It’s amazing what a dose of Nasdaq can do to your share price – just look at GW pharma!

Its amazing what a listing on Nasdaq can do for you if you a biotechnology/biophamecutical company right now. The appetite from U.S. investors for anything in the sector seems insatiable.

A great example is GW Pharma, based in Porton Down, the medical cannabis specialists which listed on Nasdaq in 2013 and led to a substantial improvement in the both the liquidity of GW’s shares and more importantly it has had an amazing impact on its share price. The daily volume of shares traded has increased from approximately 80,000 per day when it was listed just on AIM to an average volume of almost 1 million shares per day.

After trading at 60p for much of last year, it hit 211p yesterday, with a rise of 21p or 11% on the days, on news of a further successful fund raising.  The shares are up 335% in the last 6 months!

Its follow-on offering of American Depositary Shares, or ADSs, on the NASDAQ Global Market at a price of $36.00 per ADS raised gross proceeds of $87.9 million (£53.4 million) before expenses yesterday. The follow-on offering price was at a premium of 10.1% to the closing middle market price on the day immediately prior to announcement.

This offering enables GW to carry out the clinical development of their childhood epilepsy orphan development programme centred on their product candidate Epidiolex®. It has received Orphan Drug Designation from the FDA for the treatment of Dravet syndrome, a severe infantile-onset, genetic, drug-resistant epilepsy syndrome. Orphan drug potentially means fast track approval by the FDA as well as the potential to price up to £250,000 per treatment.

GW Pharmaceuticals (GWP) was founded in 1998 and listed on AIM in June 2001. The Group’s lead programme is the development of a product portfolio of cannabinoid prescription medicines, including Sativex® Spray. In 1999 GWP commenced its first clinical trials evaluating different cannabinoid formulations as potential treatments in the fields of Multiple Sclerosis and pain. In 2003, GW entered into its first pharmaceutical licence agreement with Bayer Healthcare AG for the UK marketing rights to Sativex and in 2005, they signed a deal with Almirall granting them exclusive marketing rights to Sativex in Europe (ex-UK). In 2007, GW granted Otsuka the development and marketing rights in the United States.

Sativex was first approved in Canada in 2005 and was extended to cancer pain in 2007. In May 2009, a licence submission was made for Sativex in the UK and Spain for the treatment of MS spasticity. In the United States, the FDA granted a Phase III IND (permission to enter Phase III trials) for Sativex in 2006.

Sativex is now approved for the treatment of spasticity due to multiple sclerosis in 24 countries. Sativex is also in Phase 3 clinical development as a potential treatment of pain in people with advanced cancer. This Phase 3 program is intended to support the submission of a New Drug Application for Sativex in cancer pain with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and in other markets around the world. The company also has a pipeline of development compounds in Phase 1 and 2 clinical development for glioma, ulcerative colitis, type‑2 diabetes, and schizophrenia.

Forget a dose of Sativex or Epidiolex, a dose of Nasdaq listing can make you feel much, much better!

Contrarian Investor UK

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