A biotech located in Texas’ capital will be looking to enter a SPAC deal.
On Monday, the Dallas-based SPAC Financial Strategies Acquisition Corp. announced it will merge with Austin Biosciences Corp., a biotech located in its namesake. Once the deal closes, Austin Biosciences will become a subsidiary of Financial Strategies and will be listed on Nasdaq under the symbol
$ASTN
.
Austin shareholders will receive 12.5 million shares of the acquiring corporation’s stock in exchange for all the capital stock of Austin Biosciences. Financial Strategies said in a release that the value of the combined company will be around $166.3 million, with the current shareholders of the biotech owning around 75% of the shares once the deal finishes.
The transaction is expected to close sometime in the second quarter of 2023, but no hard date was given.
Austin Biosciences has several candidates in its
pipeline
, mainly focused on oncology. According to the biotech’s website, it has six candidates that are all in preclinical testing and target pancreatic, breast and lung cancer, among others.
The biotech also has a pain therapy in the preclinical stage as well. According to Financial Strategies, the biotech has completed some preclinical studies for its candidates and has been issued patents in the US and internationally, including the EU and Japan.
“The business combination of Financial Strategies Acquisition Corp. and Austin Biosciences allows us to advance the preclinical development of our platform technology, to add significant experience to the Austin Biosciences board of directors and to access high-quality institutional investors,” Austin Biosciences CEO Ram Burgi-Krishnamurthy said in a
release
.
According to the Austin Biosciences
website
, Burgi-Krishnamurthy also serves as the CFO for a SPAC named AXIOS Sustainable Growth Acquisition Corp., and as a senior consultant for Ireland-based Celtic Asset and Equity Partners, which specializes in SPAC.
Endpoints News
reached out to Austin Biosciences for comment.
