Soul Patts-backed IPO hopeful Nicolab back in front of investors
Amsterdam-based medtech Nicolab International, which counts Washington H. Soul Pattinson, Regal Partners and Ellerston Capital among its investors, is back on the fundraising trail after just seven months.
Nicolab’s StrokeViewer aims to streamline stroke treatment.
Nicolab has been reaching out to investors in hopes of stitching up a $10 million raise that would be structured as preference shares. Sources said the biotech was willing to pay a 15 per cent accruing dividend that would be capitalised, in addition to standard preference rights for new shares issued under the raise.
The latest round is expected to value Nicolab at about $130 million, which would close to the valuation that it fetched in mid-2021. Stockbroker Ord Minnett is understood to be arranging investor meetings this time around, a change from Morgans which helped the company raise $15 million in May.
Nicolab’s flagship product is a cloud-native stroke diagnostics and triage platform dubbed StrokeViewer which was live in 200 hospitals as of May. Its founders, Merel Boers and Renan Sales Barros, were among the researchers involved in the Netherlands’ MR CLEAN trials which ended in 2014 and are credited as being seminal to care and treatment of stroke patients.
The seven-year-old company has been meeting with Australian investors as far back as 2018, when it was aiming for an ASX listing in 2019.
Over the years, Soul Patts, Ellerston and Regal have joined Nicolab’s investor base, although the mooted float is yet to happen. Investors in the May round were told Nicolab had pencilled in an IPO in the first half of 2024.
Electrical equipment giant Philips joined Nicolab’s shareholder register late last year as part of a strategic partnership. Under it Philips, a global leader in MRI machines, agreed to distribute and co-develop products with Nicolab.
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