Aligos Therapeutics, Inc.

SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., April 29, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Aligos Therapeutics, Inc. (Nasdaq: ALGS), a clinical stage biotechnology company focused on improving patient outcomes through best-in-class therapies for liver and viral diseases, today announced that it will report the Company’s first quarter 2025 financial results on Tuesday, May 6, 2025, before the open of the U.S. financial markets. About Aligos Aligos Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ: ALGS) is a clinical stage biopharmaceutical company founded with the mission to improve patient outcomes by developing best-in-class therapies for the treatment of liver and viral diseases. Aligos applies its science driven approach and deep R&D expertise to advance its purpose-built pipeline of therapeutics with high unmet medical needs such as chronic hepatitis B virus infection, metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis (MASH), and coronaviruses. For more information, please visit www.aligos.com or follow us on LinkedIn or X. Forward-Looking Statement This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Any statements in this press release that are not historical facts may be considered “forward-looking statements.” Forward-looking statements are typically, but not always, identified by the use of words such as “may,” “will,” “would,” “believe,” “intend,” “plan,” “anticipate,” “estimate,” “expect,” and other similar terminology indicating future results. Such forward looking statements are subject to substantial risks and uncertainties that could cause our development programs, future results, performance, or achievements to differ materially from those anticipated in the forward-looking statements. Such risks and uncertainties include, without limitation, the risks and uncertainties associated with market conditions and the satisfaction of customary closing conditions related to the proposed financing, risks and uncertainties inherent in the drug development process, including Aligos’ clinical-stage of development, the process of designing and conducting clinical trials, the regulatory approval processes, the timing of regulatory filings, the challenges associated with manufacturing drug products, Aligos’ ability to successfully establish, protect and defend its intellectual property, other matters that could affect the sufficiency of Aligos’ capital resources to fund operations, reliance on third parties for manufacturing and development efforts, and the impact of global events and other macroeconomic conditions on the Aligos business. For a further description of the risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ from those anticipated in these forward-looking statements, as well as risks relating to the business of Aligos in general, see Aligos’ Annual Report on Form 10-K filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on March 10, 2025 and its future periodic reports to be filed or submitted with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Except as required by law, Aligos undertakes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements to reflect new information, events or circumstances, or to reflect the occurrence of unanticipated events. CompanyJordyn TaraziVice President, Investor Relations & Corporate Communications(650) 910-0427jtarazi@Aligos.com

PIPEs have fallen out of favor. The private investment in public equity, or PIPE, had one of the best years on record in 2024. The financing instrument has a clubby feel in which drug developers typically share confidential trial data or other information with select investors to entice them to buy unregistered shares. Along with most go-to biopharma financing routes, the PIPE has frozen. There were nine PIPEs in the first quarter of 2025, compared to 34 in the same quarter of last year, according to data shared with Endpoints News by Raymond James. About $1.3 billion was funneled into PIPEs in the first quarter of this year, versus $4.9 billion in the same three months a year ago. The massive drop-off in PIPEs in the early months of 2025 likely has to do with the embattled biotech sector, according to bankers. The $XBI , a key barometer of biopharma stock performance, was trading at about $79.00 on Wednesday morning — its lowest point in a year. “Stocks aren’t trading well. Deals aren’t trading well because of it,” Brian Gleason, managing director of investment banking at Raymond James, said in an interview. “When companies do go to the markets to raise capital, the discount that’s going to be required to get those deals done is greater.” Only a few well-known names in biotech have conducted PIPEs so far this year, including Surrozen, Immunovant, Aligos Therapeutics and Tectonic Therapeutic. For some, the post-market performance has been bleak. Tectonic, for example, priced its PIPE at $50.00 per share $TECX . It’s trading below $16.50 today. “At the end of the day, the investment is made on a fundamental basis about the company, or the strength of its data or some strategic aspect that makes it compelling,” Kevin Eisele, managing director for William Blair’s equity capital markets team, told Endpoints. “What happens in the aftermarket can sometimes be divorced from the reality of the investment.” For the companies that announced PIPEs in 2024, the median drop in stock price from the offering share price to the company’s trading performance on March 26 was 30%, according to Raymond James. For biotechs that have disclosed PIPEs so far this year, that figure is 18%. The first quarter of 2024 was one of the busiest quarters ever for biotech PIPEs, according to Richard Hsieh, a managing director of healthcare investment banking at RBC. He cited a wide range of factors, including a “recovering biotech market, investor focus on tightly allocated deals driven by insiders and reverse inquiries, and the ability to share clinical data confidentially to de-risk execution.” That said, making year-over-year comparisons to predict how popular PIPEs will be in 2025 “could be misleading,” Hsieh noted in an email. PIPEs have long been viewed as a way for investors to go “much deeper than you could go in any other process,” according to Samsara BioCapital partner Mike Dybbs, and investors get ample time to dig into the data behind closed doors instead of taking part in a rushed, overnight follow-on offering. Samsara dives into a company’s plans for a “few months” as part of PIPE processes, founder Srini Akkaraju said in an interview. PIPEs are now far less popular than they were a year ago. Bankers and investors point to multiple reasons. More PIPEs are being tranched so that some money is delivered upfront but additional capital is dependent on achieving certain milestones, such as key data readouts, according to Dybbs. “For every PIPE you see get announced, there’s probably at least one, maybe two, that tried and couldn’t get announced,” he said. The shrinking deal count may also have to do with the pool of available companies. In the world of PIPEs, investors can reverse into companies, meaning the financiers will comb through biotechs in search of investment opportunities, and then those companies will market the offering and gather a syndicate. A “decent number” of PIPE deals originate from this opportunistically-driven approach from investors, according to Eisele. There also may be fewer companies that fit the bill after last year’s rush. “It feels like investors have already picked through the market and figured out what were some of the compelling opportunities that might be undervalued and they’ve reversed directly into them and already financed them,” he said. “When you think about the number of opportunities that are still out there that fit that profile, it feels like there aren’t as many anymore.” Plus, there’s been a slight uptick in registered direct offerings this year, “which essentially look and smell a lot like PIPEs,” Eisele said. Registered shares are an easier security to pitch to investors because they don’t carry the baggage of a “big lock-up period,” the banker added. Nearly 10 biotechs have done registered direct offerings this year, including Beam Therapeutics, Solid Biosciences and Arcus Biosciences, according to Raymond James. Analysts say PIPEs and registered direct offerings can boost the profile of a company, in part because biotechs often include the names of their investors in the press releases disclosing the deals. “That can be really helpful, particularly in times like this, where everyone is running for the doors,” Gleason said. “If you’re able to put into a press release that these five funds that are considered ‘smart money’ are investing in the company, it’s a form of validation, and that can help the stock in the aftermarket.” That said, the use of PIPEs ebb and flow with market dynamics. “I don’t really see there being or not being a PIPE market,” Peter Kolchinsky, managing partner at RA Capital Management, the most active lead investor in PIPEs in recent years, said in an email. Financings “are structured to fit the situation, and at any one time there are companies that would rather do a PIPE than take their chances on a standard public financing.”

SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., March 26, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Aligos Therapeutics, Inc. (Nasdaq: ALGS, “Aligos”), a clinical stage biopharmaceutical company focused on developing novel therapeutics to address unmet medical needs in liver and viral diseases, today announced positive data from three oral presentations at the 34th Annual Meeting of the Asian Pacific Association for the Study of the Liver (APASL) 2025, being held March 26 - 30, 2025 in Beijing, China. “We are pleased to present preliminary data out to 96 weeks in our Phase 1 study of ALG-000184, which continues to demonstrate first-/best-in-class reductions in important HBV markers,” stated Lawrence Blatt, PhD, MBA, Chairman, President, & CEO of Aligos Therapeutics. “Additionally, the HERALD data from the Phase 2a study of ALG-055009 in MASH subjects demonstrated robust reductions in liver fat, with a subgroup analysis in subjects on stable GLP-1 agonist therapy, showing a potential role for ALG-055009 in combination with other therapies.” Two oral presentations will highlight the continued potent antiviral activity of ALG-000184 for chronic hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection in both HBeAg-positive and HBeAg-negative subjects, demonstrating the potential for the molecule to become first-line therapy for chronic suppression and the backbone for regimens aimed at functional cure. Data from ≤84 weeks following an oral daily dose of 300 mg ALG-000184 monotherapy demonstrated HBV DNA suppression (