New filings in the stock market indicate that Glandore’s Managing Director, Michael Kelly, has enlarged his share in Poolbeg Pharma, a company owned by Cathal Friel, to almost 5 per cent. In mid-March, Mr Kelly acquired an additional 5.8 million shares in Poolbeg, now owning a total of 4.8 per cent in the corporation, a transaction recently communicated to the public.
Mr Kelly’s shares, which he bought for roughly £600,000 (€699,000), with each share costing approximately 10 pence, are now valued at roughly £2.8 million as Poolbeg’s share price has risen to nearly 12 pence per share. This transaction positions Mr Kelly as Poolbeg’s second largest individual stakeholder, coming in after Mr Friel, the company’s founder.
At Glandore, a company that presents co-working spaces for tech firms in Dublin and Belfast, Mr Kelly holds the position of Managing Director. Their client list includes well-known names like Facebook, Dropbox, Twitter, Yelp, Rapid7, and Bloomberg, as per Mr Kelly’s LinkedIn profile. In addition, Glandore owns the Suesey Street restaurant and the No 25 private dining setup, both located at Fitzwilliam Place in Dublin.
Originally a spin-off of Open Orphan (now hVivo, another Friel-owned company), Poolbeg Pharma was listed on London’s AIM market in 2021. The company is engaged in the research and development of fresh medications to tackle infectious diseases.
Mr Friel vacated the CEO post recently to assume the duties of the executive chair, making way for Jeremy Skillington. The company onboarded various executives from Amryt Pharma under Friel, which was sold for almost $1.5 billion last year, including Laura Maher, David Allmond and John McEvoy. Friel portrays this as a reunion.
Poolbeg’s advisory board includes Luke O’Neill, a professor of biochemistry at Trinity College’s School of Biochemistry. Despite not generating any revenue, Poolbeg maintained a cash balance of £14.1 million as of June 30th, a drop from £16.2 million at the end of 2022. In a recent interview with the Business Post, Mr Skillington spoke of the possibility of the company reaching a €1 billion valuation.
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