With an upgraded listing on the Nasdaq in the US and around USD 346m in fresh capital, the Danish-founded biotech company Hemab is now using its stock market debut as a stepping stone to launch a new, aggressive growth plan leading up to 2030.

The strategy is intended to cement the company’s ambition to become “the leading coagulation franchise company,” CEO Benny Sørensen tells MedWatch.

The new plan, dubbed “Hemab 2×3 by 2030,” provides, for the first time, a comprehensive overview of the next five years. The goal is for Hemab to have, by the end of 2030, two commercial drugs on the market, two new late-stage clinical programs underway, and two new early-stage clinical programs underway.

“That’s a total of six major milestones, six products. We believe that this is the framework needed to claim that we are the leading coagulation franchise company,” says Sørensen via a Zoom call from the US.

The new strategy replaces a previous one called ”Hemab 1-2-5,” which, in short, aimed to have five drug candidates in development by 2025 at the latest.

”Hemab 2×3 by 2030” emphasizes that Hemab’s portfolio, with the candidate sutacimig as the flagship project, includes multiple assets, a factor highly valued by investors.

Spreading risk across several assets is thus seen as a requirement for an IPO, Claus Andersson, managing partner at biotech investor Sunstone, recently told MedWatch. Sutacimig is a former Novo Nordisk candidate that, under Hemab’s leadership, has now completed a phase II study in Glanzmann’s thrombasthenia and is also being tested as a treatment for factor VII deficiency.

The FDA granted a regulatory advantage, known as breakthrough therapy designation (BTD), to sutacimig in early March.

The candidate HMB-002 is currently being tested in a phase II study for von Willebrand disease, with early data showing “positive proof of mechanism,” and Hemab expects to report data in 2026 or early 2027. A third program is in the works and will be announced mid-year.

“Part of the new strategy is to move away from being a single-asset company. That will also require a significant amount of capital. So we’re off to a good start,” says Benny Sørensen, who, due to US securities regulations, is still only permitted to comment to a very limited extent until a quiet period lasting the next 25–30 days ends.

Need for more funding

Since its inception in 2019, the Copenhagen- and Boston-based company has raised approximately USD 346m from investors. Prior to the IPO, the investor group consisted of Access Biotechnology, Avoro Capital Advisors, Deep Track Capital, Healthcap, Novo Holdings, RA Capital Management, Smallcap World Fund, and Sofinnova.

The most recent capital raise was in October of last year, when Hemab secured USD 157m.

Capital is precisely the focal point of both the IPO and the strategy. Hemab raised USD 301.5m by selling 16.75 million shares at USD 18 each, at the high end of the price range and significantly above the original plan of 11.8 million shares.

In connection with the IPO, the company has made an additional 2.51 million shares available for sale, which the initial shareholders have the option to purchase at the price of USD 18 for up to 30 days.

If sold, this would bring Hemab an additional USD 45m.

According to the IPO documents, the proceeds will be sufficient to:

• initiate a phase III trial with sutacimig
• complete and report the first clinical data from the second part of the phase I/II study with HMB-002
• advance an as-yet-unannounced preclinical candidate into clinical trials

But this is far from enough to take any of the candidates all the way to regulatory approval, Hemab itself emphasizes in the prospectus. The company expects to need to raise “significant additional funds” to realize the 2030 plan. Benny Sørensen cannot comment on when this will become necessary.

Sørensen describes taking the next financial step in the public capital markets as a natural extension of the journey Hemab set out on when it was founded in 2019.

“When we founded Hemab, we set out to build the leading coagulation company with a clear goal of changing the course of the disease for patients living with overlooked and often neglected blood coagulation disorders. To embark on that journey, you need capital. At some point, the public capital markets become the natural next step,” he says.

“I would say that today marks the important next step on our journey.”

Timing has sparked skepticism

The timing has otherwise been met with skepticism among some experienced investors, who have pointed to geopolitical turmoil, high interest rates, and a long line of biotech companies heading for the Nasdaq in the US. Several have called Hemab’s IPO plans both bold and risky.

The CEO refuses to be deterred by this.

“We’ve been laser-focused on what we can control ourselves. By doing so, this was the right time,” he says, adding that the upgraded IPO “probably reflects that we’ve hit a good time.”

According to him, the choice of the US as the stock market—rather than, for example, the Danish market—was never really up for discussion.

“The US is effectively the most important and significant market for biotech, and Nasdaq is home to virtually all the major biotech companies. So no, we never seriously considered anything other than that,” he says.

This view is shared by Stephan Christgau, partner and co-founder of Eir Ventures, and Claus Andersson of Sunstone, who have previously pointed out that Danish and European stock exchanges simply cannot provide the necessary amount of specialized capital for a company like Hemab.

With the IPO, Hemab has established a US holding company in Delaware, and all shares in the Danish company have been transferred there. In doing so, Hemab is following in the footsteps of other Danish biotech companies such as Galecto, IO Biotech, and Ascendis Pharma by effectively becoming more US in order to gain full access to the US capital market.

Of the three, however, only the latter has succeeded in listing in the US, as both IO Biotech and Galecto have floundered on the US stock exchange.

When asked how the IPO will change Benny Sørensen’s own role as CEO, he maintains that the listing is first and foremost a financial tool—not a strategic end goal.

“Actually, it doesn’t change that much, aside from the fact that there are a lot of rules and regulations I have to comply with. But in my view, this is just financing. After the financing, it’s about getting back to work,” he says.

“The real celebration for us isn’t the financing. The real celebration is continuing to bring medicines to people who have lived long lives without these potential modern treatment options. The real celebration for us is if we succeed in bringing medicines all the way to the point where we start to impact lives,” says Sørensen.

Novo Holdings is being diluted

While established companies like Novo Nordisk and Roche are competing fiercely in the market for the bleeding disorders hemophilia A and B—which is worth approximately USD 13bn annually—Hemab’s focus remains largely untouched, which is why there are currently no competitors.

“It’s not as if we’re completely naive and expect that no one else will ever enter this space as well. But currently, we’re the only ones working on Glanzmann and von Willebrand and the other rare diseases we focus on,” Benny Sørensen told MedWatch in February 2023.

“That just underscores the importance of the company—we’re the ones delivering innovation in areas with a huge unmet medical need, and there’s therefore a strong sense of purpose at Hemab,” he elaborated.

Hemab was founded in 2020 by Johan Faber and Søren Bjørn, both of whom have backgrounds in Novo Nordisk’s hemophilia division. At the time, they took a shelved drug from Novo Nordisk under their wing and decided to revive it with funding from Novo Seeds, the Novo Nordisk Foundation’s startup program.

Hemab’s two largest shareholders are the Boston-based life science fund RA Capital Management and the Novo Nordisk Foundation’s investment company Novo Holdings. Prior to the IPO, they held 17.63% and 15.23% of the ownership, respectively.

Following the IPO, Novo Holdings’ ownership stake will be reduced from 15.23% to 9.85%, while RA Capital Management will reduce its stake from 17.63% to 11.40%.