Akero Therapeutics, Inc.

Canaccord Genuity Acted as Lead Manager to Akero Therapeutics on its Upsized Public Follow-On Offering

Akero Therapeutics, Inc. (Nasdaq: AKRO), a clinical-stage company developing transformational treatments for patients with serious metabolic disease marked by high unmet medical need, announced the closing of its previously announced upsized underwritten public offering of 8,846,154 shares of its common stock at a public offering price of $26.00 per share, which includes the exercise in full by the underwriters of their option to purchase up to an additional 1,153,846 shares of common stock in this offering. The gross proceeds from the offering, before deducting underwriting discounts and commissions and estimated offering expenses, were approximately $230.0 million. Canaccord Genuity acted as Lead Manager for the offering. 

Akero Therapeutics is a clinical-stage company developing transformational treatments for patients with serious metabolic diseases marked by high unmet medical need, including non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), a disease without any approved therapies. Akero’s lead product candidate, efruxifermin (EFX), is a differentiated Fc-FGF21 fusion protein that has been engineered to mimic the balanced biological activity profile of native FGF21, an endogenous hormone that alleviates cellular stress and regulates metabolism throughout the body. EFX is designed to offer convenient once-weekly subcutaneous dosing. The consistency and magnitude of observed effects position EFX to be a potentially best-in-class medicine, if approved, for treatment of NASH. EFX is currently being evaluated in two Phase 2b clinical trials: the HARMONY study in patients with pre-cirrhotic NASH (F2-F3 fibrosis), and the SYMMETRY study in patients with cirrhotic NASH (F4 fibrosis, compensated). EFX is also being evaluated in an expansion cohort of the SYMMETRY study, comparing the safety and tolerability of EFX to placebo when added to an existing GLP-1 receptor agonist in patients with pre-cirrhotic NASH (F1-F3 fibrosis) and Type 2 diabetes. 

The Canaccord Genuity team consisted of Eugene Rozelman, Jennifer Pardi, Brian O’Connor, Tara Hartigan, Mike Wright, Tyler Chamberland, Esther Lee, Brooke Szczygiel, Calvin Reif, Sean Pritchett, Catherine Guanci, and William Jones.