HBM leads €41m round for AAA

Ellie Pullen
18 February 2014

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HBM Healthcare Investments has led a €41m funding round for Advanced Accelerator Applications (AAA), a French biopharma company specialising in molecular nuclear medicine.

HBM contributed €20m to the round.

Several existing investors also took part in the round, including Tamburi Investment Partners. The company has been previously backed by Seventure Partners. According to AAA, it has a total of 155 private and institutional investors.

The capital increase will allow AAA to accelerate its internationalisation efforts, with a particular focus on bolstering its presence in the US. The company will also use the funds to finance the development of its portfolio of molecular nuclear medicine (MNM) products.

Previous funding
The company raised €4.8m in a funding round in May last year, with participation from Seventure. The round valued AAA at approximately €265m, according to the company.

In July 2011, AAA secured €40m from a consortium of new and existing investors.

Company
AAA is headquartered in Saint-Genis-Pouilly, with a total of 17 production facilities across 10 countries including Italy, Germany, Switzerland, Spain, Poland and Portugal. The company is expecting to report a turnover of €56.6m for 2013, representing a 27% increase on 2012, as well as an EBITDA of €14m - a 49% increase on the previous year.

The company specialises in MNM, with a focus on molecular imaging and personalised medicine (therapy for personalised treatment of serious diseases). MNM is a medical technique that uses trace amounts of radiopharmaceuticals, which are injected into a patient's body, to create images of organs and lesions, as well as treating diseases such as cancer.

AAA is also the developer of positron emission tomography (PET) radiopharmaceuticals, which are predominantly used in clinical oncology, neurology and cardiology.

The company was founded in 2002 as a spinout from the Geneva-based European Organisation of Nuclear Research. It currently employs 280 staff.

People
Stefano Buono is the CEO of AAA. HBM CEO Andreas Wicki will join the company's board of directors following the funding round.