Director Robert Nelsen Buys $3.06M of City Therapeutics at $18 IPO Price
CTY is trading near its 52-week low of $20.5 (4.7% above the low) on light trading volume (0.4× avg).
Summary
City Therapeutics director and 10% owner Robert Nelsen bought 170,000 shares at $18.00 for $3.06M on the day of the IPO close, alongside the conversion of ARCH Venture Fund XII's preferred stock into 10.8M common shares.
Key Events · Ownership and Investor Activity · CTY
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Director Buys $3.06M at IPO Price
Robert Nelsen acquired 170,000 shares in the open market at $18.00 on 2026-10-19, a $3.06M cash purchase held through ARCH Venture Fund XII, L.P.
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Preferred Converts at IPO Close
ARCH XII's Series Seed, Series A and Series B preferred converted into 10,804,215 common shares at the 1:1.0983 ratio, retiring 9,837,218 preferred shares for no consideration.
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Post-Transaction Stake of 13.7M Shares
Nelsen's beneficial holdings after the conversion and purchase total 13,692,507 shares, plus a 22,649-share option granted 2026-10-15 at an $18.00 strike vesting by October 2027.
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Purchase Priced at the $18 IPO Level
The $18.00 purchase price matches the IPO price set on 2026-10-16, when the stock opened at $23 and traded around $22.53; shares are at $21.46 today.
Analysis · CTY · Life Sciences
Nelsen, an ARCH Venture Partners director and 10% owner, put real cash into 170,000 shares at $18.00 — the IPO price — on the day the stock closed its first session around $22.53. That is an open-market purchase, not a conversion or option exercise, and it comes from the fund that backed the company pre-IPO. The rest of the filing is mechanical: 10.8M preferred shares converted to common at the 1:1.0983 ratio at the IPO close, and a routine 22,649-share option grant at an $18 strike. The purchase is the part that matters — a large existing holder adding at the offer price right after listing.
How filings like this one have moved
In the 30 days to Oct 19, 2026, 29.4% of the 1386 measured filings Wiseek scored 7 moved their stock by 5% or more by the next session's close. The median move was -0.50%. These are measured outcomes after filings of this importance, not a forecast for this one.
Measured one observation per ticker per day, after exclusions. Current figures: Filing Impact Tracker · open dataset
At the time of this filing, CTY was trading at $21.46 on NASDAQ in the Life Sciences sector, with a market capitalization of approximately $1.1B. The 52-week trading range was $20.50 to $23.88. This filing was assessed with positive market sentiment and an importance score of 7 out of 10.