Shares soar as Oxford Nanopore makes its London debut

Shares in Oxford Nanopore Technologies surged on Thursday after the British biotech made its £3.4bn debut on the London Stock Exchange.

The initial public offering was priced at 425p, giving the firm, a specialist in DNA sequencing, a market value of £3.4bn when conditional trading got underway on Thursday.

The shares immediately started to climb, however, reaching 570p within the first hour of trading. By 1030 BST they were trading at around 605p.

Oxford Nanopore, which has also developed technology that enables the sequencing of Covid-19 variants, issued approximately 82.4m new shares, raising gross proceeds of around £350m.

Existing shareholders, including the London-listed investor IP Group, sold a further 41m shares, giving the total offer size of around £524m.

IP Group, which provided seed capital when Oxford Nanopore was spun out of Oxford University in 2005, raised around £84m. Of that, £15m will be allocated to a buyback programme, with the rest invested into its portfolio. It retains a 10.3% stake in Oxford Nanopore.

Proceeds from the IPO will be used to fund future growth. Gordon Sanghera, Oxford Nanopore chief executive, said the company was "in the foothills of a long and exciting journey".

He continued: "We are living on the cusp of a genomic era. I believe that our unique technology will open up many new possibilities for positive impact, both through enabling new discoveries in scientific research and through more accessible, faster [and] richer biological insights.

"We are delighted by the positive response we have received from investors. Our focus remains on continuing to innovate, grow, and working towards our goal of enabling the analysis of anything, by anyone, anywhere."

Unconditional trading in Oxford Nanopore is expected to start on Tuesday 5 October.

As at 1030 BST, shares in IP Group were ahead 3% at 140.2p.