ImmunoPrecise Antibodies Ltd.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for joining us today for Immunoprecise Antibodies Third Quarter Fiscal Year 2025 Earnings Call. We appreciate your time and interest in IPA. Today's call will be led by our CEO, Dr. Jennifer Bath, and Interim CFO, Joe Scheffler. They will provide a review of our financial performance, strategic initiatives, and key operational highlights for the quarter. Please note that a copy of today's presentation along with our financial statements will be available on our company's website for your reference. We encourage you to review these materials to gain a deeper understanding of our performance and strategic direction. Once again, thank you for joining us today. Before we proceed, I would like to remind everyone that today's discussion will contain forward-looking statements These statements are based on current expectations and assumptions that are subject to risks and uncertainties. Actual results could differ materially from those anticipated due to various factors, including, but not limited to, global political and economic factors, changes in market conditions, and other unforeseen business risks. Please note that these forward-looking statements are made as of today, and we undertake no obligation to update them as a result of new information or future events unless required by law. We strongly advise all participants to refer to our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including our most recent Form 20F and other periodic reports. For a more detailed discussion of these risks and uncertainties, and for a more complete understanding of the risk inherent in our business operations and the potential impact on future performance, we appreciate your continued interest in immunoprecise antibodies. I will now turn the call over to IPA's President and CEO, Dr. Jennifer Bath.

Thank you, Eric, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us today to discuss IPA's third quarter results for our fiscal year 2025. This quarter has been marked by significant positive momentum for immunoprecise antibodies. We've secured a strategic partnership valued at 8 to 10 million US dollars with a leading biotech company, leveraging our proprietary B-cell select technology and AI-driven capabilities to enhance development and optimization processes. Our collaborations with key technology partners like Vulture, AMD, and other leading providers of advanced GPU technology are enhancing our lab-in-a-booth drug discovery capabilities, driving cost-effectiveness and competitiveness, We've officially relocated our corporate headquarters to Austin, Texas, expanding our U.S. footprint in a thriving AI and biotech ecosystem. Additionally, we've entered a strategic partnership with RivalPro to integrate messenger RNA and LNP technologies and pioneered AI-designed GLP-1 therapeutics for diabetes. Our pipeline strategy has been realigned with a new therapeutic development pipeline and we revealed multiple ADC lead candidates with tumor killing capabilities. Furthermore, we've strengthened our financial position with an 8.8 million US dollar equity raise and the full conversion of the Yorkville debenture. Notably, we've made significant progress on the potential divestiture of our EU labs, which will enhance our operational efficiency and focus. The demand for our therapeutic applications is rapidly growing with the percentage of antibody discovery projects aimed at therapeutic ends increasing from 19% to 48% year-over-year at our main wet lab discovery site in Canada. This shift underscores the high revenue potential of our services. Furthermore, BioStrand has achieved a remarkable 131.8% year-over-year revenue increase, with an average growth profit margin of 97% year-to-date. This extraordinary combination of rapid growth and exceptionally high profitability is fundamentally reshaping our financial trajectory. As our AI-driven platforms continue to scale, we anticipate a dramatic enhancement in our path to profitability, positioning us for sustainable long-term growth and significantly increased shareholder value. The implications are significant. Our AI segment is emerging as a powerful engine, driving our transition to a more scalable and lucrative business model, bolstering our competitive edge and underscoring the immense potential for accelerated financial performance in the rapidly evolving AI healthcare landscape. Moving into the more detailed analysis of this quarter's activities, I want to start by first addressing our recent capital raise and financial strategy. This quarter we successfully raised 7 million U.S. dollars through our at-the-market facility, completing a consolidated $8.8 million equity raise. This capital was secured at an extremely low cost, and the execution has been met with positive feedback from the financial community. Investors and analysts have recognized that the way we managed this raise was not only efficient but highly strategic. In total, we closed the quarter with approximately 12.9 million Canadian dollars, extending our runway significantly and offsetting short-term financial risk. To give some operational context, the use of our ATM is first discussed and approved at the board level. Once a decision is made, our entire executive team works closely with our bank, ClearStreet, to ensure a smooth and effective execution within very specific market parameters. This ensures an orderly execution while reducing market disruption at a very minimum. Simultaneously with our capital raise, Yorkville elected to convert the remaining balance of their debentures, importantly, at a significant premium to our share price. This conversion marks a meaningful milestone for IPA as we are now fully debt-free with no overheating convertible obligations. while strengthening our capital structure, enhancing investor clarity, and positioning us to scale growth initiatives from a clean financial foundation. The biotech industry has faced significant capital constraints for the past few years. In 2023 alone, 41 biotech companies filed for bankruptcy, more than double the number for 2022. And this trend has continued in 2024. Even larger organizations such as Charles River Laboratories have recently reported declining revenues due to reduced demand from pharma clients. And companies like GSK have faced skepticism about pipeline execution. We have deliberately positioned IPA to avoid the financial pitfalls that have been fatal for many of our companies in our sector. We have maintained a contingency funding model for years, making difficult but necessary decisions. such as reducing management and staff. This proactive strategy has allowed us to maintain stability during a challenging market environment. And it's also provided us with the necessary resources today to realign the company with greater precision, dreamlining our structure, introducing new leadership, and preparing to roll out a series of strategic initiatives in quarter one that sharpen our commercial focus and accelerate our growth trajectory. We are pleased to announce key leadership updates that strengthen our strategic direction and operational capabilities. We're very happy to welcome Dr. Kamil Asayev to the Board of Directors. With over 30 years of experience in AI, semiconductor technologies, and global R&D operations, Dr. Asayev brings invaluable expertise to our team. His impressive career includes leadership roles at Intel, Dell EMC, Align Technology, and ABRT VC, where he has driven AI-driven innovation and commercialization across multiple industries. Currently, he leads the ABRT AI Labs and Venture Capital Score Project, focusing on bringing cutting-edge AI research and commercialization strategies. His deep understanding of AI and strategic innovation will be instrumental in advancing our AI-driven biologics platform, particularly in enhancing our lens AI strategy. Dr. Asayev's proven track record in developing go-to-market strategies and his experience in bringing emerging technologies to commercial success aligns perfectly with our mission to accelerate innovation in AI-driven biologics. Joseph Scheffler joins IPA as Interim Chief Financial Officer, bringing a wealth of financial leadership experience in both publicly traded and multinational companies. His extensive background in financial reporting, forecasting, and business strategy will be invaluable in guiding IPA's next phase of growth. Most recently, as interim corporate controller at NYDEC, Schaeffler managed consolidated financial reporting for a $400 million global manufacturing firm with 40 subsidiaries worldwide. His expertise in corporate strategy development will enhance IPA's financial operations and strategic decision-making. With an MBA in finance and a bachelor's degree in accounting from Loyola University Chicago, Scheffler combines analytical expertise with strong stakeholder engagement, making him well equipped to strengthen IPA's financial strategy and support the company's continued growth. We are also very excited to announce the addition of Dr. Li Hui as Senior Director, Client Relations to our Boston team. Leigh brings over 15 years of experience in antibody development, including driving discovery services at Abclonal and Biocytogen. Her extensive scientific knowledge and business development experience add new dimensions to our sales team, enhancing sales outreach strategies and bridging with our marketing team. With a strong focus on understanding client needs and delivering state-of-the-art solutions, including Biostrand's Lens AI capabilities, Leigh has already made a significant impact by improving sales outreach effectiveness, collaborating on scientific content creation, and strengthening Biostrand's brand awareness. Her contributions have shortened sales cycle times and increased our capacity to handle inbound requests, amplifying our operational efficiency. We are pleased to report a major commercial milestone this quarter, a strategic partnership with a global multibillion-dollar bioscience company to advance the discovery and development of next-generation cancer therapeutics. The agreement, valued between $8 million and $10 million, represents a transformational validation of IPA's business model and the commercial readiness of our integrated AI and wetland platforms. What sets this deal apart is its structure. This is not a milestone-based or royalty-driven agreement. While certain details cannot be disclosed publicly, for instance, the name of our corporate partner at their request, what we can say is this is an all-cash contract with an initial $8 million purchase order already issued in February, and the program has launched. To put this into perspective, the initial purchase order alone equates to approximately half of our annual revenue. A second purchase order may follow to expand the program, underscoring the depth of our partner's commitment to IPA. This partnership combines IPA's proprietary lens AI platform and our advanced B-cell discovery capabilities with the partner's cutting edge antibody drug conjugate technology. The program targets highly selective precision engineered cancer therapies and is structured to advance efficiently from discovery through preclinical candidate selection over the next 18 months. This deal is a strong market signal, highlighting the growing demand for AI-powered drug discovery and demonstrating IPA's ability to convert platform innovation into significant recurring commercial revenue. In parallel, we've made notable progress on our AI-designed GLP-1 program. Following the successful in silico design of optimized therapeutic candidates using our Lens AI platform, The program has now entered parallel tracks with partners for manufacturing, in-vitro testing, preclinical design, and formulation planning. These activities mark a significant milestone in the advancement of our internal pipeline as we work to translate next-generation AI designs into tangible therapeutic assets. We have added de novo antibody design to our portfolio of offerings. a transformative application of AI that enables antibodies to be designed from scratch. This capability represents a major step forward in precision biologics, particularly in targeting specific epitopes that are difficult to access through traditional methods. Notably, it was only in March of 2024 that the first and last public report on AI-driven de novo antibody design was released in a pre-print publication. led by Nobel Laureate David Baker, a pioneer in the field. Since then, a returning large pharma approached us to initiate a de novo program using this precise targeting method, highlighting both the relevance and the immediate demand for this innovation, which is not currently publicly available. To support the growing complexity of our AI-driven initiatives, particularly the recently commissioned DeNovo antibody design program from a top 20 pharmaceutical company, we are actively expanding our scalable cloud infrastructure in collaboration with Vulture, a premier provider of high-performance GPU clusters. This strategic partnership is crucial for enhancing our computational capability and ensuring seamless execution of sophisticated AI tasks. As of this morning, a detailed case study highlighting the benefits and technical aspects of this collaboration is available on the presentation section of our investor relations website. Providing insights into how our infrastructure advancements are empowering cutting edge projects like de novo antibody discovery and design. This infrastructure enables us to execute compute-intensive processes like structure prediction, generative design, affinity maturation, and large language model-based sequence modeling with greater speed and efficiency. These capabilities directly power initiatives like our GLP-1 program and de novo antibody discovery workflows, where rapid iteration and model refinement are essential. By leveraging Vultr's flexible deployment of NVIDIA H100 and AMD M1300X GPUs, we've achieved up to a 66% cost saving over traditional cloud providers, all while maintaining the compliance, scalability, and security required for modern drug development. These savings may not only increase our already very high profit margin, they can also be passed along to the client, further increasing the competitiveness of our programs. Innovation remains a cornerstone of our growth strategy. I want to provide an update on the AWS marketplace integration, a major step in expanding our access to solutions. In December, 2024, we completed the submission of our technical review to the AWS partner. By early February, 2025, we received positive feedback on the DevOps segment with only minor recommendations that we were already addressing. Next, we await the remaining review results and we'll finalize our invoicing strategy to ensure seamless transactions upon launch. This integration will greatly expand our market reach, making our AI-powered solutions available to a broader customer base. We are pleased to provide an update on our ongoing EU potential divestiture initiative. The process has progressed significantly and according to our projected timeline, with a structured outreach strategy that has generated interest from potential buyers. A total of 77 strategic and financial partners have been engaged, ensuring broad market exposure and fostering meaningful discussions. As a part of this process, we conducted due diligence calls with multiple interested parties and distributed confidential information packages to 30 qualified parties. The response has been highly encouraging, with close to a dozen formal bids received, with a focus on our integrated service offerings and diversified customer base. After significant due diligence evaluations and presentations, we hosted the highest potential buyers on site for private tours and in-depth discussions. We still aim to have a definitive conclusion by the end of the fiscal year, while of course providing any material updates as they emerge. Our rebrand signals a meaningful evolution in IPA's journey. one that unifies our identity and better reflects our integrated capabilities across AI and biologics. By bringing all IPA entities under a single brand, we are streamlining collaboration, enhancing global visibility, and creating a stronger platform for commercial growth. At the center of this transformation is our HIP technology, the foundation of our Lens AI platform, a native AI built specifically for biology, HIP's ability to map and decode complex biological patterns across more than 25 billion biologic relationships unlocks new dimensions of insights and therapeutic discovery. With only a small fraction of druggable proteins currently addressed by existing therapies, the opportunity ahead is vast. Our unified brand embodies decisions where AI meets biologic intelligence to uncover novel targets, accelerate timelines, and power the next wave of innovation in medicine. This is more than a visual refresh. It's a strategic alignment that reflects who we are and where we're headed. We look forward to sharing more as we prepare for a public rollout in the coming months. I'll now turn things over to Joe Scheffler for our financial updates for the quarter.

Thank you, Jennifer. I'll now provide a summary of our financial results for the third quarter of our fiscal year 2025. ending January 31st, 2025. As a reminder, all the numbers referenced are in Canadian dollars, unless otherwise noted. For the third quarter, IPA generated 6.2 million in revenue, compared to 6.2 million in the same quarter last year, a consistent quarter-over-quarter strength across our wet lab operations. On the AI side, BioStrand generated $0.6 million in third quarter revenue, bringing us to a year-to-date revenue in excess of $1 million and a year-to-date gross profit margin of 97%, demonstrating the financial leverage potential of this business segment as we scale. Operating expenses for the third quarter totaled $27.8 million, driven largely by a non-cash impairment charge of 21.2 million related to the impairment of BioStrand's intangible assets as part of our internal strategic review and repositioning. Excluding impairment, operating expenses were 6.6 million Canadian compared to 6.5 million Canadian in Q3 of the prior year. Further breaking this down, R&D expenses remained constant at 1.1 million compared to 1 million in Q3 last year. Sales and marketing expenses increased to 1.3 million compared to 0.6 million in Q3 last year. And G&A expenses decreased to 3.6 million as compared to 4.2 million reported in Q3. of the priority area. We continue to tightly manage costs while aligning spending with our highest growth strategic priorities, particularly lens AI and platform expansion. The net loss for the third quarter was 21.5 million, or 66 cents per share. However, the net loss free impairment net of tax was 2.9 million or 9 cents per share compared to a net loss of 2.6 million or 10 cents per share in Q3 of last year. As of January 31st, 2025, we held 12.9 million in cash compared to 3.5 million at the fiscal year end 2024. This increase was driven by the successful execution of our ATM program, through which we raised $12.2 million, as well as the full conversion of the Yorkville debenture, which is now retired and no longer a source of dilution risk. We are evaluating additional non-dilutive funding mechanisms and strategic asset realignment including a potential divestiture of select European operations to further streamline costs and focus our capital on technology-led growth initiatives. With a leader structure, validated AI economics, and strong partner momentum, we believe we're entering the next quarter in a more focused and financially disciplined position. Thank you. And now we'll turn it back to the operator for the Q&A portion of the call.