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Photographer: Kiyoshi Ota / Bloomberg
Photographer: Kiyoshi Ota / Bloomberg
SoftBank Group Corp. led a $ 1.15 billion investment in genetic testing company Invitae Corp. to help expand the use of its platform.
The financing will be in the form of convertible debt, Invitae said in a statement Monday. The convertible senior notes due in 2028 will have an initial conversion price of $ 43.18 per share, a 20% premium over the company’s volume-weighted five-day average price from April 1, according to the company. Shares of San Francisco-based Invitae have tripled in the past 12 months and closed at $ 39.19 in the United States on Thursday, pushing its market valuation to $ 7.7 billion.
“With the support of our long-term shareholders, we are creating the platform to support the systematic use of genetics in traditional medicine to achieve better Health care for everyone, ”said Sean George, Co-Founder and CEO.
SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son has expanded his investments in publicly traded companies in recent months, including in Amazon.com Inc., Facebook Inc. and Alphabet Inc. Bloomberg News reported in February that the Japan-based company plans to invest billions of dollars in the biotechnology and health care sector. The Invitae investment was made through SoftBank’s asset management group, SB Management, which also took a stake of around 6% at the start of the year. Pacific Biosciences of California Inc., a DNA sequencing company. As of December 31, SoftBank’s public holdings also included 4D Molecular Therapeutics Inc. and AbCellera Biologics Inc.
Son previously created a $ 100 billion Vision Fund to invest in private startups, betting on companies such as Didi Chuxing and DoorDash Inc.
While SB Northstar was forced to liquidate controversial derivatives positions in large tech companies after investor backlash, it took stakes in various other companies. He recently invested in Norway-based educational software provider Kahoot! AS, and I bought one-tenth from Swedish cloud platform provider Sinch AB.
Widely followed investor Catherine Wood is the largest holder of Invitae shares through her exchange-traded fund Ark Innovation ETF, which owns around 14%, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Wood told CNBC earlier this month that Invitae was one of the fund’s most underappreciated holdings.
Invitae offers genetic testing for a range of diseases, including hereditary cancer, cardiology, neurology, pediatric genetics, as well as reproductive health in the United States and abroad. Invitae also announced on Monday that he was the purchase of Genosity Inc., a company that provides software and laboratory solutions, for $ 200 million.
J. Wood Capital Advisers LLC and Perella Weinberg Partners LP acted as advisers and JP Morgan acted as placement agent for Invitae on the transaction
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