November 14, 2019

Biotech billionaire continues to hold most stocks in AquaBounty following sales

Intrexon may have sold all 8.2 million of its shares in AquaBounty Technologies in late October, but biotechnology billionaire Randal Kirk remains the person with the greatest control over the Maynard, Massachusetts-based creator of AquAdvantage, the world's first genetically engineered salmon, based on filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

Kirk is both the chairman and CEO of Intrexon, a Germantown, Maryland-based biotech company, but he is also the founder, CEO and senior managing director of Third Security LLC, the Radford, Virginia-based investment capital firm that manages TS Aquaculture, the documents show.

It was TS Aquaculture that paid US$2.62 per AQB share (US$21.6 million) to Intrexon, giving it 38.1% ownership of the company. With some 634,994 in other AQB shares it manages and 202,560 shares also owned by Kirk, he still maintains the largest amount of combined stock (42.0%), confirmed Dave Conley, a spokesman for AquaBounty.

Intrexon, however, no longer needs to include AquaBounty in its financial statements.

Neither Intrexon nor Kirk have explained the strategy behind the stock sale.

Kirk, who has a reported net worth of US$2.2 billion, is no. 370 on Forbes' list of the 400 wealthiest people in the world.

Intrexon, which he founded in 1998, acquired a company credited for inventing Arctic apples, genetically engineered to never brown.

In late 2012, Intexon acquired a 48% interest in AquaBounty, buying the shares of the Atlantic salmon recirculating aquaculture system (RAS) producer, from Linnaeus Capital Partners and its affiliate, Tethys Ocean, for US$6 million.

AquaBounty has predicted having its first harvest of AquAdvantage salmon in September or October 2020. Also, other media reported that the company has revealed that it is in the final design phase for a new RAS facility similar to the one it now maintains in Albany, Indiana, and is considering locations in both western Canada and across the United States.

In March, the US Food and Drug Administration removed what was deemed to be its final major regulatory barrier, a three-year-old import alert that had prevented AquaBounty from importing the eggs necessary to grow AquAdvantage fish in the US.

- Undercurrent News