TransEnterix shores up balance sheet with $25m stock sale deal

TransEnterix (NYSE:TRXC) said today that it inked a deal to sell up to $25 million worth of stock to Lincoln Park Capital Fund over 3 years.

Research Triangle Park, N.C-based TransEnterix said the deal values any sales based on its share price at the time. The company markets a robot-assisted surgery platform that incorporates haptics and eye-tracking technology called Senhance.

TransEnterix said the deal gives it the right to control the stock sales to Chicago-based Lincoln Park, which pledged not to short or hedge TRXC shares. TransEnterix, which can also spike the agreement with no penalty, agreed to issue shares to the investment bank as a fee for signing the deal and is due to issue more with each stock sale. The proceeds are earmarked for general corporate purposes, the company said.

“The company expects this commitment to provide us with additional balance sheet strength and to help continue funding our Senhance regulatory and commercial efforts,” president & CEO Todd Pope said in prepared remarks.

When TransEnterix acquired the system for $100 million last fall as the Telelap ALF-X device, the system already had CE Mark approval in the European Union and quickly rebranded it as Senhance. The buy was timely, as the company had shelved its flagship SurgiBot platform after the FDA denied its submission for 510(k) clearance earlier this year. The company is on track for an FDA decision on Senhance in 2017.

Pope told MassDevice.com that the Senhance’s haptics – the system’s ability to convey a sense of touch and resistance to the surgeon – are an important selling point with physicians. The tech works on the concept of force feedback, he explained: Senhance’s interaction with tissue is fed back as haptic force to the surgeon’s hands. In demos of the system, surgeons are able to knot a suture while blindfolded, he told us.

“We had so many surgeons that are using the Senhance say that it was enhancing their senses, it was taking their sense of feel, their sense of touch, and, certainly, their sense of sight and really enhancing it,” Pope said.

Last week TransEnterix opened a new R&D and training center in Milan.

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