A Medical Device Daily

Natus Medical (San Carlos, California), a company that makes newborn care, hearing, and neurology products, said it plans to sell 3.5 million shares of its common stock in a public offering. The company has not yet disclosed an offering price or an expected proceeds amount.

The company expects to grant a 30-day over-allotment option to underwriters to buy an additional 15% of the shares offered.

All of the shares are being sold by Natus and offered by Cowen and Co. and UBS Investment Bank as joint bookrunning managers. Natixis Bleichroeder, Needham & Co., Raymond James & Associates, and Roth Capital Partners are acting as co-managers.

According to the company's filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the last reported sale price of Natus' common stock was $21.10 a share.

Natus said it would use the proceeds from the offering to repay outstanding debt and for general corporate purposes, which may include acquisitions of, or investments in, companies and technologies that complement its business, capital expenditures or additions to the company's working capital.

Last month Natus reported that Roth, the sole underwriter of its previous public offering of 770,000 shares of common stock valued at roughly $13.4 million, exercised its over-allotment option. By purchasing another 115,500 shares, Roth brought the total shares offered to 885,500 and the expected proceeds to $15.5 million based on a per share price of $18.27 (Medical Device Daily, April 10, 2008).

Also in April, the company agreed to acquire SonaMed (Waltham, Massachusetts), a private company that makes the Clarity Screener and associated disposable supplies to help medical practitioners screen newborns for hearing loss. Natus agreed to acquire all outstanding shares of SonaMed capital stock in a cash deal, but financial terms were not disclosed (MDD, April 16, 2007).

SonaMed is one of several companies Natus has acquired since 2006, the year it went public, according to its SEC filing. The company acquired Excel-Tech (Oakville, Ontario) in November 2007 for $64 million in cash (MDD, Dec. 3, 2007); Olympic Medical (Seattle) in October 2006 for $16.9 million in cash (MDD, Oct. 17, 2006); Deltamed (Paris) in September 2006 for $4.1 million in cash (MDD, Sept. 7, 2006); and Bio-logic (Mundelein, Illinois) in January 2006 for $69.3 million in cash (MDD, Jan. 6, 2006).

In other financing activity:

• NightHawk Radiology (Couer D'Alene, Idaho) said it has begun its previously disclosed modified Dutch auction tender offer to buy up to $50 million of its common stock, at a price range of $7.45 to 48.05 a share. The number of shares proposed to be purchased in the offer represents about 20.2% of the company's outstanding shares as of May 1.

The tender offer will expire at 5 p.m. EST on June 13, unless extended by NighHawk.

The modified Dutch auction will allow stockholders to indicate how many shares and at which price within NightHawk's specified range they wish to tender. Based on the number of shares tendered and the price specified by the tendering stockholders, NightHawk will determine the lowest price per share within the range that will enable it to purchase up to 6,211,180 shares, or such lesser number of shares as are properly tendered. All shares accepted in the tender offer will be purchased at the same price even if the stockholder tendered at a lower price. If the price per share determined in the tender is less than $8.05, NightHawk expects to purchase additional shares such that a total of $50 million is used to purchase NightHawk's shares. If stockholders tender more than $50 million worth of shares at or below the determined purchase price per share, NightHawk will purchase $50 million of shares, subject to proration.

• ProCure Treatment Centers (Bloomington, Indiana), a proton therapy treatment company, said it has received an additional $35 million round of equity funding from McClendon Venture Company (MVC). Aubrey McClendon, co-founder, CEO/chairman of Chesapeake Energy owns MVC.

The $35 million investment represents the second major investment in ProCure by MVC and pushes the firm's total investment in ProCure to $70 million.