The Kinase platform that started in the 1970s
Investment industry focuses on future trends as much as technology
Focus on company value rather than license out size
It is possible to challenge listing without a separate procedure until July.
[E-Daily Reporter Kim Yu-rim] Voronoi, who challenged the unicorn special listing No. 1, decided to withdraw from the IPO as it recorded a box office loss in demand forecasting. In the background of the low participation rate of institutional investors, he cited doubts about the licensed out company and that the companys core technology, Kinase, is not the latest trend. Voronoi IPO press conference. On the 16th, Voronoi decided to withdraw from the KOSDAQ listing. Earlier, Voronoi conducted a demand forecast for institutional investors for two days from the 14th to the 15th. The expected public offering price was 50,000 won to 65,000 won, with a market cap of 666.7 billion won to 866.7 billion won. However, under the sway of institutional investors, it received disappointing results in demand forecasting, and eventually announced a withdrawal report.
The value of the company that signed a license out contract is only 30 billion won
The reason why institutions were hesitant to invest was that they had doubts about the value of the license out that Voronoi signed last year. “The biggest weakness of Voronoi is that the founder and largest shareholder of an asset management company is from a securities company, and he is not a scientist or a person in the bio industry. In this situation, the two recent deals were the decisive blow.” “The market capitalization of US companies that have done two license outs is about 30 billion won, and the total contract size ranges from hundreds of billions to trillions. In a situation where two-seam in the bio sector has deteriorated, such a deal is not conducive to marketing.”
Kim Hyun-tae, the founder and CEO of Voronoi, is not a bio-related major. He received his bachelors and masters degrees in business administration from Seoul National University. He started the bond sales business at Tongyang Securities, followed by Samsung Asset Management, KB Investment & Securities, and Hanwha Investment & Securities before establishing Voronoi in 2015. The development of Kinase, the companys core technology, began two years after its establishment, when doctors from the Daegu-Gyeongbuk Advanced Medical Industry Promotion Foundation joined.
Voronoi has a total of 4 out of licenses, with a total contract size of about 2 trillion won. Among them, Brickell, who signed a contract in August of last year, signed a contract with a contract amount of $5 million and a maximum of $323.5 million while introducing Voronois autoimmune disease treatment pipeline VRN02. On the other hand, in the NASDAQ market, Brickells market cap is only 34 billion won. In November of last year, Pyramid of the United States signed a contract for the MPS1-targeted solid cancer treatment VRN08 with a total milestone of $846 million, with an undisclosed down payment. Pyramid, a privately held company, recently succeeded in attracting Series B, with a total investment amount of $61.6 million.
Institutional investors are questioning whether the US company that signed the contract will be able to pay future milestones, as the value of the company is far less than the total size of the out-of-licensing. In this regard, a Voronoi official said, “Brickell Biotech is a company specialized in skin diseases, and Pyramid Bioscience is specialized in cell cycle.
Started full-scale development in the 1970s Kinease, already saturated market
Some analysts say that the fact that Kinase, Voronois core platform technology, has already been popular for a long time did not attract the interest of institutional investors. Voronois main business is the development of a kinase treatment. In particular, it is concentrating on the development of precise targeted therapies that are selective for oncogenic mutations. Since Gleevec was first released in 2001, more than 60 kinases have been released.
A CEO of a bio company said, “The era of kinases in the 70s, proteins in the 80s, antibodies in the 90s, cells and genes in the 2000s, and the current nucleic acid therapy era have begun. The current bio market is where all these technologies are mixed.” He said, “Kinase is the oldest platform, and if there are 1000 biotechs, 500 is saturated enough to be kinased. Compared to the latest platforms such as mRNA and RNAi, the investment industry that looks to the future and invests could not be able to appreciate the potential highly.”
Voronoi emphasized that it has the latest Kinase technology. A Voronoi official said, “Kinase’s technology has continued to evolve since Gleevec was first released. In the early days of pharmaceuticals, due to low technology, side effects occurred in 7 out of 10 patients. The drug released in 2020 has a reduced chance of side effects in 0.7 out of 10 people,” he said. It is a very precise technology that few companies in the world possess such technology,” he said. “VRN07, a non-small cell lung cancer treatment targeting EGFR Exon20 INS mutation, licensed out to Oric in the US, shows superior selectivity and brain permeability compared to competing substances. VRN11, which is being developed as a treatment for catching resistance to Tagrisso, is a target material for C797S, and I would like to ask whether the development of a material following Tagrisso can be considered low in technology. Both substances will receive accelerated FDA approval and launch within a few years.”
The industry expects Voronoi to retake the IPO challenge within this year. This is because the approval of the preliminary examination for listing was granted on January 18, and listing is possible without a separate procedure until July, which is within six months. Voronoi plans to further focus on strengthening corporate value through R&D and technology transfer. Kim Dae-kwon, CEO of Voronoi, said, “As Voronois future growth potential is being evaluated positively, we plan to focus on strengthening our core competitiveness and re-challenge for listing in consideration of the market stabilization time in the future.”
