Two companies, Achilles Therapeutics and Coursera, made their entrance as public companies Wednesday. Shares of Coursera rose 36.39%, while Achilles dropped below its $18 offer price.
Coursera’s (ticker: COUR) stock opened at $39 and closed at $45.01, up $12.01 from its $33 IPO price.
Late Tuesday, the Mountain View, California company sold 15.73 million shares at the top of its $30-to-$33 price range, collecting $519 million.
Founded in 2012, Coursera provides an online learning platform, offering about 5,100 courses and specializations to individuals. Students can take classes such as Japanese for Beginners, Predictive Analytics & Data Mining, or Covid-19 Contact Tracing, and they can earn a degree or an online certificate. The company said its platform has attracted more than 77 million learners. Classes are meant to be affordable, with a bachelor’s or master’s degree ranging from $9,000 to $45,000, the prospectus said.
The company, however, isn’t profitable, reporting $66.8 million in losses on $293.5 million in revenue for the year ended Dec. 31.
Achilles (ACHL) also made its debut. The biotech raised $175.5 million after selling 9.75 million American depositary shares at $18, the middle of its $17-to-$19 price range. Each ADS represents one ordinary share.
The stock ended its first day of trading at $16.55, down $1.45, or about 8.1%, from its $18 IPO price. This makes Achilles a broken deal.
Achilles is developing T-cell therapies to treat cancer. It is conducting two open-label Phase I/IIa trials to evaluate its product candidate, ATL001, for use in advanced non-small cell lung cancer and metastatic or recurrent melanoma.
Achilles isn’t profitable and hasn’t generated revenue. Losses widened to $33.2 million for the year ended Dec. 31 from about $14 million in 2019, a prospectus said.
Write to Luisa Beltran at [email protected]
