Richard Branson SPAC may help take 23andMe public at $4B valuation
A "blank check" merger at a $4 billion valuation may be in the future for consumer genetics testing unicorn 23andMe Inc.
Bloomberg and Financial Times both cited unnamed sources on Wednesday who said the Sunnyvale company led by Anne Wojcicki is in talks with New York-based VG Acquisition Corp., a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) backed by Richard Branson's Virgin Group Ltd.
The SPAC's stock (NYSE:VGAC) jumped by 18% on the news on Wednesday before trading was halted temporarily. It finished the day down 0.7%, closing at $13.55.
Both reports said 23andMe would be valued at about $4 billion if a deal can be worked out. It was figured to be worth about $2.5 billion in a 2018 funding round, according to PitchBook Data. Bloomberg reported its sources said a more recent round in December came at the same valuation.
A growing number of venture-backed companies are pairing up with SPACs as a way to go public, saying it eliminates some of the uncertainty of a traditional IPO while still allowing them to rise capital. SPACs raised a record $83 billion in IPOs last year, more than in all previous years combined, and have already raised more than $23 billion already in January.
Their popularity was helped by the successful 2019 merger of Branson's Virgin Galactic Holdings Inc. space tourism business and Chamath Palihapitiya's Palo Alto-based Social Capital Hedosophia. Virgin Galactic stock is up 157% in the past 12 months.
VG Acquisition would bring $480 million to a 23andMe deal, the amount it raised in an October IPO that was priced at the $10 a share that is customary for SPACs. The deal would also likely include money from a separate PIPE deal (private investment in public equity).
23andMe has offered direct-to-consumer genetic testing kits since it was co-founded by Wojcicki in 2006. Its $1,000 kits were touted as a way for customer to learn of potential health risks that could be discerned from their DNA.
It pivoted to doing ancestry tests after the Food and Drug Administration ruled that it needed to get regulatory approval for each health claim it said the gene tests found. It has slowly done so and has also moved to use collective data from customers to promote development of therapeutics. GlaxoSmithKline PLC (NYSE:GSK) took a $300 million stake in the company in 2018.
The company on Wednesday launched a Covid-19 Severity Calculator that it says shows a person's risk of being hospitalized by the virus. This was built on data collected last year by the company in a million-person study.
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