IQnovate completes public listing on NSX

Contract medical services company IQnovate (NSX:IQN) on Thursday completed a public listing on the National Stock Exchange.

IQN shares started trading at $0.350, a 75% premium to the $0.200 IPO offer price.

But by around 3:30pm on Thursday the stock price had fallen to $0.280 – 20% below the opening figure. This price represents a market capitalisation of $9.74 million.

IQnovate provides drug development, pre-clinical and clinical development and other services to clients including pharmaceutical, biotech, medical device and academic organisations. It also offers biotech capital advisory services to global institutional investors.

IQnovate, which bills itself as the world's first company of its kind, was founded by experienced Australian biopharma executive, George Syrmalis, who is the current chairman and CEO .

The company raised around $1.2 million in the IPO on the NSX. According to Syrmalis, IQnovate “deliberately limited the size of the IPO because we don’t need a lot of capital at this stage of [our] development. But as we advance our plans to expand into the Asia Pacific Region, investors should take greater notice of us.”

He said the company’s main selling point is an ability to “more efficiently develop products for bio-pharma companies,” cutting down the cost of bringing a new drug to market from the current average of $980 million.