MONROVIA, Calif.—STAAR Surgical Co. (NASDAQ: STAA), which develops, manufactures and markets implantable lenses, on Wednesday announced the pricing of a previously announced public offering of 1.74 million shares of its common stock. The offering is expected to raise approximately $68 million (at a price of roughly $39 per share).In addition, STAAR has granted the underwriters a 30-day option to purchase up to an additional 260,850 shares on the same terms and conditions. The offer is expected to close Friday, Aug. 10.

STAAR intends to use the net proceeds from the offering to fund its operations, which may include advancing and broadening commercialization of its implantable Collamer lens (ICL) family of products, funding pipeline research and development activities and clinical trials, funding incremental investments in automation and precision manufacturing and capital expenditures, according to the announcement. Canaccord Genuity is acting as the sole book-running manager for the offering, STAAR said.

Separately, STAAR reported this week that net sales in its second quarter ended June 29 totaled $33.9 million, an increase of 55 percent from $21.9 million in year-ago period, with ICL (Implantable Collamer Lens) sales climbing 67 percent on a dollar-value basis and 66 percent on a unit basis from the prior year. Net income for the second quarter was approximately $1.8 million, compared with a net loss of $1.0 million for the prior year quarter, according to the earnings announcement.

STAAR generated record quarterly sales, driven by the continuing expansive growth of the EVO Visian ICL family of lenses, president and chief executive officer Caren Mason said in the announcement. “ICL unit growth highlights for the quarter included Japan up 131 percent, China up 127 percent, Canada up 64 percent and India up 61 percent with solid 30 percent unit growth in Germany and 20 percent from our European distributors,” Mason added.

“We continue to see a high level of momentum in our key international markets and therefore believe our second half sales growth may exceed 20 percent even taking into account our strong finish to 2017. In addition, we believe our full year fiscal 2018 sales growth may now exceed 25 percent compared with our prior target for sales growth closer to 20 percent over 2017, based on current market conditions.”

Mason added, “We believe that the previously announced lifting of the 2014 Warning Letter in the U.S. is a positive step towards moving forward with the required regulatory approval processes for our Toric and EVO family of lenses in the United States.”

The gross profit margin was 74.4 percent in the quarter, compared with 70.5 percent in the year-ago period. The improvement in gross margin resulted from lower unit costs and lower inventory provisions, STAAR reported.