Health Company Lippo Investment Portfolio Owned By Conglomerate Mochtar Riady Will IPO On The United States Stock Exchange

Illustration. (Photo: Unsplash)

JAKARTA - Hong Kong-based laboratory and healthcare company, Prenetics Ltd. has agreed to merge with tycoon Adrian Cheng's US-listed company Artisan Acquisition Corp.

In Bloomberg news, quoted on Tuesday, September 21, Prenetics has a company value of 1.25 billion US dollars in an agreement to make it a public company. The special-purpose acquisition company, or SPAC, also raised $120 million to support the transaction.

For information, investors in private investment in Prenetics include Aspex, PAG, Lippo belonging to conglomerate Mochtar Riady, Dragonstone and Xen Capital. The transaction is expected to be completed in the fourth quarter of this year or the first quarter of 2022.

The combined company is expected to be listed on the Nasdaq under the PRE symbol. Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder Danny Yeung said prenetics would receive as much as $459 million in cash from the deal, and acquisitions would be a priority going forward.

"The United States will be a priority market for us, and Southeast Asia then adds further expansion into the UK and Europe to the list," he said.

Prenetics was founded as a genetics and DNA testing company but switched to COVID-19 testing when the pandemic began last year. The company operates in 10 countries and has completed more than 5 million COVID-19 tests, including regular testing given to players and staff in the Premier League.