By Mary Welch

Staff Writer

Invitrogen Corp. raised about $60 million in a secondary offering of common stock that will be used for licensing agreements and to expand and accelerate its technology.

The Carlsbad, Calif.-based company originally planned to sell 1.5 million shares but instead it offered 2.4 million, in addition to 3.5 million shares being tendered by stockholders. The shares were sold at $25 each. Between the company and the stockholders, the offering netted $140 million.

Underwriters have the option to purchase another 885,000 shares to cover overallotments, an increase of 18 percent over the original overallotment of 750,000 shares. The offering was led by Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette Securities Corp., of New York, and co-managed by Hambrecht & Quist LLC, of New York; U.S. Bancorp Piper Jaffray, of Minneapolis; and Dain Rauscher Wessels, of Minneapolis.

Prompting the secondary offering was the arrangement the company made when it purchased Novex in a $50 million stock transaction. Novex, a private company based in San Diego, was purchased by Invitrogen in a deal that called for Invitrogen to issue about 2.5 million shares of common stock for Novex's 11 million shares of capital stock as well as assume about 500,000 outstanding options. (See BioWorld Today, June 16, 1999, p. 1.)

Novex's largest institutional shareholder, Ampersand Ventures, of Wellesley, Mass., controlled 38.5 percent - or 4.2 million shares - of Novex's stock. The financial institute was going to distribute the Invitrogen stock to its stockholders and partners, Turner said.

"We did the secondary offering as a way to control the stock hitting the market," he said. "We're a thinly traded company, averaging about 20,000 shares traded a day. Ampersand stockholders were about to dump - to liquefy - about 900,000 shares of our stock at once. That's very scary, especially when you consider that a stock's price can go up and down on a few shares trading. It motivated us to find a wiser way to place those shares in an orderly fashion."

Invitrogen handled all of Amersand's shares and about 50 percent from the remaining selling shareholders.

In addition to controlling the stock, the offering adds other benefits to the company, Turner said.

"We now have a large enough float that institutional investors can get in and out whenever they want," he said.

The offering, in fact, more than doubled the number of outstanding shares, from 4.5 million to over 10 million, he said.

"In addition, with the money we already have on hand, we now have a $100 million war chest," Turner said. "That will allow us to expand and accelerate and create easy-to-use kits."

Founded in 1987, Invitrogen develops, manufactures and markets research tools in kit form for gene cloning and protein expression. The kits simplify and improve gene cloning, gene expression and gene analysis techniques as well as other molecular biology activities, the company said.

Invitrogen went public in early March, raising $52.5 million by selling 3.5 million shares at $15 each. The company raised $45 million through the sale of 3 million of those shares; three selling stockholders sold the other 500,000 shares. (See BioWorld Today, March 1, 1999, p. 1.)

Invitrogen's stock (NASDAQ:IVGN) closed Wednesday at $25, down 18.75 cents.