Healthcare

Bryan, Garnier & Co acts as European Lead Manager on Abivax’s USD 236 million Nasdaq IPO

Abivax is a French listed, late-stage clinical biotech company developing oral small molecule therapies that harness the body’s natural immuno-regulatory system.

Abivax has the potential to disrupt the inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) landscape in the near term, establishing its lead drug candidate obefazimod as a potential 1st line advanced therapy for IBD, and leveraging its proprietary small molecule library of miR-124 enhancers to expand its pipeline.

Capital raise proceeds will be mainly used to finance operations and pipeline developments with impactful catalysts expected into 2026, including top-line data from its Phase 3 induction trials in ulcerative colitis (UC) in Q1 2025, top-line data from its Phase 2a induction trial in Crohn’s disease (CD) in H2 2025, and top-line data from its Phase 3 maintenance trial in UC in Q2 2026.

Acting as European Lead Manager, Bryan, Garnier & Co helped to deliver a USD 236m Nasdaq IPO for Abivax, bringing additional demand from long-standing shareholders and specialist investors from Europe and the US.

Following a 4-day fully marketed book building process, Abivax raised USD 236m in a global SEC-registered equity offering targeting institutional investors across the US and Europe and US retail investors. Over the course of the roadshow, base deal was upsized from 18.7m shares to 20.3m shares.

The transaction was priced at USD 11.6 per ADS (lower end of the USD 11.6 – USD 13.0 range), representing a discount of 9.4% to 3-day VWAP preceding the start of the offering.

The book was well oversubscribed with high-quality US and European biotech specialist investors and with participation from new and existing investors.

This represents the largest Nasdaq IPO ever from a French biotech company, the largest IPO from a French company since 2022 and the largest European biotech IPO year-to-date.

Once again, Bryan, Garnier & Co is the chosen European investment bank supporting a European company during its Nasdaq IPO, as exemplified by previous transactions with Valneva, Genfit, DBV, Ablynx, LDR, Celyad, Galapagos, and BioNTech.

This also marks Abivax’ sixth consecutive financing transaction with Bryan, Garnier & Co since 2020, marking another landmark transaction for Bryan, Garnier & Co’s Healthcare and Equity Capital Markets franchises.

"I am grateful to the full Bryan, Garnier & Co team for their work on our landmark Nasdaq IPO. As an historic partner, their advice and demand generation have proven instrumental to the company's success."

— Marc de Garidel – CEO Abivax

"We are delighted with our Nasdaq outcome and we thank Bryan, Garnier & Co for their contribution. This marks our sixth consecutive financing transaction with Bryan, Garnier & Co and we deeply value the relationship."

— Didier Blondel – CFO Abivax

Abivax is a clinical-stage biotechnology company focused on developing therapeutics that harness the body’s natural regulatory mechanisms to modulate the immune response in patients with chronic inflammatory diseases. Based in France and the U.S., Abivax’s lead drug candidate, obefazimod (ABX464), is in Phase 3 clinical trials for the treatment of moderately to severely active ulcerative colitis.