Lycia Therapeutics stock surges in IPO debut after pricing about $317.5M offering

Lycia stock changed hands at $23.74 as of 12:07 p.m. ET, valuing the business at $1.31 billion. The stock trades on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the symbol LYCA.

Gross proceeds are expected to be approximately $317.5 million before underwriting discounts, commissions and other offering expenses, the company said. Lycia is selling all of the shares in the offering. The underwriters hold a 30-day option to buy up to 2,646,000 additional shares at the offering price, less discounts and commissions.

The offering is expected to close on Oct. 26, subject to customary closing conditions, the company said.

Lycia had marketed 14.7 million shares before it upsized the deal, and the price landed at the top of its range, according to Bloomberg.

Jefferies, TD Cowen, Evercore ISI and Guggenheim Securities are joint book-running managers. LifeSci Capital is a passive book-running manager.

Lycia is a clinical-stage biotechnology company developing therapeutics designed to degrade disease-causing extracellular proteins. Its initial focus is autoimmune, inflammatory and allergic diseases. The company's lead candidates are LCA-0061, a degrader of IgE for food allergy and other allergic diseases, and LCA-0321, a degrader designed to deplete the autoantibodies that cause Graves' disease.

Lycia was founded on the work of Nobel laureate Carolyn Bertozzi, a professor of chemistry at Stanford University. Bertozzi is also a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator.

Both lead candidates are currently undergoing Phase 1 trials, and results are anticipated in 2027, according to BioPharma Dive. Lycia plans to direct the money toward advancing its three experimental drugs, all of which are still at an early stage, according to Bloomberg.