work.
A few days later Catalent bought antibody-drug conjugate technology firm Redwood Bioscience, from which it had licensed rights to SMARTag platform in April 2013.
Blackstone
Around 17.6m of the shares that will be made available are currently held by Catalent’s biggest investor, and former owner, the Blackstone group.
After the offering, Blackstone’s holding will be 37.9% but, according to Catalent, the investor will continue to exercise influence.
Catalent said that: “Blackstone will continue to be able to strongly influence our decisions. In addition, Blackstone may have an interest in pursuing acquisitions, divestitures and other transactions that, in its judgment, could enhance its investment, even though such transactions might involve risks to you.”