Investors pile into Prometic after loan repayment extension

Prometic Life Sciences (TSX:PLI) is among the most actively traded stocks on the Toronto Exchange today after the company announced it had finalized loan repayment terms to some long term stakeholders and pushed back the repayment of $4-million in secured debt by a year, to July 1, 2014.

As consideration for the restructuring, the stakeholders collectively received 1,043,476 shares in ProMetic’s share capital at an approximate average share price of 46 cents, and 754,715 warrants with a strike price of 53 cents, for which the TSX has already given conditional approval.

CFO Bruce Pritchard says the extension puts the company in a better place to capitalize on its recent momentum.

“These loan extensions and working capital grant conversions clearly demonstrate, once again, the confidence shown by these investors and lenders in our ability to execute on our business plan. This significantly reduces pressure on our short-term liquidity requirements and positively impacts our ability to continue to improve our balance sheet,” he said.

Founded in 1992, Laval-based Prometic Life Sciences designs technology that is used to remove pathogens from blood, and extract and recover proteins from plasma. The company has a number of therapeutics and protein technologies that target everything from Chemotherapy-induced anemia, to Cancer related anemia, to its Prion Capture Technology, which enhances detection of “mad cow disease” in cattle.

Shares of Prometic have been on traders radar since January, when the company announced that it had has received confirmation from partner Octapharma of the regulatory approval of Octaplas by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the U.S. market.

At press time, shares of Prometic were up 7.7% to $.42, as more than 3.2-million shares changed hands.

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