Affymetrix May Benefit Significantly From Perlegen IPO (AFFX, PERL)

Yesterday morning we had an IPO filing from Perlegen Sciences Inc. (proposed ticker: PERL) for up to $115M in stock, all of which will be sold by the company according to the press release. Perlegen is a biopharmaceutical company developing a pipeline of late-stage genetically targeted medicines. The company also collaborates with pharmaceutical companies to apply genetics to drug response and disease to filter out patients that may experience adverse side-effects during drug trials.

One public company that benefits directly and indirectly from this is
Affymetrix, Inc. (AFFX), which owns 25.4% according to filings. AFFX shares did promptly respond to this yesterday with an approximate 2% gain for the day.

AFFX is already profitable and has a market cap of $2.26B. Their fiscal 2005 revenues were $367.6M, with a $57.4M operating income and $57.5M net income applied to common shareholders after items. As of year-end the company reported $766.8M total assets ($284.9M of which were cash and equivalents) and $246.9M total liabilities.

Based on this financial data, it is going to depend entirely on the reception and demand from the street for Perlegen shares ahead of the IPO as to how AFFX shares will directly and indirectly win.