Imperial Innovations Group Regulatory News (IVO)

7 July 2014

Imperial Innovations Group plc

Portfolio company Abzena announces offer price

Imperial Innovations Group plc (AIM: IVO or 'the Group' 'Innovations') notes that Abzena plc ('Abzena') has today announced the pricing of its initial public offering, prior to seeking Admission of its shares to AIM.

The offer has conditionally raised gross proceeds of approximately £22.7 million, comprising £20.0 million for Abzena through the issue of 25 million New Shares and £2.7 million on behalf of selling shareholders. The offer price has been set at 80 pence per Ordinary Share. On the basis of the offer price, Abzena's market capitalisation on Admission is expected to be £77.9 million.

Innovations had a 26.2 per cent. interest in the issued share capital of Abzena before the IPO, which at 31 January 2014, was valued at £11.1 million.

Innovations has purchased in the offering a further 5,000,000 shares in Abzena at a cost of £4.0 million and will have a 23.6 per cent. interest in the issued share capital of the Company as enlarged by the issue. At the issue price Innovations' holding in Abzena would be valued at £18.0 million.

Abzena's admission and trading on AIM under the symbol "ABZA" is expected to take place at 8.00am on 10 July 2014.

Russ Cummings, Chief Executive Officer, Imperial Innovations, said:

"Abzena is the fourth of our portfolio companies to join the public markets in recent months, which is a clear demonstration of the strength in depth of our maturing portfolio.

"We are delighted with the progress that Abzena has made since we led the last funding round in July 2013 and believe that through the IPO, the business has laid a firm foundation to continue its growth trajectory."

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Notes to editors

About Imperial Innovations - www.imperialinnovations.co.uk 

Imperial Innovations creates, builds and invests in pioneering technologies developed from the academic research of the UK's four leading Universities. The Group supports scientists and entrepreneurs in the commercialisation of their ideas and intellectual property by leading the formation of new companies, providing facilities in the early stages, providing investment and encouraging co-investment to accelerate development, providing operational expertise and recruiting high-calibre management teams. It also runs an Incubator in London that is the initial home for many of its technology spin-outs.

Originally formed as the Technology Transfer office for Imperial College - a role it still carries out today, Innovations also invests in opportunities arising from intellectual property developed at, or associated with, Cambridge University, Oxford University and University College London. These are the top four research intensive universities in Europe with a research income of over £1.3 billion per annum.

Innovations invests in the most promising opportunities from whichever technology sector they arise, but has built particular expertise in the key sectors of: therapeutics, medtech, engineering and materials, and ICT.

During the period from the admission of its shares to trading on AIM in 2006 to 31 January 2014, Innovations has invested a total of £160.9 million across its portfolio companies, which have raised collectively investment of over £750.0 million.

About Abzena plc - www.abzena.com

Abzena is focused on providing proprietary technologies and value-added services to enable the development of better biopharmaceuticals.

Abzena comprises two wholly owned subsidiary businesses - PolyTherics and Antitope - which have established a broad suite of complementary technologies that are designed to improve the chances of successful development of antibodies and proteins with enhanced therapeutic benefits. The group has built a global customer base over the past decade, including the majority of the top 20 biopharmaceutical companies as well as large and small biotech companies and academic groups.

PolyTherics specializes in proprietary site-specific conjugation technologies for antibody drug conjugate development and solutions for optimization of the therapeutic properties of biopharmaceuticals.

Antitope provides immunogenicity assessment, protein engineering to create humanized antibodies and deimmunised therapeutic proteins, and cell line development for manufacture.