CRISPR Therapeutics Prices Public Offering; Analysts Bullish On CTX130 Potential

CRISPR Therapeutics (CRSP) has announced the pricing of an underwritten public offering of 6,428,572 common shares at a public offering price of $70 per share.

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The underwriters also have a 30-day option to purchase up to an additional 964,285 common shares at the public offering price less the underwriting discount.

CRISPR Therapeutics anticipates its gross proceeds from the offering to be approximately $450 million, before deducting underwriting discounts and commissions and other offering expenses. This figure also excludes any exercise of the underwriters’ option to purchase additional shares.

The offering is expected to close on or about July 6, 2020, subject to customary closing conditions.

CRISPR Therapeutics is a leading gene editing company focused on developing transformative gene-based medicines for serious diseases using its proprietary CRISPR/Cas9 platform.

Shares have soared 21% year-to-date, and analysts have a cautiously optimistic Moderate Buy consensus on the stock’s outlook. Their average price target of $85 indicates a further 16% upside potential lies ahead.

Encouragingly, Oppenheimer’s Jay Olson has just reiterated his buy rating on the stock with an $89 price target. He made the bullish call after CRSP announced four poster presentations on CRISPR-based allogeneic CAR-T therapies featuring promising preclinical data on CTX130 in T-cell lymphoma (TCL).

“The data validates CTX130’s therapeutic potential for the treatment of TCL, a type of blood malignancy that is difficult to treat by autologous CAR-T therapies” Olson explained. As a result, the analyst raised his probability of success estimate for CTX130 to 33%.

He believes that CTX130 marks the transition of allogeneic CAR-T therapies from hematologic to solid tumors, highlighting the therapeutic potential of CRISPR-based technology.

“Overall, we view CRSP’s development strategy as well thought out: the Clinical pipeline is most focused on improving “established” approaches via CRISPR while more complex projects (in vivo editing) are pursued in a second wave” the analyst concluded. (See CRSP stock analysis on TipRanks).