LegoChem Biosciences shares hit the daily price limit of 30 percent on Monday after it announced a bonus issue -- offer of free additional share to existing shareholders for every stock they hold.

“We have decided on the bonus issue, taking into consideration the low volume of stocks kept our company undervalued despite the series of upbeat license-outs,” said a LegoChem Biosciences official.

The company, which is listed on secondary bourse Kosdaq, will newly issue 1,283,070 preferred stocks and 10,770,101 common stocks, after which the total volume of stocks rise to 24,106,342.

"Through this bonus issue, LegoChem Biosciences will interact more actively with the market to become a shareholder-friendly company,” said the official.

Those who buy the biotech firm’s stocks by June 15 will have them doubled on July 7.

After the announcement, its stock price closed at 66,900 won ($54.60), up 29.9 percent from the day before.

LegoChem Biosciences is a biologics research firm whose primary role in the novel drug development chain consists of identifying potent drug materials that show potential for becoming a new therapy for rare, incurable diseases.

It has a number of global partners for antibody drug conjugate pipelines, antibiotic pipelines, anticoagulant pipeline and autotaxin inhibitor pipeline.

The most famous of it all, perhaps, is the fibrosing interstitial lung disease treatment candidate, licensed out to Bridge Biotherapeutics, which then licensed it out to Boeringher Ingelheim for 1.5 trillion won ($1.26 billion). LegoChem Biosciences has 45 percent share of the proceeds.

By Lim Jeong-yeo (kaylalim@heraldcorp.com)