(Bloomberg) -- Biotechnology and drug-research services firm PPD Inc. raised $1.62 billion in the biggest U.S. initial public offering so far this year.
The company sold 60 million shares Wednesday for $27 each after marketing them $24 to $27. PPD is valued in the IPO at $9.16 billion based on the outstanding shares listed in its filings.
Business-to-business firms such as PPD have tended to fare better in their IPOs and afterward than consumer-focused companies, including the herd of so-called unicorns that have gone public in the past year. The two most prominent of those once-private startups with valuations of $1 billion or more -- Uber Technologies Inc. and Lyft Inc. -- are still trading well below their offer prices.
Casper Sleep Inc., which had a $1.1 billion valuation in a private funding round last year, is valued in its IPO Wednesday at only $476 million. The mattress retailer sold its shares at the bottom of a target range that it had lowered to $12 to $13 to raise about $100 million.
PPD's listing surpassed last week's $1.23 billion offering by Reynolds Consumer Products Inc., making it the biggest IPO on a U.S. exchange this year.
Like Reynolds, Wilmington, North Carolina-based PPD is profitable. For the nine months ended Sept. 30, PPD had revenue of $2.98 billion with net income of $34 million, according to its filings.
During the past five years, PPD has conducted more than 2,100 clinical trials, and its laboratory scientists have completed more than 57,000 pharmaceutical development projects and worked with more than 7,600 compounds, according to its filings.
The offering was led by Barclays Plc, JPMorgan Chase & Co., Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. Its shares are expected to begin trading Thursday on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the symbol PPD.
To contact the reporter on this story: Michael Hytha in San Francisco at mhytha@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Liana Baker at lbaker75@bloomberg.net, Michael Hytha, Kara Wetzel
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