SomaLogic goes public, will trade on Nasdaq

BOULDER — Two weeks after Boulder biosciences company SomaLogic Inc. won U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission approval for its go-public merger with a special purpose acquisition company, shareholders signed off on the move Tuesday and set the stage for the company’s stock to begin trading on the Nasdaq exchange.

SomaLogic,  which develops platforms to read thousands of proteins in a patient’s blood or urine sample that may signal illnesses or future health conditions and suggest potential treatments via machine learning, will begin trading publicly under the ticker symbol SLGC on Thursday. 

“We are both excited and prepared to begin a new chapter as a publicly traded company, accelerating our goal of leveraging proteomics to have an increasingly positive impact on human health and healthcare delivery,” SomaLogic CEO Roy Smythe said in a prepared statement. “Our innovative, differentiated platform has a multi-year track record of success, but our commercial ramp has only just begun. We intend to build on our first-mover advantage – working with research collaborators, diversifying our offerings through kits and other products for life sciences customers, and continuing to develop new diagnostic applications from our deep pipeline. SomaLogic had long been a leading, driving force in the evolution of proteomics, and we intend to remain at the forefront of that effort.”

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Tuesday’s shareholder vote closes SomaLogic’s merger with CM Life Sciences II (Nasdaq: CMIIU). CM Life Sciences II is a subsidiary of Casdin Capital LLC, a life-sciences investment group with $1.31 billion in assets under management. 

Special purpose acquisition companies, known alternatively as SPACs, are companies set up by investment groups and taken onto a public exchange with no actual business. The entities are designed solely to raise funding and later merge with a company seeking to go public outside of the initial public offering process.

“The completion of this business combination is a pivotal milestone in our long-established partnership with SomaLogic and brings a scale of resource and support that will super-charge its already dominant platform and pipeline of commercial offerings,” CM Life Sciences II CEO and SomaLogic board member Eli Casdin said in a statement. “Proteomics is a huge untapped opportunity set and a next frontier for drug discovery, research, and diagnostics. This is a uniquely positioned company on that frontier and the one we see as leading the charge to deliver enormous value for researchers, clinicians and investors alike.”

In addition to Casdin, the newly merged company’s board of directors includes Troy Cox, former CEO of Foundation Medicine; Kevin Conroy, CEO of Exact Sciences; Steve Quake Stanford University professor; Bob Barchi former president of Rutgers University; and Ted Meisel, founder of AVIA Health Innovation.

As a result of the merger, SomaLogic got a cash infusion of about $630 million. 

The company disclosed last month that it thinks it will beat its previous full-year 2021 revenue guidance of $66.7 million by 10% or more. Gross margins are expected to be more than 500 basis points ahead of past full-year projections of 51%.