Xoma Royalty is ravenous for biotechs, and the Bay Area licensing aggregator has found its next meal in Mural Oncology. Xoma is set to acquire Mural for $2.035 per share, for a total value of about $36 million, the company announced on Aug. 20.
The price is a premium on the $1.80 per share that Mural was trading at when the market closed on Aug. 19, but by 9:45 a.m. ET on Aug. 20, the biotech's share price had jumped 16% to $2.08.
If Mural somehow reaches the acquisition’s closing date with more than the estimated $36.2 million, shareholders will be paid up to $0.205 more per share to be sure they get back that extra cash.
The deal is set to close by the end of 2025, according to the release, after which Mural will be housed in a new Xoma subsidiary called XRA 5 Corp.
The writing has been on the wall for Mural since April, when the cancer company’s IL-2 variant nemvaleukin alfa failed a phase 2 melanoma trial. That clinical flop followed similar struggles in a phase 3 trial in platinum-resistant ovarian cancer. Mural responded by laying off 90% of its staff and launching a hunt for strategic alternatives.
"The transaction agreement with Xoma Royalty announced today is the result of a thorough and wide-ranging strategic review process, conducted with the support of our legal and financial advisors,” Mural CEO Caroline Loew, Ph.D., said in the release. “We believe that this transaction, which is supported by our board, achieves the goal of this strategic review process, which was to maximize shareholder value.”
Mural marks Xoma’s third biotech acquisition of the month. On Aug. 4, the royalty collector announced it was buying Takeda spinout HilleVax and Dutch outfit Lava Therapeutics. HilleVax went awry in July 2024, when the company’s sole clinical-stage candidate failed a phase 2b trial in norovirus-related acute gastroenteritis, while Lava’s bispecific gamma delta T-cell engager flopped in a phase 1 trial at the end of last year.
And in June, Xoma snagged San Diego-based Turnstone Biologics at a bargain price of less than $8 million. That deal came after Turnstone was forced to drop its last clinical program due to manufacturing costs.
Xoma’s primary business is buying rights to royalties and milestones, paying biotechs cash upfront to support their assets in exchange for longer-term revenue streams.