89bio Inc. ETNB said Friday that its public offering of stock, which the biopharmaceutical company launched after a 55% surge in its stock in the past two days, was upsized by about 38%. The company said it sold 16.92 million common shares at $16.25 each, to raise $275.0 million. The pricing was 4.1% below Thursday’s closing price of $16.94. Late Thursday, the company had said it proposed a public offering of $200 million shares of common stock. The stock tacked on 0.2% in premarket trading. The company took advantage of the stock’s big rally over the past two days, in the wake of the company’s announcement that its experimental treatment for nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) led to NASH resolution compared with placebo in a Phase 2b clinical trial. The stock has rocketed 325% over the past 12 months through Thursday, while the iShares Biotechnology exchange-traded fund IBB has lost 4.4% and the S&P 500 SPX fell 12.6%.
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