PTLA Prices Offering At $40/Share

(RTTNews) - Portola Pharmaceuticals Inc. (PTLA) has offered to sell about 2.49 million shares of its common stock to the public at a price of $40.00 each.

The underwriters have a 30-day option to purchase up to an additional 374,348 shares at the public offering price. The offering is expected to close on March 13, 2015, subject to customary closing conditions.

The company ended December 31, 2014 with cash of $392.3 million.

The last time Portola priced its public offering was on October 2, 2014 when it offered to sell 6.2 million shares of its common stock at $26 each.

The company has two drug candidates in phase III testing - Betrixaban, an oral Factor Xa inhibitor anticoagulant for in-hospital and post-discharge prevention of venous thromboembolism in acute medically ill patients, and Andexanet Alfa, a Factor Xa inhibitor antidote.

Betrixaban is under a phase III trial, dubbed APEX Study - with patient enrollment scheduled for completion by the end of 2015. The company expects to report top-line APEX data in early 2016, and submit a New Drug Application to the FDA in 2016.

Andexanet Alfa is currently being evaluated in two pivotal phase 3 studies with the Factor Xa inhibitors Eliquis (apixaban) and XARELTO (rivaroxaban) in healthy volunteers, dubbed ANNEXA-A and ANNEXA-R, respectively.

Portola announced positive results from the first part of ANNEXA-R study early this month, demonstrating that Andexanet Alfa rapidly and significantly reversed anticoagulant effect of Factor Xa inhibitor XARELTO. Data from the second part of the ANNEXA-R study are expected in the first half of 2015.

The results from the first part of the phase 3 ANNEXA-A trial were presented last November which showed that Andexanet Alfa rapidly reversed the anticoagulant effect of the Factor Xa Inhibitor Eliquis (apixaban) among all study participants. Data from the second part of the ANNEXA-A study are also expected in the first half of 2015.

PTLA closed Tuesday's trading at $39.78, down 5.98%.