Greater Cincinnati is set to welcome another public company.
Blue Water Vaccines, a downtown-headquartered biopharma company, filed plans Friday with the Securities and Exchange Commission for an initial public stock offering, or IPO. The move follows three other locally based companies that have already gone public this year, with another local IPO pending.
Blue Water said the number of shares it will sell and the price have yet to be determined. It listed $24 million as the proposed maximum offering size in the filing, although those figures are often placeholders and the total can be much higher. It's not known when the IPO will be completed.
Blue Water plans to have its stock trade on Nasdaq under the ticker symbol BWV. Maxim Group LLC will serve as the offering's sole book runner, according to a news release.
Blue Water, formed in 2018 and backed by local investor group CincyTech, is developing a universal influenza vaccine, or a single-dose vaccine that would provide lifelong protection against all flu strains, as well as an H1N1 vaccine candidate. Both utilize the epitopes of limited variability covered in the patent.
The company also has a vaccine candidate for streptococcus pneumoniae, designed to specifically prevent middle ear infections, known as acute otitis media, or AOM, in children.
Last month, the company was awarded exclusive rights to a new United States patent awarded to its licensor, Oxford University Innovation Limited. The U.S. patent — coupled with Blue Water’s exclusive rights — means the company’s competition cannot use the technology, called epitopes of limited variability, discovered by the team at Oxford, which Blue Water believes will drive development of a universal influenza vaccine candidate.
Norwood-based payroll and human resources company Paycor HCM Inc. was the most recent Greater Cincinnati-based company to go public. It completed a $426 million IPO July 20.
Blue Water will be the fifth locally based company to go public this year if it wraps up the deal before January. Paycor and commercial real estate company Phillips Edison completed IPOs in July. That same month, hardware distributor Hillman Group went public when it merged with special purpose acquisition company Landcadia Holdings III Inc. In September, Blue Ash-based Ensemble Health Partners filed as well.
In May, Wilder-based Quipt Home Medical Corp. gained listing on Nasdaq. The company, formerly known as Protech Home Medical Corp., had traded on a Canadian exchange and over-the-counter in the U.S.
