Vir Announces Public Offering With Option for Investors to Buy Up to 15% More Shares

Key Facts

Vir Biotechnology announced on November 12, 2026, a managed public offering of its common stock, with underwriters granted a 30-day option to purchase up to 15% more of the shares offered. The company said it would sell all the shares proposed in the offering, while the underwriters would arrange the transaction. The additional purchase option sets the maximum underwriters may buy beyond the offered shares, but does not specify the base share count or offering value. The company’s stock closed at $12.12 in the same session, down 7.69%, according to market data. The announcement followed a sharp move in the opposite direction in earlier sessions, after the company announced results from a pivotal clinical trial.

The offering prospectus directs net proceeds toward multiple purposes, including commercial-readiness activities for the company’s chronic hepatitis delta program and investment in its T-cell oncology therapeutics platform. Reuters quoted the prospectus as saying the funds would be used "to fund, among other things, pre-commercial launch activities for our chronic hepatitis delta program." This adds a specific commercial purpose alongside investment in the therapeutic platform, but the available information does not provide an allocation between the two uses. The facts announced here also do not include the net proceeds or the number of shares to be issued. Leerink Partners, Morgan Stanley and Evercore ISI are acting as book-running managers, while Raymond James is a co-manager.

The stock had risen 22% on Monday, November 9, after Vir announced that the Phase 3 ECLIPSE 1 trial met its primary and key secondary endpoints. In the trial results, 44% of patients who received the combination therapy met the primary endpoint at week 48, compared with 0% in the deferred-treatment group at week 12. The share of patients who met the secondary endpoint, reaching an undetectable level of the virus, was 79% in the treatment group at week 48, compared with 0% in the comparison group. The trial included 124 patients, randomly assigned in a 2-to-1 ratio to combination therapy or deferred treatment. The report said all patients completed 48 weeks of treatment, while the stock’s rise after the results announcement was followed by a lower close in the November 12 session, when the offering was announced.