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Covid testing biotech Prenetics merges with US Spac in $1.25bn deal

The biotechnology start-up whose Covid-19 checks helped the English Premier League play through the pandemic has merged with a US-listed explicit goal acquisition agency, turning into Hong Kong’s first “unicorn” to itemizing.

The deal to absorb Prenetics into the Nasdaq-listed Artisan Acquisition clear cheque agency, valued the genome and diagnostics biotech at $1.25bn. Together with the funds already raised by the Artisan Spac, which will be renamed Prenetics, the deal gives the entity a blended equity price of $1.7bn.

The deal is predicted to close throughout the fourth quarter of this yr or the first quarter of 2022.

Prenetics, which was based mostly by the Hong Kong entrepreneur Danny Yeung in 2014 and bought early funding from Alibaba, has constructed a standing spherical genome testing and sickness diagnostics, areas the place it sees multibillion-dollar world options. 

Its fortunes have been reworked by the worldwide effectively being catastrophe, notably due to the company’s place in “project restart”, the English Premier League’s efforts in May 2020 to resume rivals no matter a lockdown and avoid an estimated $1bn hit from cancelling the entire season. 

The league hired Prenetics to deal with the widespread testing regime for players and employees, a deal that contributed to the Hong Kong agency producing $65m in revenues in 2020 and a forecast of $205m in 2021.

Totally different revenue streams included providing one-stop lab testing suppliers for Hong Kong and Heathrow airports and IWG, the world’s largest versatile office agency.

Yeung described the deal, which adopted a name to not itemizing domestically, as a “monumental second” for Hong Kong start-ups. Prenetics will grow to be the first “unicorn” — or start-up with a listed market price of better than $1bn — from Hong Kong, paving the best way through which for others to follow a route to itemizing exterior the Chinese language language territory.

Artisan is backed by Adrian Cheng, chief govt of Hong Kong property and infrastructure conglomerate New World Progress, who established the Spac to hunt out companies in healthcare-related sectors with optimistic progress prospects throughout the higher China space.

People close to the company said that Prenetics had been in discussions with “dozens” of various Spacs sooner than deciding on the deal with Cheng.

Prenetics foresees its subsequent stage of progress throughout the rise in demand for fast, appropriate checks administered in homes and offices, on prime of fixed testing should struggle coronavirus outbreaks.

Using experience developed at Oxford faculty, the company has produced a small machine — the Circle HealthPod — that takes $20 disposable checks accessible from pharmacies and delivers lab-quality diagnostics in about 20 minutes.

The $126 machine, which the company launched closing month all through New World’s buying malls, office buildings and residential developments, affords solely Covid-19 checks nonetheless Prenetics envisages widening its decisions to checks for sexually transmitted illnesses.

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https://www.ft.com/content material materials/71a31ece-65a5-4746-9d7d-789f220734f1 | Covid testing biotech Prenetics merges with US Spac in $1.25bn deal

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