Eden Prairie-based Miromatrix to Go Public
Add Eden Prairie-based Miromatrix Medical Inc. to the growing list of Minnesota companies going public this year.
On Friday, Miromatrix filed paperwork with the Securities and Exchange Commission to take the company public. The company, which develops synthetic organ transplants, hasn’t yet released the number or price of shares it plans to sell. But, in a prospectus document, Miromatrix officials said there’s a lucrative market for “bioengineered” organs.
The company estimates an $8.8 billion annual market for its lab-made livers, and a $26.3 billion annual market for its kidneys. “Over time we believe that our bioengineered livers will expand into less severe forms of chronic liver disease that are progressing and potentially causing comorbidities but are not yet life threatening,” Miromatrix officials wrote in the filing.
The company is still in the testing phase for its synthetic organs, though. “Our next step is to demonstrate function of our bioengineered organs in humans,” company officials wrote. “We believe it is important to first demonstrate this function outside of the patient’s body, and if successful it will expedite our clinical pathway to full organ transplantation.”
The road to profitability may be a little bumpy; Miromatrix officials cautioned that the company has incurred “significant net losses since inception, and we expect to incur net losses in the future.” It’s not unusual for young companies to lose money in their early years. Consider online retail behemoth Amazon Inc., which was founded in 1994 but didn’t turn a profit until 2001. Today, Amazon is one of the most profitable companies in the world, with net income of over $21.3 billion in 2020. Miromatrix was founded in 2009.
In 2020, Miromatrix recorded a net loss of $10.3 million, an uptick from a net loss of $4 million in the prior year. The company pulled in licensing revenue of $46,530 in 2020, according to the SEC filing.
Nonetheless, Miromatrix has captured the attention of some of the biggest names in medical research, including the Mayo Clinic. In the SEC filing, Miromatrix officials noted that the company is operating pre-clinical research programs with Mayo, Mount Sinai, and the Texas Heart Institute. Miromatrix also counts dialysis giant DaVita and transplant services company CareDx Inc. among its “strategic investors.”
So far, nearly all of Miromatrix’s revenue has come through royalties from the sale of its two surgical products Miromesh and Miroderm. But the company is now turning all of its attention on transplantable organs. “In order to focus all of our efforts on bioengineered human organs, we spun out the commercial acellular business as Reprise in June 2019, and subsequently divested our minority ownership stake in March 2021,” the company wrote in the SEC filing.
In 2016, TCB took a closer look at Miromatrix’s plan to develop transplantable organs.
Miromatrix becomes the fourth Minnesota company to file for an initial public offering (IPO) this year. In February, Twin Cities-based air carrier Sun Country filed for an IPO, raising more than $218 million and surpassing expectations. Then came Bloomington-based chipmaker SkyWater Technology, medical equipment manager Agiliti Inc., and finally health insurance startup Bright Health.
Minneapolis-based payment platform Sezzle Inc. has also announced plans to go public, though it hasn’t yet unveiled an official IPO. Sezzle is already publicly traded in Australia.
What’s driving the rush of public offerings? Wall Street investors are buzzing after a record year in 2020. That’s led to “massive sources of liquidity and buyer pools,” as one analyst told TCB earlier this year.
