Gencurix’s sell-off of equity changes NGeneBio’s largest shareholder to KT

Gencurix, NGeneBio's largest shareholder, has sold some of its shares to 10 people, including NGeneBio CEO Choi Dae-chul, drawing attention to its background.

As a result of the stock transfer, the largest shareholder of NGeneBio has changed to KT, Korea's second-largest wireless carrier, which founded NGeneBio with Gencurix.

NGeneBio said in a public disclosure Monday that its largest shareholder, Gencurix, has signed a stock transfer agreement with 10 people, including NGeneBio CEO Choi Dae-chul. The stock transferees included special parties and investors with returns purposes.

According to the disclosure, Gencurix will transfer 220,000 of its 1.5 million shares to Choi and nine others with a down payment of 1.0175 billion won ($752.36 million). Of this amount, 101.75 million won was paid on the day of the agreement, and the remaining 915.75 million won will be paid next Tuesday.

Among the transferees, NGeneBio CEO Choi and R&D Center Director Kim Kwang-joong will each receive 10,000 shares of common stock as special parties of Gencurix. As a result, the number of shares held by Choi and Kim will be 518,400 shares (4.02 percent of the total outstanding shares) and 161,250 shares (1.25 percent), respectively.

With the transfer of Gencurix’s shares of NGeneBio, KT, which established NGeneBio in 2015 in a joint venture with Gencurix, has emerged as the largest shareholder. KT holds 1,354,545 shares (10.51 percent) of NGeneBio.

As NGeneBio, which started as an in-house venture of KT, ushers in KT as its largest shareholder, there is much interest in how this will affect the company’s future business.

Last year, NGeneBio posted consolidated sales of 4.3 billion won, an operating loss of 13.4 billion won, and a net loss of 12.9 billion won.

NGeneBio has professed its plans to enter the global market by acquiring laboratory standards certified research labs (CLIA Labs) in the U.S.

Last month, the company said it would acquire a CLIA lab facility established in San Diego, Calif., by Bertis, a Korean precision medical technology company, for the first time.

At the time, NGeneBio said, "We will sequentially set up new NGS precision diagnostic services in the U.S. using our NGS precision diagnostic panels and analysis software that we sell to medical institutions at home and abroad. We also expect to increase NGS precision diagnostic services sales in the U.S.”

Besides, NGeneBio, which held its ninth annual general meeting of shareholders on March 29, re-appointed Yoon Se-hyuk, executive vice president of business planning, as an executive director and changed its articles of incorporation to add “development, manufacturing, and wholesale and retail of pharmaceutical products” to its business purpose, citing its plan to pursue the business of discovering and developing new drug candidates based on artificial intelligence (AI) as the reason.

On Monday, NGeneBio's stock price closed at 5,760 won, up 14.97 percent, or 750 won, from the previous day's closing price.