Greater Cincinnati startup Enable Injections is aiming to build a 150,000-square-foot headquarters as the company plans to more than double its headcount in the next five years.
Mike Hooven, the company’s president and CEO, confirmed Enable will start looking for a site to build a state-of-the-art facility in mid-2023. It’s the first time he’s talked in detail about the company’s future needs. Enable, which is developing a device called the enFuse, a wearable drug-delivery device, is quickly moving toward commercialization with plans for a future initial public offering, or IPO.
Enable Injections landed millions in incentives Monday as part of its projected hiring push. It plans to add 257 jobs with more than $19.8 million in new payroll by 2027. The company will retain another 193 jobs with $20.3 million in payroll.
Hooven has conceptual renderings in hand. Evendale, where Enable currently maintains its headquarters, is in the running as a possible location, as are Blue Ash, Mason, West Chester Township and others, he said.
“We’ll be looking for more incentives,” Hooven told me. “We should be a pretty desirable tenant.”
The hiring spree comes as the company expects U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval for the enFuse, likely next year. That will serve as a major inflection point.
An IPO will follow. The timing would depend on a variety of factors, including current market conditions, Tim Flaherty, executive vice president and chief financial officer, said.
The enFuse, a palm-sized wearable circular disk, has the potential to replace traditional IV therapy.
Hooven said it will “revolutionize” health care. It’s designed to deliver large volumes of medication for a wide range of therapies and diseases, providing a safer, convenient and more cost-effective form of treatment.
To date, Enable has raised more than $311 million for the enFuse. Its backers include drugmaker Sanofi; Magnetar Capital, an Illinois-based hedge fund; Cincinnati Children’s Hospital; CincyTech and others.
“It’s a big way for pharma to differentiate its product,” Hooven told me. “They can either sell a drug that essentially does the same thing as their competitor, but by using this type of delivery, it offers tremendous flexibility. A patient can do this at home or at work, versus spending hours at an infusion clinic, and we believe it will lead to a significant reduction in health care costs.”
At 150,000 square feet, the new location would nearly quadruple the company’s current 40,000-square-foot footprint in Evendale, although Enable will likely consolidate all its operations to the new building. The company has a manufacturing facility in Franklin and an administration office in West Chester.
If the FDA timeline plays out, Enable will start manufacturing in earnest in 2025, Hooven said. The Evendale location has capacity to make 3 million units of the enFuse a year. Enable, to date, has invested $60 million in its modular scalable manufacturing, or MSM, system, which includes high-tech robotics and state-of-the-art equipment.
The plan would be to run the new facility and the current facility in parallel for a period of time, Flaherty said.
Wherever the new headquarters lands, the company has cemented itself in the state. As part of its hiring push, the Ohio Tax Credit Authority Monday approved a 2.009%, 10-year job creation tax credit, valued at an estimated $3.25 million. Additional funds pending from JobsOhio could push that total to more than $5 million. REDI Cincinnati also provided support.
Enable employs 180 people across its three sites.
“It’s a way to anchor our expertise here,” Flaherty said. “We’re committed. We’re centrally located from a distribution standpoint, and we have the human factor, the expertise, big pharma companies don’t have.”
Hooven is equally bullish on the company’s outlook. Hooven, before Enable, founded now-publicly traded Atricure (Nasdaq: ATRC), a Mason-based medical device maker known for its focus on atrial fibrillation.
Hooven said Enable will surpass Atricure in key metrics like revenue and employees. Atricure currently employs 1,000 worldwide with a nearly $2 billion market cap.
Enable has spent 10-plus years developing the enFuse. Hooven expects the company to be alone in the market for the foreseeable future.
Bill Baumel, managing director of Columbus-based Ohio Innovation Fund, which has invested in Enable, agreed. Enable's team, customer base and intellectual property present huge barriers to entry for competitors.
Hooven predicts Enable will be a $5 billion business, or more, in the next five years.
“We’re in a really unique market position,” Hooven said. “Other companies – big companies – have tried to do what we’re doing, and they can’t. The biggest question right now is, are patients going to switch (to our device)? After commercialization, we’ll have the evidence that this is the way to go. It’s the one missing piece.”
