After 16 years in Santa Clarita, MannKind Corp. is moving its corporate headquarters to Westlake Village.
The bioscience company markets Afrezza, a fast-acting inhalable form of insulin. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved Afrezza in 2014.
In a quarterly filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday, MannKind provided details of a lease for more than 13,200 square feet of space at 30930 Russell Ranch Road.
The space is in one of two buildings in the Westlake Landmark office park, next to the Lindero Canyon Road exit of the Ventura Freeway.
The 65-month lease, signed in May, calls for monthly payments of $40,951, which will increase by three percent a year, plus maintenance costs. It includes a five-year renewal option.
Jones Lang LaSalle acted as a dual broker on the transition for MannKind and the landlord, Russell Ranch Road II LLC, which was also represented by ID Real Estate Group.
The move helps MannKind reduce operating expenses. The company “redeployed capital and critical resources across the company such as reducing our burn rate in facilities that aren’t being utilized, CEO Michael Castagna said in an Aug. 5 conference call with investment analysts. “Our move to Westlake Village from Valencia will reduce our expenses in the second half of this year.”
MannKind is one of 17 companies founded by Alfred Mann, and one three that went public. Its headquarters is currently at 25134 Rye Canyon Loop, in the Southern California Innovation Park, the former Mann Biomedical Park. It has rented space on a month-to-month basis.
Afrezza is the first widely available drug to use MannKind’s Technosphere formulation technology based on a class of organic molecules that are designed to self-assemble into small particles onto which drug molecules can be loaded. These can be inhaled, replacing medications that can only be delivered by injection.
The company was founded in 1991 as Pharmaceutical Discovery Corp., and took its present form and moved to Valencia in 2001, when pioneering biomedical entrepreneur Alfred Mann merged that company with two others he owned.
In January, MannKind sold 11.4 acres of land and a 146,000-square-foot building at 28901 N. Avenue Paine in Valencia to Rexford Industrial Realty Inc. of Los Angeles for $17.3 million.
Rexford is a real estate investment trust that owns and operates 136 industrial properties across Southern California. The company owns about fifteen million rentable square feet and manages another 19 properties with about 1.2 million rentable square feet.
The sale of the building, which was vacant, helped MannKind reduce its operating expenses and focus on commercializing Afrezza, according to the company. The two-story building was built in 1999 and includes 50,000 square feet of office space, 40,000 square feet of lab and support facilities, and 52,000 square feet of warehouse space.
In its most recent quarter, ending June 30, MannKind had a net loss of $35.3 million on revenues of $2.1 million. For the first six months of 2017, the company had a net loss of $51.7 million on revenue of $5.2 million. The company’s stock closed yesterday at $1.19 a share on Nasdaq, down three cents.
