Lifecore Biomedical, Inc.

Good day, and welcome to the LifeCorps Biomedical Fourth Quarter 2025 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. Instructions will be given at that time. Please note this call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the call over to Stephanie Diaz, Manager of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Good morning, and thank you for joining us. Today, LifeCore Biomedical will provide its earnings results for the fourth quarter and transition period ended December 31st, 2025 and a corporate update. As the company has recently changed its fiscal year end to align with the calendar year, we will be comparing our 2025 results to the closest comparable period in the prior year. Today, we will be comparing our fourth quarter ended December 31st, 2025 with the previously reported quarter ended November 24th, 2024. We will be comparing our seven-month transition period ended December 31st, 2025, with the unaudited seven-month period ended December 31st, 2024. Hosting the call today from LifeCorps are Paul Josephs, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Ryan Lake, Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin, we'd like to remind everyone that today's conference call will contain forward-looking statements. It is important to note that the forward-looking statements made during this call reflect management's judgment and analysis only as of today, March 16, 2026, and the company's actual results could differ materially from those projected in such forward-looking statements. For a more thorough discussion of the risks and uncertainties associated with any forward-looking statements, please see the disclaimer regarding forward-looking statements that is included in our earnings press release which was furnished to the Securities and Exchange Commission this morning on Form 8K and is available on our corporate website at lifecore.com, as well as our other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including but not limited to the company's Form 10KT for the transition period ended December 31st, 2025, which was filed with the SEC this morning and is also available on our website. In addition, our earnings press release includes a discussion of And during this call, we will reference certain non-GAAP financial information. You can find relevant non-GAAP reconciliations in our earnings press release. With that, I'd like to turn the call over to Paul Josephs, President and Chief Executive Officer.

Thank you, Stephanie. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. 2025 was a highly productive year for LifeCorps Biomedical, during which we strengthened our pipeline capabilities leadership, and our standing as a differentiated CDMO. During the year, we continued to successfully execute against our strategy to position LifeCorps for sustained growth through which we aim to achieve a 12% revenue CAGR and improved EBITDA margins to above 25% in the midterm. Our many achievements during the year included maximizing our existing commercial business, advancing our development portfolio towards commercialization, adding multiple new programs to our pipeline through our revamped business development strategy, and implementing key initiatives throughout the organization that have improved our margins and will continue to drive improvement towards our EBITDA goal. Our financial performance was also strong during the transition period. During the fourth quarter of 2025, we recorded revenues of $35.7 million, a 10% increase as compared to the most comparable prior year quarter. And for the approximately seven-month transition period from May 26, 2025 through December 31, 2025, we recorded revenues of $75.5 million, an increase of 20% compared to the prior year comparable period. Gross margin and adjusted EBITDA also improved during the 2025 fourth quarter and transition period as compared to the prior year comparable periods in 2024, reflecting the growth in our fermentation business as well as the benefit of the many efficiencies incorporated throughout our organization in 2025. Ryan will elaborate on these financial results as well as guidance for 2026 following my overview of our 2025 achievements, beginning with the successful expansion of our commercial business. As noted previously, our company is preparing to support a significant increase in aseptic fill finish demand from our largest customer that is expected to begin in 2027. In 2025, LifeCorps achieved several milestones in support of this anticipated event. In particular, the company successfully qualified our five-head isolator filler to supply the European and Asian markets for this customer. Expansion into these markets is expected to help drive a more than doubling of this customer's aseptic fill finish demand, and we are pleased to have achieved this key milestone. Another milestone supporting this expansion is the successful qualification of our hyaluronic acid for supply to the Japanese market. Meeting Japan's strict HA specification requirements is difficult to achieve, and we believe our success in meeting this challenge speaks to our expertise and capabilities. With these hurdles achieved, we believe that we are well positioned to support this critical expansion and financial inflection point. We continue to work closely with this important customer as we approach this inflection point, and we are grateful for their continued trust that they have placed in LifeCorps. The impact of our revamped business development strategy was demonstrated as we recently added several new high value programs to our late stage pipeline, including two commercial site transfers in 2025. Unlike development programs, commercial site transfers have existing demands and are substantially de-risked as they do not require additional clinical trials and only require qualification at LifeCorps. Based on our quality track record and expertise in producing similar products, we believe that both products will be successfully transferred to LifeCorps and generate commercial revenue at our site in 24 to 30 months. These two products represent important additions to our late stage pipeline, strengthening a growing portfolio of programs that we are actively advancing towards commercialization. As we have previously disclosed, the company has a promising late stage pipeline. In prior quarters, we have stated that we expect launch dates for these programs to take place between 2026 and 2029. And while the company has made substantial progress with many of these programs in 2025, we are adjusting the expected launch timeline to between 2027 and 2030. The shifting of these timelines is not due in any way to LifeCore's performance, capabilities, or capacity. Rather, they are due to matters outside of LifeCore's control, including typical changes in customers' development plan strategies, and the impact of financing challenges in 2025 that two of our customers experienced. We remain optimistic that the 10 late stage programs in our 30 plus program development pipeline will continue to advance and have the potential to reach commercialization before or during 2030. And while we cannot provide assurances that all programs will achieve regulatory approval, we believe that even the commercial success at a modest conversion rate of 50% of these programs could drive a significant increase in revenue in the years ahead. LifeCorps continued to make strong progress in 2025, successfully advancing key initiatives despite external headwinds. Notable advancements of our development pipeline during 2025 include the installation and operational qualification of an automated manufacturing equipment to accommodate the scale-up and commercialization of a customer program. This particular customer is a large pharma company, and we are currently preparing to produce validation batches for this project in 2026. We expect this program to be a meaningful growth driver upon regulatory approval, having the potential to contribute more than half of the commercial revenue we anticipate for our late-stage pipeline by 2030. Several other programs met key advancement milestones in 2025, paving the way for continued progress in 2026. These include the completion of development work in advance of the production of validation badges for another late-stage customer, the successful completion of two Phase III clinical badges for a separate late-stage program, And finally, the onboarding of a late-stage transfer work for the company's GLP-1 customer. We believe that we are on track to achieve our financial goals and reiterate our expectation that a significant number of programs in our late-stage pipeline will launch within the midterm window, specifically between 2028 and 2029. The advancement of our development pipeline remains central to our mid- and long-term growth strategy. And in 2025, we successfully delivered multiple key customer milestones that meaningfully advanced these programs towards commercialization. The third pillar of our growth strategy is the addition of new programs to our pipeline. In 2025, the company revamped its business development strategy and team in an effort to expand our service market and increase the number of high-quality customer wins. In 2025, LifeCorps expanded the strategy from a primary focus on supporting complex, highly viscous formulations towards a strategy of promoting our strong technical capabilities and our ability to support products across multiple modalities. This effort is being executed and led by a new team of seasoned industry professionals, and the successes achieved in our first year were impressive. Employing an aggressive hunting model, the momentum achieved by this team over the last year has resulted in five new programs in the transition period, including the aforementioned two commercial site transfers and a late-stage GLP-1 program. Our business development pipeline has not only grown in its number, but in the quality of new business wins has improved significantly. Given the value and opportunity presented by commercial site transfers and the growing trend of regionalized manufacturing in the United States, our team is strategically and aggressively pursuing additional commercial site transfer programs, and we are optimistic regarding the potential to add more in 2026. We believe other factors may positively impact our ability to further grow our pipeline and customer base in the midterm. Among these, We believe we will continue to benefit from the fact that approximately 50% of the drug development pipeline in the United States is injectables, a trend that is expected to grow in the coming years. We believe that LifeCorps' exceptional track record in compliance and quality distinguishes us and so gives further support for our business development efforts with existing and new customers. In early 2025, the company successfully completed an unannounced FDA inspection. During the transition period, we also conducted 10 customer audits and one regulatory inspection. All were positive, reinforcing our confidence in the organization's ability to support the high-quality demands of our customers. Given the strength of our revamped business development organization, the successes achieved in 2025 and the quality standards that LifeCorps employs throughout the organization, I am highly optimistic for continued growth in the future. In addition to supporting revenue growth, we continue to improve our adjusted EBITDA margins through the implementation of cost improvement initiatives throughout the organization. We believe that targeted cost control and optimized procurement strategy provide other opportunities to improve EBITDA margins in the near term. A key tool in this effort will be our Enterprise Resource Planning System, or ERP, for which substantial preparatory work was completed in 2025, enabling a successful launch in January 2026. LifeCorps expects this system to strengthen inventory control, support improved financial management, and help reduce costs in 2026 and as the company grows. Another key factor that we believe will drive LifeCorp's growth in the midterm is the company's current and anticipated capacity utilization. As we look forward, our capacity in aseptic fill finish is 45 million units. During the last year, we utilized approximately 20% of our available capacity. As we scale our production towards our goals in 2029, we expect our utilization to reach an estimated 60% of our current installed production capacity. Our long-term plan is to fill the remaining unused capacity, which we expect will drive revenues to over $300 million and further improve EBITDA margins. Importantly, reaching this long-term capacity utilization plan is tied to commercializing wins that already exist in our development pipeline, the expansion of our existing customer relationships, and adding new programs to our pipeline. In conclusion, 2025 was a strong year for LifeCorps. We executed effectively across each pillar of our growth strategy. This manifested in strong revenues and improved EBITDA margins for the period. At the same time, our organization today is leaner, more efficient, and more productive than at any time in the recent past. Our quality track record remains strong, and our business development team is aggressively pursuing and winning the projects that we expect to fuel our future growth. I'm very pleased with our progress in 2025, and I believe it has created a strong foundation for us to achieve both our mid and long-term goals. That concludes my update. I will now turn the call over to Ryan Lake to provide an overview of our financial results for the fourth quarter and the seven-month transition period ended December 31, 2025, and to provide calendar year 2026 guidance. Ryan?