June 24, 2020
Affluent Medical – a French MedTech Company, announced the closing of €10.3 Million in Private Placement Financing and the appointment of two new board members to further bolster the team.
Affluent Medical specializes in innovative, minimally-invasive implants designed to restore key physiological functions in patients suffering from structural heart diseases, as well as urinary incontinence.
“We are very pleased to welcome Jean-François Le Bigot and Benoît Adelus to our board of directors. They bring decades of leadership in key areas, such as talent acquisition, strategy implementation, clinical development, and financing in the medical field that are vital to our future operations and strategy,” said Michel Finance, Chairman and CEO of Affluent Medical. “Their expertise along with the €15.8 million in refinancing should allow Affluent Medical to make rapid progress on its clinical programs and its commitment to bring new-generation minimally-invasive medical devices to the market for the treatment of large unmet medical needs.”
The Private Placement Financing was taken out for gross proceeds of €10.3 million, €8 million via convertible bonds (of which €4 million were received in December 2019).
The investment was led by Truffle Capital through the Truffle Biomedtech FCPI Fund and Truffle Innov FRR France. Other investors who participated in the financing include Head Leader Limited (China), Affluent Medical partner for two joint ventures in Shanghai, Ginko Invest (Jean-François Le Bigot), Fate (Benoît Adelus), and one historic investor, Simone Merkle.
The Company intends to use the proceeds from the offering to fund its ongoing clinical activities in cardiology, and especially for the MINERVA First-In-Human clinical study of the Epygon Mitral valve, to complete the OPTIMISE II pivotal clinical study of KALIOS (adjustable mitral ring) and start a pilot / pivotal study of Artus (implantable urinary sphincter) in urology.
Affluent Medical has been granted two “PGE” (government-backed) loans for a total of €2.2 million from the banks Société Générale and BNP PARIBAS as part of public measures to mitigate the economic impact of the Coronavirus. The two loans are interest-free and repayable either after one year or over a period of up to five years.
An innovation loan for €1 million was also granted by Bpifrance to finance R&D projects in cardiology. The loan carries an interest rate of 1.14% and will be repaid over a period of five years starting in September 2022.
Furthermore, following approval of the clinical study in Austria, Epygon received €2.3 million in grants in early May from the French public investment bank Bpifrance as part of the PSPC MIVANA project.