Proteomics Company Nautilus Bio to List on NASDAQ via SPAC

On February 8th, Arya III, a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC), announced entering into a combination agreement with Seattle-based Nautilus Biotechnology and expect to be listed on NASDAQ under the ticker symbol “NAUT.” Nautilus, founded in 2016, will be relocated to Delaware for its official state of incorporation as part of its going public. The combined company, which has received a $900 million valuation, will continue to operate under the Nautilus management team, led by Founder and Chief Executive Officer Sujal Patel and Founder and Chief Scientist Parag Mallick.

Financial Activities

As of February 8th, the share price shot up to $22.43 in response to the announcement. The combined company’s initial market capitalization is predicted to be approximately $1.3 billion from selling 20 million shares at $10 each in exchange for about 15% of the company in total.

Current Nautilus Biotechnology stockholders and holders of outstanding equity awards are converting 100% of their existing equity interests into shares or equivalent awards of the combined company at an implied Nautilus Biotechnology equity value of $900 million. The company will be 70% owned by the stockholders of the original Nautilus, assuming that no Arya III shareholders try to redeem their shares.

The combined company will have access to $350 million in capital to develop its technologies, assuming that the deal succeeds. About $150 million will be the balance in Arya III’s trust account and another $200 million from the previously mentioned common stock sale done by PIPE (Private Investment in Public Equity) investors.

Morgan Stanley is acting as lead financial advisor to Nautilus Biotechnology and Jefferies LLC, and Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC acting as financial advisors to Arya III. The transaction is set to finalize in 2021. Additional information about the transaction will be provided in a Current Report on Form 8-K that will contain an investor presentation to be filed by Arya III with the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”)

Company Technology

Life sciences, Physical Engineering, and Computer science contribute to the non-obvious and patent-protected science that is the basis for Nautilus’ approach in developing a toolset for proteomics that can close the gap between the field and genomics/transcriptomics. The ultimate goal is to make the process of gleaning proteomic data both faster and less expensive than previous methods.

The delay in development relative to genomics and transcriptomics is considered to be the result of the lack of proteomics measurement tools. Nautilus intends to use the money that it has raised to create a bold, disruptive technology that has the potential to accelerate the generation of proteomics-based insight dramatically, drive new discoveries, and propel this field forward to better understand our fundamental biology and the molecular mechanisms of disease.

The platform that Nautilus is building has incredible potential to improve the quality of research and drugs designed by the health industry. Protein-protein interactions are the key to signal transduction to many regulatory events in the body, and high-throughput proteomics technologies, along with advanced bioinformatics, are extensively used to identify molecular signatures of diseases based on protein pathways and signaling cascades.

While the potential of proteomics is great, there are challenges, such as the integration of proteomics with genomics and metabolomics data that the Nautilus platform could help with. Investors in this newly public company have a good long term investment on their hands because of this proteomics platform.

“We believe Nautilus has the potential to help revolutionize biomedicine with an ultra-sensitive, single-molecule protein analysis platform designed to comprehensively analyze and quantify the human proteome,” said Nautilus CEO, Sujal Patel.

Related Article: Sana Biotechnology Makes Wall Street Debut with $587.5 Million IPO

References

1. https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210208005194/en/Next-Gen-Proteomics-Company-Nautilus-Biotechnology-to-List-on-Nasdaq-Through-Merger-with-Arya-Sciences-Acquisition-Corp-III

Author

Eduardo Longoria