HealthBeacon, the Dublin-based medical technology company, may pursue a dual listing on the Nasdaq exchange in New York in the future to increase trading activity in its stock, according to its chief executive.
“We want to increase liquidity in the stock, so we’re going to be quite open to that,” Jim Joyce, chief executive and co-founder of HealthBeacon, told The Irish Times when asked during an interview about the prospects of the company seeking a quotation on the US technology-focused stock exchange. “We’re taking good advice on that.”
Still, market sources said the company, which currently has a market valuation of less than €80 million, would be unlikely to seek a second quotation until it got to a multiple of its current size to justify the costs and regulatory burden involved.
HealthBeacon, which was founded in 2013, has developed a digital sharps bin aimed at making it easier for patients injecting themselves with medicines at home to stick to their medication schedule. Its devices are digitally connected to individuals’ smartphones and are used for the disposal of injector pens and syringes and tracking of individual patients’ adherence to medication regimes. The system will also remind people to stick with their course of medicine if necessary.
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The company floated on Euronext Dublin last December after raising €25 million in an initial public offering (IPO) aimed at increasing its number of devices in North America and Europe to 100,000 by the end of next year from almost 10,200 last year. The plan also envisaged tripling HealthBeacon’s workforce to 150 - it currently has 70 employees.
However, shares in HealthBeacon have fallen by as much as a third from their €5.85 IPO price, as technology-related stocks have borne the brunt of a global equities sell-off in 2022. Still, the stock has rallied off its lows in recent days.
Mr Joyce described the timing of the HealthBeacon deal late last year, making it only one of two Irish companies to float in 2022, as a “good decision”.
“An earlier stage company [like HealthBeacon] wouldn’t otherwise have been able to pull an IPO off, and we would have had to look to the private markets for money and stay private for longer,” he said.
