Twist Bioscience announces pricing of $78.8 million public offering of common stock

Twist Bioscience  ( TWST), a company enabling customers to succeed through its offering of high-quality synthetic DNA using its silicon platform, announced the pricing of its underwritten public offering of 3,750,000 shares of its common stock at a price to the public of $21.00 per share, before underwriting discounts and commissions. In addition, the company has granted the underwriters of the offering an option for a period to purchase up to an additional 562,500 shares of the company’s common stock at the public offering price, less the underwriting discount and commissions. The gross proceeds of the offering to Twist, before deducting underwriting discounts and commissions and other offering expenses payable by Twist, are expected to be $78.8 million, excluding any exercise of the underwriters’ option to purchase additional shares.

Twist intends to use the net proceeds of the offering, along with its existing cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments to improve and update its platform and core technologies by investing in equipment, expanding its NGS research and development capabilities, investing in production software, consolidating into new operation facilities and increasing its production capacity. It also intends to use the proceeds of the offering to expand its commercial operations including marketing, NGS sales and technical services in the United States, Europe and Asia, to continue to expand in the pharmaceutical biologics drug discovery and DNA data storage markets, to establish its NGS operations in China and for working capital and general corporate purposes.

The offering is expected to close on or about May 13, 2019, subject to the satisfaction of customary closing conditions.

J.P. Morgan Securities, Cowen and Company and Evercore L.L.C. are acting as joint book-running managers for the proposed offering. Robert W. Baird & Co. Incorporated is acting as manager.