US-based Metsera has set its sights on a $289m public listing as the weight loss drug developer becomes one of the early biotechs to venture into the thawing IPO landscape in 2025.
Metsera is offering over 17 million shares priced between $15 and $17 for its Nasdaq listing. The biotech is targeting $250.8m based on the midpoint of the price range, and the $289m value would be reached if underwriters exercise their option to purchase additional shares, according to an SEC filing on 27 January.
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Trading under the symbol ‘MTSR’, the company said it plans to use the funds to advance its glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonist (GLP-1RA) asset MET-097i through a Phase III trial. MET-097i recently demonstrated weight loss of up to 11.3% in a Phase IIa trial after three months of treatment. Some patients in the trial reached responses as high as 20%, and the biotech reported that all 120 enrolled patients – regardless of dose – achieved clinically meaningful and statistically significant weight loss. The results raised MET-097i’s profile in an increasingly crowded field of GLP-1RAs where makers are trying to differentiate from the market leaders—Eli Lilly’s tirzepatide and Novo Nordisk’s semaglutide—by improving on administration logistics or efficacy.
MET-097i is subcutaneously administered like other popular weight loss drugs on the market and is the company’s lead candidate. However, the drug’s claim to fame is its half-life developed using Metsera’s peptide lipidation platform HALO. MET-097i has a half-life of 15 to 16 days which trumps the reported time of both tirzepatide, marketed as Zepbound, and semaglutide, marketed as Wegovy, for weight loss.
GlobalData senior analyst Ophelia Chan said: “The promising results from the company’s 12-week Phase II trial of MET-097i are likely to draw significant attention, especially as MET-097i has a longer half-life than both Lilly’s Zepbound and Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy.”
For the IPO landscape, Metsera’s bigger-sized listing backs views by investors that the pharma fundraising landscape continues to recover and could provide an early indication of what 2025 has in store for biotechs going public. At $289m, Metsera’s IPO would be on the higher end of listings since the start of 2024.
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By GlobalData“This significant raise could serve as a catalyst for other similar companies considering entering the public markets,” Chan said.
On the same day as Metsera’s filing, Maze Therapeutics also outlined plans for a $131m Nasdaq IPO, while Ascentage Pharma – already listed in Hong Kong – started trading in the US last week with a $126.4m raise.
Metsera’s journey
Metsera also has two other pipeline candidates in the clinic. MET-233i is what Metsera calls “an ultra-long acting injectable”, which could be administered monthly – a prized target for many pharma companies in the weight loss space. Alongside MET-233i, Metsera has an oral GLP-1RA drug called MET-002 that is currently in a Phase I trial.
It has been a fast-moving time for Metsera, having emerged from stealth with $290m in April 2024. In November 2024, the company added to its funds with a $215m raise in a Series B round.
Metsera is targeting a lucrative market, with GLP-1RA therapies forecast to bring in sales of $168bn across 68 pharmaceutical markets by 2033, according to analysis by GlobalData. It will take some doing to capture market share from Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk, who are forecast to pull in 2030 sales of $27.6bnbn and $19.5bn for Zepbound and Wegovy respectively.
GlobalData is the parent company of Pharmaceutical Technology.
