Telix snags Macquarie bankers to smooth the way for ASX listing

Telix Pharmaceuticals has snagged two ex-Macquarie bankers to help it launch onto the ASX.

Kevin McCann, who is currently chairman of IT services company Citadel Group and counts chairs of Healthscope and Origin Energy in his resume, joined the board this week.

And Alan Moss, who co-founded Macquarie Group and led it for 15 years until 2015, is one of seven major shareholders after an $8.5 million seed funding round.

“Until January it was just founders, my cofounder [Andreas Kluge] and myself, financing the cost of putting the company together,” CEO Dr Chris Behrenbruch told Stockhead. “We’re all experienced entrepreneurs and have reasonable resources.”

He says that while they’re “looking at a variety of funding options” to keep pushing forward a pipeline of drugs, they wanted someone who knew the ins and outs of capital markets.

Telix, which only launched in 2015, is contemplating a float to raise $50 million at 65c a share before the end of the year, giving it a valuation of $130 million.

The company is pre-revenue but is bringing a late stage pipeline of cancer drugs and diagnostic products to the market, based on radiopharmaceuticals or molecularly-targeted radiation (MTR).

Dr Behrenbruch says they bought up technology from academics and small drug companies to manufacture and commercialise radioactive drugs to diagnose and treat cancers.

The prostate and brain therapies are still only at Phase I and II trial stages.

The kidney diagnostics technology is the most advanced. It has finished a Phase III trial and has been asked to do a second version for the US FDA.

Dr Behrenbruch says this drug, if successful, could start making Telix money within two to three years.

It’s this kind of immediacy that he thinks will be attractive to investors.

Acorn Capital, CVC, Monash Investors and Viburnum Funds joined Moss in that seed round, as did two strategic industry investors.

Dr Behrenbruch and Dr Kluge plan to retain 12.5 per cent each of the company, and while Telix is an Australian company they plan to raise at least half of the sum they are looking for from overseas investors.