Deal: HWL Ebsworth has acted for Atomo Diagnostics Limited (ASX: AT1) on its recent initial public offering and ASX listing. 

Value: $40 million.

Area: Capital raise, private equity.

Key players: The HWL Ebsworth team was led by partner Grant Hummel and assisted by senior associate Hanna Posa and solicitor Rita Mikhael.

Deal significance: The oversubscribed IPO raised $30 million via the issue of 150 million shares at $0.20 each. ASX conducted its first-ever virtual listing ceremony for Atomo, which was also the first listing ceremony hosted by Zoom globally. AT1 commenced trading on the ASX on 16 April 2020 at a strong premium.

Atomo’s co-founder and managing director, John Kelly said, “This is a hugely significant day in Atomo’s history.” 

“We started the listing process to underpin the expansion of our global HIV business and enable us to commercialise other opportunities in the rapid blood test market, but through the offer period determined we were also uniquely positioned to make a major impact within the COVID-19 environment,” he added. 

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“We are now well capitalised and able to quickly move to meet the significant global demand for reliable rapid testing for COVID-19 in the community.”.

Strong institutional and retail investor demand led to the company raising a total of $30 million at the offer price of $0.20 per share. Atomo lists with a market capitalisation of $112 million and an enterprise value of $80.31 million.

In recent weeks, Atomo had announced strong interest in the use of its integrated rapid test device for the testing of COVID-19. On 31 March 2020, a binding agreement was announced under which French company NG Biotech would have the right to purchase up to a total of 2.465 million devices during calendar year 2020 for sale in France and the UK.

Funds raised under the offer will be applied to the expansion of Atomo’s manufacturing and distribution capacity to support demand for tests using Atomo’s devices, including for COVID-19, HIV and other purposes and continue to support its existing HIV distributors and other original equipment manufacturing (OEM) customers.

Atomo is an Australian medical device company that supplies integrated rapid diagnostic test (RDT) devices for professional and self-test use to the global diagnostic market. 

Its rapid HIV test devices are sold direct to market in Australia and through distributors in Africa and Europe and it has also entered into agreements to supply its COVID-19 rapid blood-based tests to France. 

Atomo also supplies its device for use by other diagnostic companies to produce devices that test for chronic infections and pregnancy.