A Medical Device Daily

AGA Medical (Plymouth, Minnesota) said Wednesday its initial public offering of 13.75 million shares of common stock was priced at $14.50 a share – lower than the company had previously expected. Trading began Wednesday.

AGA sold about 6.5 million of those shares, and Franck Gougeon, the company's former president/CEO, sold roughly 7.2 million shares. The underwriters have a 30-day option to buy up to an additional 2,062,500 shares of common stock from the company.

BofA Merrill Lynch, Citi, Deutsche Bank Securities, Leerink Swann and Wells Fargo Securities have acted as joint book-running managers for the offering.

Last week AGA said it expected to price its IPO between $19 a share and $21 a share. Earlier this month the company said it expected to offer 8.5 million shares and that it planned to raise $275 million in the offering. AGA said it will use proceeds from the IPO to pay down debt and for expansion capital (Medical Device Daily, Oct. 9, 2009).

The company's first attempt at an IPO was in 2008 for up to $200 million (MDD, June 26, 2008) but a crippled stock market changed its plans.

In other financing activity:

• Nanosphere (Northbrook, Illinois), a developer of advanced molecular diagnostics, reported the closing of its previously disclosed underwritten public offering of 5,405,000 shares of its common stock at a public offering price of $7 a share, including 705,000 shares of common stock issued pursuant to the underwriter's exercise in full of its over-allotment option. Piper Jaffray & Co. acted as the sole manager for the offering.

Net proceeds from the sale of the shares after underwriting discounts and commissions and other offering expenses are expected to be about $35.3 million.

The company plans to use the net proceeds from the offering for general corporate purposes and working capital.

• Cardium Therapeutics (San Diego) said it has completed its $6 million registered direct offering of common stock to selected investors. The transaction resulted in net proceeds to the company of $5.5 million after fees and expenses. The offering was made pursuant to a shelf registration statement that Cardium filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission and was declared effective by the SEC on Aug. 15, 2007.

• ICU Medical (San Clemente, California), a manufacturer of safe medical connectors, custom medical products, and critical care devices, said that its board has amended its previously disclosed stock repurchase program to permit share repurchases up to an aggregate of $55 million. The company's stock repurchase program was originally adopted on July 18, 2008 and permitted repurchases up to $40 million.

The company said it currently intends to repurchase up to nearly $43.5 million of its common stock in the open market. As of Monday, ICU had roughly 14.8 million shares of common stock outstanding.