BioAmber first filed for an IPO back in November 2011, and it has finally set a share price range, which means its public debut will take place soon.
It will list on the NY Stock Exchange under the ticker BIOA and will launch in the range of $15-$17 per share, aiming to raise about $130 million.
The Minnesota-based company is part of a wave of recent Green Chemistry entries that produce petroleum alternatives for chemicals or fuels. BioAmber makes bio-based succinic acid, a starting material for many other important chemicals.
Last year, competitors Ceres (CERE) and Renewable Energy Group (REGI) went public, following Codexis (Nasdaq: CDXS), Amyris Biotechnologies (AMRS), Gevo (GEVO), KiOr (KIOR) and Solazyme (SZYM).
Other similar companies have pulled their planned IPOs, citing market conditions: Fulcrum BioEnergy, Genomatica, Enerkem and Mascoma.
The green chemistry market is expected to expand from $2.8 billion in 2011 to $98.5 billion by 2020 – still a tiny share of the $4 trillion global chemical industry.
In 2011, the US EPA gave BioAmber the Small Business Award for Green Chemistry for creating sustainably produced, low-cost succinic acid. BioAmber’s process uses 60% less energy than succinic acid made from fossil fuels and costs 40% less. It actually consumes carbon dioxide rather than generating it.
Since early 2010, BioAmber has been producing succinic acid by fermenting bacteria from glucose in the world’s only large-scale, dedicated, biobased succinic acid plant.
Its products can substitute for many widely used toxic fossil fuel products, such as solvents and phthalate-based plasticizers in PVC, as well as make biodegradable, renewable performance plastics, such as bio-based polyester.
BioAmber has a contract with Faurecia-Mitsubishi Chemical for automotive plastics and is expected to complete an $80 million factory in Ontario next year using the proceeds of the IPO.
In 2011, BioAmber raised $45 million and has been growing revenues, from $560,000 in 2011 to about $2.3 million in 2012. It moved from a $277,000 net loss in 2011 to a $545,000 net profit in 2012.
Here is their website:
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