Lynn Stockwell prices US$500m SPAC
Pharmaceutical entrepreneur and serial SPAC sponsor Lynn Stockwell secured US$500m on Wednesday from an IPO of Drugs Made in America Acquisition II, vowing to use that money to onshore drug development to the USA.
“The US$10bn total addressable market is not about volume – it’s about control,” Stockwell said in a release earlier this month.
“Federal agencies already procure these drugs, often from foreign sources. Our goal is to ensure they contract with a sovereign platform like PharmAGRI that can produce and manufacture them on US soil,” she said, referring to the court-enforced merger earlier this year of the reconstituted PharmAGRI medical cannabis company she founded.
Drugs II shares closed Thursday’s session at US$9.99.
Drugs II is the largest SPAC IPO this year and the largest offering since 2022.
Cantor was sole bookrunner on the Drugs II pricing of 50m units at US$10, with each unit structured as one share and one-tenth right post merger. The SPAC has a 24-month investment tenor with all the proceeds raised held in trust, providing investors with a put if Stockwell does not come through.
In addition to the large size, this is an aggressively structured SPAC for the current vintage – investors are required to commit to a merger to get the extra share for each 10 owned.
Typical of SPACs, there is not a lot for investors to go on other than Stockwell. The Drugs II IPO focuses on “reducing America’s overreliance on production of pharmaceuticals from concentrated geographic regions through investments in strategic onshoring of advanced domestic manufacturing technologies for critical drugs”.
Shortages of critical medications continues to rise, affecting a variety of medications from drugs used in hospital emergency room to over-the-counter cold and flu medicine for children, Stockwell and Drugs II management argued in the IPO prospectus.
Drugs II is a follow-up to the US$200m Drugs Made in America I priced in January, and one of four drug-related SPACs Stockwell is planning.
With Drugs II, Cantor was bookrunner on 20 SPAC IPOs this year totalling US$5.6bn, giving nearly a one third (28.2%) share of SPAC business executed in 2025, according to LSEG data.