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Rua Bioscience has become the second medical cannabis company to go public on the New Zealand Stock Exchange after raising $ 20 million in its initial public offering this week.
The company offered 40 million shares, at 50 cents a share.
An hour after going public, the company’s stock price jumped 40 percent to 70 cents.
Rua Bioscience held a joint listing event with its board of directors and president in Auckland and co-founders, Manu Caddy and Panapa Ehau, and CEO Rob Mitchell at Ruatoria on the east coast north of Gisborne.
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Chairman Trevor Burt said that Covid-19 had delayed its listing plans, but Rua Bioscience was NZX’s first new listing since Napier Port in August last year.
Rua Bioscience received its business license to grow and supply cannabis-derived pharmaceuticals in August.
Burt said the company’s main market would be Germany, and it would apply for European Union Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) certification, a standard that all pharmaceutical manufacturers must adhere to in their production process, in November to sell to the country.
Supplied
Rua Bioscience plans to leverage New Zealand’s clean and green international brand to differentiate itself from its overseas competitors.
“Once we get it, we can sell the product on the German market.”
Caddy said the company’s goal was to grow its local economy and create jobs in Ruatoria.
The company wanted to create 100 jobs within the community over the next two years, Caddy said.
Chris McKeen / Stuff
Rua Bioscience co-founder Manu Caddy said the company’s goal is to grow its local economy and create jobs in Ruatoria.
Burt said the outcome of the recreational cannabis referendum would have no business impact as his focus was on exports.
“We are not looking for recreation at all. We are very clear that it is medical cannabis. The referendum raises the agenda on cannabis as a product and as a medicine, but either way, it will have no effect on us. “
Preliminary results of the recreational cannabis referendum will not be available until October 30.
Burt said the company had no plans to branch out into recreational cannabis if the referendum passed.
“That would require a massive change in our shareholder base. The investors who started the company are very clear that they are only medicinal. “
John Kirk-Anderson / Stuff
Rua Bioscience President Trevor Burt says the result of the referendum on recreational cannabis will not affect the medical cannabis company that plans to sell drugs to Germany.
He said Rua Bioscience would leverage New Zealand’s clean and green international brand to differentiate itself from its overseas competitors.
Burt said the listing solidified the reputation of the company, which operates in an industry laden with stigma.
“It frustrates me so much that people don’t understand the difference between medicinal and recreational. We do not produce pharmaceuticals from ‘weeds’, we produce pharmaceuticals from plants. “
He said that, as in any dawn industry, there were some cowboys.
“The rigor of going through a listing and going public, the kind of disciplines a company goes through that it wouldn’t embark on unless it was real and it was doing something that was feasible and meaningful.
“Doing a series of slides and raising money is very different from having to account for every statement you make in a product disclosure statement.”
