ImmunoPrecise Antibodies Ltd.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for joining us today for Immunoprecise Antibodies fourth quarter and fifth school year and 2025 earnings call. We appreciate your time and interest in IPA. Today's call will be led by our CEO, Dr. Jennifer Bass, and interim CFO, Joe Scheffler. They will provide a review of our financial performance, strategic initiatives, and key operational highlights for the fourth quarter. Please note that a copy of today's presentation, along with our financial statements, will be available on our company 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 as for joining. 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, SEC, 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 risks inherent in our business operations and the potential impact of our 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 Bass.

Thank you, Karen, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us. to discuss today's IPAs fourth quarter and full year fiscal results for 2025. Fiscal year 2025 was a standout year for immunoprecise antibodies capped with record-setting fourth quarters. With $7 million in revenue, our fourth quarter delivered the highest quarterly revenue in our company's history. We also achieved a growth margin of 64% in the fourth quarter, up from 48% in the fourth quarter of fiscal year 24. This improvement reflects the impact of our continued focus on operational efficiency and disciplined execution. For the full fiscal year ending April 30th, 2025, we expanded our growth margins by 600 basis points from 49% to 55%. A key driver of this improvement was the exceptional growth of our BioStrand segment, which grew more than 180% year-over-year and delivered growth margins approaching 90%. As BioStrand continues this high growth path, we expect it to remain a strong contributor to the top-line performance and to support continued margin expansion going forward. Another key highlight in the fourth quarter was our record-adjusted EBITDA performance. We narrowed the loss to just $316,000, a significant improvement compared to the loss of $1.7 million in the same quarter last year. This marks meaningful progress and highlights the impact of our focus on operational efficiency and disciplined execution. In parallel and of note, our Canadian business showed strong growth in the fourth quarter. Sales orders reached $4.3 million this quarter, more than double historical quarters. Year-over-year sales in Canada increased by 47%, with quarterly orders coming in up 83%. Orders from new clients rose 93% year-over-year and 80% quarter-over-quarter. As we noted on our last earnings call, we've been actively moving forward with the divestiture of our Dutch subsidiary. I'm pleased to share that we are now in the final stages of that process with due diligence progressing with a single focused buyer. While the timeline has extended slightly beyond our original expectations, the transaction remains on track and we anticipate near-term completion. Once finalized, we expect this divestiture to sharpen our focus, streamline operations, and generate additional cash to further strengthen our balance sheet and support our strategic priorities. Shortly after the completion of the divestiture, we are rebranding to reinforce our position as a bio-native AI platform that integrates AI, connected data and advanced lab research. This signals our shift from a service-oriented model to a customizable, platform-driven business aligned with an industry transformation where AI and data integration are reshaping how drug discovery is done. We are positioned to deliver earlier insights, stronger candidate selection, and faster decision-making at scale. At the center is our Lens AI platform, powered by our patented HIFT technology. which transforms fragmented biological information into a computable model for precision discovery and development. This approach strengthens our value to partners, drives growth, and enhance our competitive advantage across the full biologic continuum. Now we will walk through some of our key milestones from the past several months. In February, we announced a strategic collaboration with RiboPro. to combine their messenger RNA antigen expression technology with our AI and wet lab antibody discovery platform, aimed at accelerating next-generation therapeutic development offerings. In March, we strengthened our AI infrastructure through strategic collaboration with Vulture and deploying AMD's MI300x GPUs to support the growing demands of our discovery platform. This upgrade has significantly increased our processing speed, improved scalability, and reduced compute costs by up to 66%, all of which contribute to stronger operational efficiency and improved margin potential as we grow. Also in March, we entered into a strategic partnership with a publicly traded, multi-billion dollar technology company focused on antibody drug conjugates and bispecific antibodies in oncology. This collaboration combines our B-cell select platform and AI discovery capabilities with their research infrastructure. The agreement has an initial value of $8 million, with the potential to reach $10 million over an 18- to 24-month term. In April, the FDA announced plans to phase out animal testing for monoclonal antibodies, a move that aligns with Lens AI's in silico capabilities to predict toxicity, immune response, and efficacy, reducing reliance on animal models. Also in April, we launched our presence in Cambridge, Massachusetts, offering fee-for-service biologic services, extending our geographic reach and service footprint in a core U.S. biotechnology hub. In May, we validated Lens AI's ability to map antibody-antigen interactions with accuracy comparable to X-ray crystallography, which is the industry gold standard, but in hours instead of weeks. This breakthrough significantly accelerates early discovery and reduces the need for complex, time-consuming lab work. In June, we announced a major advance in our dengue vaccine program. Using our HIFT-powered Lens AI platform, we identified a highly conserved epitope shared across all four dengue serotypes, a key step toward a universal vaccine. We also released in silico data showing the structural stability of the target and its potential to trigger a safe, balanced immune response, supporting its move toward translational studies. In the same month, we shared promising results from our AI-designed GLP-1 peptides, which matched or exceeded semaglutide in independent receptor activation assays. This milestone shows the versatility of our platform beyond vaccines, with clear applications across metabolic disease, infectious disease, and oncology. In July, we released a validation case study showing that Lens AI's immunogenicity screening can predict anti-drug antibody risks with strong correlation to real-world results. In direct comparison, it outperformed a leading industry benchmark. This supports its value in helping drug developers identify and de-risk problem candidates earlier in the discovery process. Also in July, we regained compliance with NASDAQ's minimum bid price requirement following 10 consecutive days of trading above the $1 threshold. While procedural, this milestone reflects growing market confidence in the evolution of our platform-driven, bio-native AI approach. On the leadership front, earlier this month, we welcomed John Lieber to our board. John brings over 30 years as a senior executive in biotechnology and life sciences, with deep experience in capital markets, corporate strategy, and governance at NASDAQ-listed companies, critical assets as we drive commercialization and scale platform adoption. We also expanded our advisory board with the appointment of Jeff Freed, an expert in healthcare data architecture and AI innovation. He's played a pivotal role in integrating vector search capabilities into Lens AI's platform via our InterSystems partnership. further enabling large-scale computation-driven discovery workflows. I'll now turn things over to Mr. Joe Scheffler for our financial updates.

Thank you, Jennifer. Please note that all numbers referenced are in Canadian dollars. As Jennifer mentioned earlier, BioStrand is currently delivering triple-digit revenue growth with margin near 90%, underscoring the strong performance and long-term value of this asset. Total revenue for the fourth quarter was $7 million, representing our highest quarterly revenues in the company's history. Fourth quarter revenue increased 8.1% over the year-ago quarter and 13.5% for the prior quarter. This strong revenue growth was driven by increasing sales to our service platforms, in particular, our Revit B-cell platform in Canada. Gross profit in the fourth quarter was $4.5 million, also at the highest level in the company's history. This represented a gross margin of 64%, up from 48% in the year-ago quarter, and 54% in the prior quarter. Gross margins in the fiscal year 2025 were 55%, up from 49% in fiscal year 2024. The significant increase in our gross margins over the past year was due in part to increasing sales from our BioStrand division, which has margins approaching 90%, much higher than our core wet lab business. We expect our gross margins to trend higher over time as BioStrand continues its growth trajectory and represents a larger portion of our revenues. With our strong fourth quarter revenues, our fiscal year 2025 revenues amounted to $24.5 million, a slight increase over our fiscal year 2024 revenues. R&D expenses in Q4 were $1.1 million, down 14% in the fourth quarter of last year. Sales and marketing expenses were $1 million in Q4, up from $900,000 in the year-ago quarter. General and administrative expenses in the fourth quarter were $3.7 million, down 10% from the fourth quarter of last year. In total, operating expenses excluding amortization and one-time charges declined to $5.8 million down 7% from the year-ago quarter and down 2% from the prior quarter. This year-over-year decline in operating expenses was driven primarily by lower G&A and lower R&D, while the sequential decline was driven by lower sales and marketing. Our decreasing operating expense is a result of our targeted focus on improving efficiency within the company. Adjusted EBITDA for the fourth quarter was a loss of 316,000, a significant improvement from a loss of 1.7 million in the year-ago quarter and a loss of 1.7 million in the prior quarter. As a percentage of revenues, adjusted EBITDA was a negative 5% in the fourth quarter, a big improvement. over the negative 24% in the year-ago quarter and the negative 25% in the prior quarter. Again, these improvements are the result of reducing our expenses as well as improved gross margins. As of April 30th, 2025, we held $10.8 million in cash compared to $3.5 million at fiscal year end of 2024. With our strong CAAS position, validated AI economics, and strong partner momentum, we believe we are entering a new fiscal year in a financially disciplined position to support our growth. Thank you. And now we'll turn it back to the operator for the Q&A portion of our call.

We will now go to the question and answer session. we would like to ask if there are some questions from our... Okay, so our question comes from Swayampakula Ramakant. Your line is open.

Thank you. Good morning, Jennifer and Frederick. A couple of questions from me. You know, actually, congratulations on generating, you know, high-efficiency GLP-1 peptides that you were talking about. in your opening remarks. So in terms of clinical development, what should we expect for them? And also, you know, how do you plan to monetize this asset?

Hi, RK. This is Jennifer. Thanks for joining us. And thanks for your question. I appreciate that. So first of all, in terms of development, we have two partners that we're working with at the moment. One of them very specifically on the actual drug product manufacturing as well as formulation. And then an additional partner who actually brings about novel ways to administer the drug product in a unique route of administration. And that partner is actually working with us not only on dosing escalation analyses and formulation, but also has done the preclinical design and validation in terms of how we will execute on preclinical IND enabling data to support translational work and clinical design. We ourselves actually do not intend to take this product into the clinic. We do have an interested party who contacted us on the day of the very first press release with GLP that we are focused on demonstrating some of these initial formulation studies and dose-dependent responses to where our hope and anticipation is that we will be bringing along a financial sponsor that will then sponsor this in the clinical setting.

Okay, perfect. Then regarding the biotech partner that you're working with on the oncology assets, so for you to start recognizing, you know, some of the initial payments of the $8 million, what sort of milestones do you need to achieve um and if you if you're unable to spell out the milestones at least what's the kind of cadence that we should expect for that eight million dollars can you see something in the fiscal year 26 or you know is it like one big lump payment that you will get at the end of whatever you're supposed to be doing um in terms of the problem yeah that's a good question

Yeah, that's a good question. Arcane. I can appreciate that from your analyst perspective too, looking to see, you know, when some of these financial components will start to hit the books. Um, so it's definitely not all in one lump sum actually. So we have just, we are closing out on Thursday of this week, of course, our first quarter, we anticipate a significant amount of this program to actually be visible in our second quarter. So we're launching quite a number of programs simultaneously for this particular partner that will then be moving through to a more advanced stage where we draw down and recognize that revenue in Q2. So that's the time when I would expect you'll start seeing the impact from that particular partner is this coming quarter. And then in terms of milestones, We really don't have like, I mean, we have the usual milestones we have when we build a therapeutic for anyone, but we don't have any, you know, milestones that are deal breakers here or anything unusual. So we move through our process as we go. We always are very transparent in sharing that data with any given client to demonstrate the quality of the work and the product as it moves through the process. And technically, every program we have has go-no-go aspects, but we have approaching 100% success rate on these platforms. So it's pretty rare that something doesn't continue to move through. So this program is similar in the sense that we're using highly validated platforms and we don't have any particular set places where we have a unique milestone that could change. end up triggering, you know, the halt or the completion of the program early.

Okay. And then you're, you know, we are all aware of the FDA's guidance of trying to move to AI-based systems for preclinical drug development. So since that announcement had come out from the regulatory agency, have you know, what sort of traffic have you seen, you know, inbound, you know, for your services? And, you know, is there any way we can gauge as to, you know, how much the Lens AI platform will start getting used, you know, in 26, your fiscal year 26? Because, you know, you said in the PR that only 5% of your annual revenues at this point is coming from the AI side of business. So I'm just trying to see how quickly can that grow and what magnitude could it grow to?

Yeah, that's a great question as well. So I think we've got a lot of eyes on the direction that people with kind of earlier stage preclinical work are going in terms of FDA guidance and applications. We have, you know, through some of our peer groups, recognized that there has been at least a couple of early stage purely in silico work that has supported some unique cases already in their approval for clinical use from the FDA. But overall, that's probably a few years out before we get a firm transition in that space. So we've been curious as well as to how this type of work will transition to what we're doing at BioStrand. So we've definitely had an increase on inquiries in the particular areas that are very directly related to IND applications when it comes to clinical safety, patient safety, and uniqueness of patients being enrolled in studies. But the area where we have seen really the most dramatic and material change um is kind of an interesting one because it's um it corresponds as well to some of the more recent platforms that we've been fairly vocal about so this includes our immunogenicity platform and then which includes of course the analysis of these ada responses and epitope mapping as well and It's interesting because it's difficult for us to know how much of that, even in communication with our clients, is due to the regulatory changes and people's ability to very rapidly and less expensively and very accurately bolster the information that is going into their IND applications and dossiers, whereas previously those were kind of rate limiting and time consuming steps. But interestingly enough, obviously, these do also provide significant reassurances and support sometimes with aspects of an IND application that people did not previously bother to do because of the time and the expense, where now they're able to get more data and create a more data-rich dossier for the application to support IND work. So it does correspond as well with not only when we were able to go out and showcase these capabilities, but when we were able to take them publicly into the conference realm and share them with people in the industry, we saw a very, very rapid uptick of people coming in to utilize things like epitope mapping from BioStrand. So in response to your question, the inbound traffic has been quite significant. It's not traffic coming in to replace IND applications, but instead to bolster them with data that they might not otherwise have had that might have been too cumbersome or time consuming for them to retrieve. And going forward for the second part of your question, we definitely expect that trend to continue, but there are other aspects of BioStrand that we also believe will continue to grow. So kind of across the board in these core capabilities. you know, this overall uptick that we've been seeing, we do expect that to continue into the next fiscal year, only to be bolstered and supported by these newer applications that are gaining traction as well.

Thank you for that. One last question from me. Sure. Just would like to understand if the divestment of the European facilities, you know, how far into it are you at this point? And also regarding your base business, you know, there are some transfers happening between Europe and the Canadian facility. Is that all done? And then is the Canadian facility, you know, able to have enough resources, you know, for the work that you do?

Yeah. Great question. So how far along are we? We are Extremely far along in the process. So I mentioned we do have one kind of dedicated buyer. We're really in the last stages of agreement in the sale and purchase agreement. So we're extremely far along in this process and really down to the finer details of what needs to happen upon closing and post-closing for the full independence of both of these locations for buyer and seller. With regard to Canada, so this is actually quite interesting. You can see the rapid growth we've had in Canada over the last quarter or two. It really is faster growth than we've ever seen in any of our sites ever in the history of IPA. They are able to take all the work that is coming in, even though they are quite full, and in part, they're able to were able to rely on Canada to continue to take this work because of the expansion, you know, that we've been doing in Canada. That expansion continues through fiscal year 26. And we had a very, very small number of programs that were really going between the location in Canada and in Europe. And so we do not expect any sort of impact to Canada in a detrimental way there. but instead have found that we have been able to ensure that we can continue to take on all programs holistically from beginning to end, whether it's diagnostic or therapeutic in nature. And in addition to that, to also lean into the integration we've done for the NCILICO work into the Canadian side. I think we only mentioned on this briefly previously, but about a year ago, we did begin the integration of Lens AI applications into the Canadian site in a selected manner, which could really enhance and bolster the data packages coming out from Canada. And we completed the transfer of those applications in whole. So they're actually being added to quotes and are a designated application. official part of all of our therapeutic programs. That actually happened last March. So we're also just beginning to see the impact of that, which serves obviously not only to enhance the programs that we're offering, but to also ensure that every one of our clients is having the benefits of those in silico applications, as well as the exposure to what those in silico applications can do for their work. So in short, Base business will continue to go strong with Canada. Canada and BioStrand are in a really good position as we look at their pipelines moving forward. Again, stronger than we have ever seen in this company in terms of the growth from quarter to quarter and year over year and the number of new clients flocking very specifically to that location. And in the divestiture, we're looking to see that quite rapidly. quite rapidly here as we just go through the final details in the sale purchase agreement over the next week or so.

Perfect. Thank you very much, Jennifer, for taking all my questions.

Yes, of course. Thank you, RK.

Thank you for your insightful questions. I will now hand the call over to Dr. Jennifer Bass, our CEO, to conclude the call.

Thank you, Karen. To close, fiscal year 2025 definitely marked a clear turning point for IPA. We've delivered strong revenue, we've expanded growth margins by 600 base points year over year, and we did significantly improve fourth quarter adjusted EBITDA, narrowing the Q4 loss by over 80% compared to the same period last year. These results reflect the tangible impact on our focused strategy, operational efficiencies, and growing commercial traction across high value platforms. Our biostrand segment continues to grow rapidly, contributing strong margins and expanding pipeline opportunities. The nearing completion of our Dutch divestiture and planned rebrand will allow us to further concentrate resources where we see the greatest return potential. With a sharpened focus, strengthened leadership, and increasing momentum behind our platform-driven model, we believe IPA is well-positioned to drive long-term value creation. We remain committed to building a scalable, capital-efficient business that delivers innovation, margin leverage, and sustained shareholder growth. Thank you for your continued trust and your investment in IPA.