Eyeonics Inc. is hoping its high-end replacement lens for cataract patients stirs up a premium on Wall Street.
The Aliso Viejo-based company, a member of Orange County’s group of eye device makers, filed plans to go public in July. The company hasn’t set a date yet.
Eyeonics is looking to raise up to $86.5 million in its offering.
The company’s product, Crystalens, gives cataract patients what the company calls “natural vision” after surgery. It uses the eye’s muscle to move the lens back and forth. It also allows wearers to be less dependent on glasses or contacts, according to Eyeonics.
Eyeonics has sold Crystalens since 2004. More than 75,000 of the lenses have been sold through June 30, according to a company filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
There’s room for growth, according to Eye-onics. In its filing, the company said the “premium intraocular lens market” saw sales of $169 million last year, nearly double that of 2005.
“We believe that the (intraocular lens) market will grow as the population in the U.S. and other developed nations ages,” Eyeonics said in its filing.
Crystalens is called a “premium” lens because it replaces a natural lens impacted by cataracts and corrects a related refractive vision error.
In its filing, Eyeonics said premium intraocular lenses should capture a greater share of the market as awareness of them grows.
The lenses also could benefit from wealthy patients who pay for the procedure out of their own pockets, according to the company.
More Sales
Eyeonics is at the stage where it’s looking to expand sales of its lenses, according to Dennis McCarthy, a managing director for B. Riley & Co., a Los Angeles-based investment bank with an office in Newport Beach.
“You could roll out on your own, or you could theoretically sell to a bigger company with a marketing infrastructure already in place,” McCarthy said. “The filing signals that they are planning to head out on their own. If you wanted to take on the cost of your own rollout, you might as well do it as a public company because the cost of capital is lower than as a private company.”
There’s still a possibility that the company “could be acquired by one of the big guys,” McCarthy said.
Big Competitions
Eyeonics’ filing noted that it competes with big names that offer standard intraocular lenses, such as Santa Ana-based Advanced Medical Optics Inc. and Nestl & #233; SA’s Alcon Inc., which has a large operation in Irvine.
The filing also mentioned another Irvine startup, Visiogen Inc., which is working on a lens that could compete with Crystalens.
Eyeonics plans to use proceeds from its offering to create a sales force as well as for boosting research and development.
J. Andy Corley, Eyeonics’ chief executive and cofounder who holds about 11% of the company, declined to comment before the offering.
The company sells Crystalens to ophthalmologists, hospitals and ambulatory surgery centers.
Eyeonics posted a net loss of $3.6 million for the six months through June 30, down from a $4.4 million loss a year earlier. Sales were up 62% to $13.6 million.
In its filing, Eyeonics warned investors that one of its risks is dependence on a single product, Crystalens.
“We expect that sales of our (Crystalens) product will account for substantially all of our revenue for at least the next several years and we are highly dependent on the success of this product,” the device maker said.
Eyeonics was established nine years ago and has some 105 workers.
The company would be the third local medical device maker to go public this year.
Irvine’s Masimo Inc., a maker of devices to measure patients’ oxygen levels, went public in early August, raising $202 million. As of last week, Masimo’s shares are trading some 78% higher than their opening price, giving it a market value of $1.7 billion.
SenoRx Inc., which is also based in Aliso Viejo, went public at the end of March, raising $45 million. Shares of the breast biopsy device maker are now trading about 10% above their opening price with a market value of $151 million.
