Ligand Pharmaceuticals-backed Pelican Technology Holdings to merge with Primordial Genetics.

Ligand Pharmaceuticals-backed Pelican Technology Holdings, a company that creates a novel way of enhancing biological productivity to enable the next generation of therapeutics, agreed to merge with Primordial Genetics, a synthetic biology company. Financial terms were not disclosed. “The acquisition of Pfenex in 2020 was a successful and accretive deal for Ligand that continues to pay dividends. After incubating Pfenex and its Pelican Expression Technology for three years, we now have five commercial royalties from the technology platform, and with today’s announcement, we retain a significant equity stake in an exciting new company pushing the frontiers of synthetic biology. With the spinout of Pelican, retention of economic rights to commercial royalties, and subsequent purchase of economic rights, we are delivering on our strategy to streamline the Company’s operations and focus on accretive high-margin businesses and royalties. We believe this will accelerate profitability and growth for our investors and add multiple new royalty ‘shots-on-goal’ for Ligand while realizing lower infrastructure costs within our efficient high growth business model,” Todd Davis, Ligand CEO.