Seth Klarman, the founder and hedge fund manager of Baupost Group disclosed 11.23% stake in Biotie Therapies, a Finnish biopharmaceutical company focused on developing drugs for patients with neurodegenerative and psychiatric disorders.
Details of Klarman’s position in Biotie Therapies
Klarman on behalf of himself, SAK Corporation and Baupost Group submitted a new notification to the management of Biotie Therapies regarding the changes to its position in the company on June 17, 2015.
Biotie Pharmaceuticals issued convertible notes and warrants pursuant to the subscription agreement entered by the company and certain investors. On April 23, 2015, the company explained that the subscription based on the warrants is conditional, among other things, on the holder’s decision to subscribe for shares and the occurrence of other events.
Based on the latest notification, Klarman and the firms he controls, own a total of 130,682,552 shares and voting rights or 11.23% of Biotie Therapies. His stock holding in the company included 8.6% or 100,126,996 currently held shares and voting rights and 2.6% 30,555,556 shares that may be subscribed based on warrants.
On June 12, 2015, Klarman notified the management of Biotie Therapies regarding the possible changes of his stock holding in the company. Based on his notification, he had more than 10%— assuming the completion of the company’s U.S. public offering, the full conversion of the convertible notes, and full exercise of other equity-based instruments (warrants).
Biotie Therapies U.S. public offering
Biotie Therapies completed the pricing of its U.S. public offering of 3,761,418 American Depositary Shares (ADS) for $14.888 a piece. The company raised approximately $55.99 million from the offering.
According to Biotie Therapies the share to ADS ratio is 80 to 1, and the ADS will represent 300,913,440 newly issued shares in the company. It has a subscription price of €0.165 per new share (based on fixed ECB exchange rate of $1.1279 per euro as at June 10, 2015).
Biotie Therapies also granted the underwriters an option to subscribe additional 44,629 ADS represents up to 3,570,320 newly issued shares in the company. Furthermore, UCB S.A. granted the underwriters an option to purchase up to 519,583 ADS within 30 days of its offering solely to cover over-allotments. The company will not receive proceeds from the ADS sold by UCB S.A.
The shares of Biotie Therapies are listed on the NASDAQ OMX Helsinki under the symbol BTH1V. The company started trading on the NASDAQ Global Select Market on June 11, 2015, under the symbol “BITI” and expected the closing of its ADS offering on June 16 subject to customary closing conditions.
The shares of Biotie Therapies closed $19.32 per share, up by 10.72% on NASDAQ on Thursday, June 17.
RBC Capital Markets and Stifel served as book-running managers, JMP Securities acted as lead manager and Roth Capital Partners as acting co-manager of the public offering.
