Paragon 28 stock gains traction in early trading debut, while MiNK bounces back

MiNK, for much of Friday, traded below its IPO price before making a comeback in the late afternoon. Biotech has avoided the fate of four other companies this week: the payments startup

AvidXchange Holdings

(ticker: AVDX), healthcare IT company

Health triangle

(HCTI), designer of medical devices

Lucid diagnostics

(LUCD), and telecom tower operator

IHS Holding

(IHS) – which fell into the secondary market. Sole software developer

GitLab

(GTLB) and Paragon 28 traded above their public offering prices this week.

So far this year, 793 companies have gone public, raising $ 253.1 billion, Dealogic said. This compares to the 301 companies that listed their shares for the same period last year, raising $ 114.4 billion. Of the 793 offers, around 41%, or 323, are traditional IPOs. The others are ad hoc acquisition companies.

Shares of Paragon 28 (FNA) rose nearly 17% on Friday. The stock started at $ 19.15, peaked at $ 19.92 and closed at $ 18.71, up $ 2.71 from its offer price.

The solid debut came after Paragon 28 raised $ 125 million on Thursday night. The medical device company sold around 7.8 million shares at $ 16 each, in the middle of its $ 15- to $ 17 price range.

Founded in 2010, Paragon 28 designs and markets orthopedic products and medical devices to treat medical conditions of the foot and ankle requiring surgery such as bunions, hammer toes, flat feet, charcot foot and orthobiological products. (The 28 in Paragon 28 stands for the number of bones in the foot.) The Englewood, Colorado company’s suite of surgical solutions includes 72 product systems, and customers include doctors and hospitals, according to a prospectus.

Shares of MiNK Therapeutics (INKT) started off a high of $ 12.04, fell to an afternoon low of $ 11.62 before rebounding and ending at $ 12.

Late Thursday, MiNK reduced the size of its IPO by 16%, selling 3.3 million shares to $ 12, the lowest of its $ 12 to $ 14 price range.

MiNK is developing ‘natural killer’ invariant T cell therapies, or iNKTs, to treat cancer. Biotechnology said that iNKT cells help clear tumors and infected cells and suppress graft versus host disease. MiNK’s most advanced product candidate, AGENT-797, treats multiple myeloma and is currently in a Phase 1 clinical trial. In August, MiNK received clearance from the US Food and Drug Administration to initiate a study clinic using AGENT-797 to treat solid tumors, according to the prospectus.

Write to Luisa Beltran at luisa.beltran@dowjones.com