Israel's Evogene completes $8M IPO

Rehovot, Israel-based Evogene has completed an initial public offering on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange. The company sold units consisting of ordinary shares, series 1 and 2 warrants. In total, 3,800,000 ordinary shares, 3,900,000 series 1 and 3,400,000 series 2 warrants were sold in the offering. In addition, existing shareholders exercised warrants for around 2,000,000 ordinary shares, bringing the total new capital raised to approximately $8.0 million, the company said.

The series 1 warrants included in the IPO are exercisable until May 31, 2009, at a price of NIS8.45 ($2.02) per share; the series 2 warrants have until May 31, 2011, at a price of NIS11.05 each. The full exercise of both series of warrants would approximately generate an additional $16.8 million of capital.

Ofer Haviv, Evogene's chief executive, said: "the capital raised will enable us to expand our gene discovery efforts, to advance our products towards commercialization, to widen our activities in the field of biofuels and to be full partners with leading companies worldwide in the development of products arising out of our unique and broadly applicable discovery capability."