Sientra debuts on Nasdaq
On a day when the Federal Reserve announced the end to its historical bond buying program, Sientra, the Santa Barbara-based medical aesthetics company, made a bit of history of its own.
Sientra became the latest company in the Tri-Counties to list on a major stock exchange Oct. 29, selling 5 million shares of common stock at a public offering price of $15 per share.
Heavy demand for the shares, which began trading under the symbol SIEN on Nasdaq’s Global Select Market, pushed the price up 11 percent to close at $16.75 per share.
Sientra has granted the underwriters a 30-day option to purchase up to an additional 750,000 shares of common stock at the same price.
Piper Jaffray and Stifel were joint book-running managers for the offering. Leerink Partners and William Blair are acting as co-managers. Sientra’s market capitalization was a respectable $237.5 million at the close. Sientra’s top executives rang the opening bell at the Nasdaq stock exchange as the company commenced trading.
Sientra has developed a range of naturally shaped breast implants and expects to find a niche competing against Johnson & Johnson and Allergan. Allergan has shut its Santa Barbara medical device unit under pressure from activist investor Bill Ackman.
— Bloomberg News contributed to this report
