NEW YORK – Invitae announced after the close of market Tuesday that it has filed for Chapter 11 protection in the US Bankruptcy Court for the District of New Jersey.
"We have been working diligently over the past 18 months to improve our cash position by realigning our portfolio and focusing on our most impactful business lines," Ken Knight, president and CEO of Invitae, said in a statement. "These strategic initiatives have accelerated our path to positive cash flow in order to realize our potential as an industry-leading genetics platform. However, we still need to address the company's debt position through these Chapter 11 proceedings."
In its petition, Invitae said it had assets of between $500 million and $1 billion, along with liabilities of $1 billion to $10 billion. It also said that it had between 1,000 and 5,000 creditors.
As of the end of the third quarter, the most recent quarter for which financial results are available, Invitae said it had cash and cash equivalents of $158 million, marketable securities of $96.6 million, and restricted cash of $10.1 million.
Its bankruptcy filing follows a report in the Wall Street Journal that Invitae planned to pursue such action within a matter of weeks, sending Invitae's stocks tumbling 77 percent in one day.
Subsequently, the New York Stock Exchange notified Invitae that it would begin proceedings to delist the company's common stock and immediately suspended trading of its shares due to "abnormally low" trading price levels.
The San Francisco-based genetic testing firm has sought to improve its financial position via a broad restructuring effort over the past couple of years. The company laid off over 1,000 employees and eliminated non-core operations in mid-2022. It later began selling many of its assets, beginning with its Archer NGS research assays, which Integrated DNA Technologies acquired.
Invitae later divested its Ciitizen health data platform and most recently sold its reproductive health assets to Natera.
Invitae has also been embroiled in patent infringement litigation. DNA testing company Natera sued Invitae and ArcherDx, which Invitae bought in 2020, over patents involved in legacy Personalized Cancer Monitoring (PCM) products, that Natera said infringed on its intellectual property. Natera won an injunction against the two companies late last year. The parties later reached an agreement to limit any liabilities attributed by jury to Invitae for past damages related to infringing sales of the Invitae PCM products as part of the deal to sell Invitae’s reproductive health assets to Natera.
Separately, Tecan Genomics sued Invitae, ArcherDx, and others for infringing on its intellectual property, asserting that its technology underlies the Anchored Multiplex PCR target enrichment technology found in Invitae's PCM service and in ArcherDx's LiquidPlex, VariantPlex, and FusionPlex kits.
Its Chapter 11 petition arrives close on the heels of spatial biology firm NanoString Technologies, which filed for bankruptcy protection on Feb. 4.