GI Innovation said Thursday that it has submitted a preliminary application to be listed on the secondary Kosdaq market.
The lead organizers are NH Investment & Securities and Hana Financial Investment, and the associated listed organizer is Samsung Securities.
The company stressed that the application and the review would proceed under a Unicorn special listing track meant for companies with an excellent market evaluation.
To be eligible for Unicorn special listing, the expected market cap of the applying company must be over 500 billion won ($420 million) in the Kosdaq market, and the company must receive an A grade from at least one of the evaluation agencies.
GI Innovation said the company would take steps for its initial public offering (IPO) in the second half.
“Currently, GI-101 and GI-301 of GI Innovation’s main pipelines are cruising,” GI Innovation CEO Rhee Byung-geon said. “For GI Innovation’s successful IPO and growth into a global company, it plans to focus on 3S’s -- science, strategy, and speed.”
GI Innovation has made two out-licensing deals for the products in the pre-clinical stage. The company licensed out GI-101, an immunotherapy candidate, to Simcere Pharmaceutical Group, a Chinese pharmaceutical company, in 2019, for a maximum of $750 million, and GI-301, its anti-allergy candidate, to Yuhan Corp. for a maximum of $1.2 billion.
A phase 1 and 2 study of GI-101 is ongoing in Korea and the U.S., and a phase 1 study of GI-301 in Korea.
GI Innovation signed a joint clinical trial agreement with MSD and AstraZeneca to supply Keytruda (MSD) and Imfinzi (AstraZeneca) for combination therapy with GI-101.
The company will obtain preliminary results from the phase 1 and 2 studies of GI-101 as monotherapy and combination therapy with Keytruda by the end of this year. In addition, the preliminary results from the GI-301 phase 1 will also come out by this year-end.
The company plans to develop the next pipelines, such as a new immunotherapy project and a metabolic disease project.