By Mary Welch

Aurora Biosciences Corp. has definitive purchase agreements to raise $75 million by selling 1.8 million shares of common stock.

"We could have raised more because there is a very, very strong appetite for Aurora stock," said Stuart Collinson, the company's CEO. "We are growing very fast and we need the money to build our company and for general corporate expenses. When you are growing as fast as we are you do need greater working capital. We'll also use it to develop and acquire new technologies, especially in genomics and drug discovery."

The San Diego-based company sold the newly issued stock to institutional and other accredited investors at $42 per share, which was slightly above the last 10-day trading price. The company now has about 19 million shares outstanding, so the placement represents about 10 percent of the company, he said.

Aurora's stock (NASDAQ:ABSC) closed Monday at $59.75, up $11.50, or 24 percent.

"We are not losing money and we expect to be profitable in 2000," Collinson said. "This money is not going to be used to cover a burn rate. There is no burn rate."

Aurora had nearly $100 million in cash as of Dec. 31, he said.

Aurora, which will report its fourth-quarter 1999 results Wednesday, ended the year with a strong performance, according to a research report released by Deutsche Banc Alex. Brown Inc. in New York. "Aurora clearly demonstrated its ability to translate its technological leadership in drug discovery into commercial success," the report said. "For the year, we estimated that revenue nearly doubled to approximately $50 million."

The investment firm projects Aurora will report fourth-quarter revenues of $19.2 million, up 130 percent from the 1998 period, with earnings per share of 30 cents vs. a loss of 30 cents in the fourth quarter of 1998.

The report acknowledged that Aurora plans for a "steep ramp-up in revenues and profitability in 2000," principally driven by the large delivery payments anticipated from Aurora's collaborators in the near term and a broad portfolio of projected instrumentation and screening services revenues in the mid- to long term. It projects the company's current collaborators have committed more than $165 million in payments to Aurora.

Aurora will have total 1999 revenues of $49.7 million, the report projected, growing to $63.5 million in 2000, $79.3 million in 2001 and $98.5 million in 2002. Aurora will become profitable this year, it said, generating earnings per share of 23 cents, 44 cents in 2001 and 57 cents in 2002.

Collinson refused to comment on the projected figures.

Founded in 1995, Aurora is a provider of technologies, systems and services that assist in drug discovery. It has several core technologies including GenomeScreen, its functional genomics program; the UHTSS platform, its ultra-high-throughput screening system; and the GeneBLAzer Reporter System, which is used for monitoring any signal that can be linked to transcription.

Although the company already has marketed the UHTSS technology, the software that will integrate the entire system will become available this year. The platform combines compound management, assay preparation, hit selection, fluorescence detection and data analysis into one fully integrated system that has the capacity to retrieve, plate and screen more than 100,000 compounds a day.

"When the software is available, it will allow for a full integration - everything from compound storage to lead information," Collinson said.