To The Moon

DICE Therapeutics spikes 90% on its first day of trading.

DICE Therapeutics, Inc. (Nasdaq: DICE), a biopharmaceutical company leveraging its proprietary technology platform to build a pipeline of novel oral therapeutic candidates to treat chronic diseases in immunology and other therapeutic areas, today announced the pricing of its upsized initial public offering of 12,000,000 shares of its common stock at a public offering price of $17.00 per share. All of the shares are being offered by DICE. The gross proceeds from the offering, before deducting underwriting discounts and commissions and other offering expenses payable by DICE, are expected to be $204.0 million. The shares are expected to begin trading on the Nasdaq Global Market on September 15, 2021 under the ticker symbol “DICE.” The offering is expected to close on September 17, 2021, subject to the satisfaction of customary closing conditions. In addition, DICE has granted the underwriters a 30-day option to purchase up to an additional 1,800,000 shares of common stock at the initial public offering price, less the underwriting discounts and commissions.

BofA Securities, SVB Leerink and Evercore ISI are acting as joint bookrunning managers for the offering.

About DICE Therapeutics, Inc.

DICE Therapeutics, Inc. is a biopharmaceutical company leveraging its proprietary technology platform to build a pipeline of novel oral therapeutic candidates to treat chronic diseases in immunology and other therapeutic areas. DICE is initially focused on developing oral therapeutics against well-validated targets in immunology, with the goal of achieving comparable potency to their systemic biologic counterparts, which have demonstrated the greatest therapeutic benefit to date in these disease areas. The Company’s DELSCAPE platform is designed to discover selective oral small molecules with the potential to modulate protein-protein interactions (PPIs) as effectively as systemic biologics. DICE’s lead therapeutic candidate, S011806, is an oral antagonist of the pro-inflammatory signaling molecule, interleukin-17 (IL-17), which is a validated drug target implicated in a variety of immunology indications. DICE is also developing oral therapeutic candidates targeting α4ß7 integrin and αVß1/αVß6 integrin for the treatment of inflammatory bowel disease and idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, respectively.

Company & Technology

South San Francisco, California-based DICE was founded to leverage its proprietary DELSCAPE platform for discovering and developing chronic immune system disease treatments.

Management is headed by co-founder and CEO J. Kevin Judice, Ph.D., who has been with the firm since inception and was previously Chief Scientific Officer at Cidara Therapeutics(NASDAQ:CDTX).

The firm's lead candidate, its oral IL-17 franchise, is being developed to treat psoriasis and other mediated chronic immunology indications.

Investors in the firm have invested at least $107 million in equity investment and include RA Capital Management, Northpond Ventures and Sands Capital Private Growth.

Market & Competition

According to a 2019 marketresearch reportby ResearchAndMarkets, the global market for the treatment of psoriasis conditions of all types is expected to reach $46.6 billion by 2022.

This represents a forecast CAGR (Compound Annual Growth Rate) of 11.5% from 2019 to 2022.

Key elements driving this expected growth are a rise in incidence of psoriasis among patients possibly attributed to climate changes, increased stress and unhealthy lifestyles.

Also, according to the World Health Organization, more than 100 million people suffered from some form of psoriasis in 2016.

Major competitive vendors that provide or are developing related treatments include:

• Novartis(NYSE:NVS)
• Eli Lilly & Co.(NYSE:LLY)
• Bausch Health(NYSE:BHC)
• Amgen(NASDAQ:AMGN)
• Bristol-Myers Squibb(NYSE:BMY)
• Pfizer(NYSE:PFE)
• AbbVie(NYSE:ABBV)
• Nimbus Therapeutics
• Biogen(NASDAQ:BIIB)
• Takeda(NYSE:TAK)
• Boehringer Ingelheim
• Roche(OTCQX:RHHBY)

Financial Status

DICE's recent financial results include little revenue and significant R&D and G&A expenses associated with its development efforts.

Below are the company's financial results for the past two calendar years:

As of June 30, 2021, the company had $15.5 million in cash and $8.5 million in total liabilities.