Ligand Pharmaceuticals Incorporated

Good afternoon. My name is Dennis, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Ligon Pharmaceuticals third quarter 2022 earnings conference call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star, then the number one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, press star one again. I would now like to turn the conference over to Simon Latimer, head of investor relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Welcome to Ligon's third quarter of 2022 financial results and business update conference call. Speaking today for Ligon will be John Higgins, CEO, Matt Kornberg, president and COO, and Tavo Espinoza, CFO. We'll use non-GAAP financial measures and some of our statements will be forward-looking, including those related to our financial condition, results of operations, financial guidance, and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Additional information concerning risk factors and other matters concerning LIGIN can be found in our earnings press release and our periodic filings with the FCC. We undertake no obligation to revise or update any statements to reflect events or circumstances after the date of this conference call. A reconciliation between the non-GAAP financial measures we discuss and the closest GAAP financial measure can be found in our earnings release issued earlier today. I'd now like to turn the call over to John Higgins.

Simon, thank you. Good afternoon. Thank you for joining Ligand's third quarter 2022 financial results conference call. I'll open the call with some remarks about our recent major strategic and financial transaction. We closed the OmniApp spin-out on November 1st, just one week ago today. In the parlance of radio, you are tuning into the same station. This is Ligand Pharmaceuticals, and our ticker symbol is still LGND. But things have changed. Compared with a week ago, Ligand is a streamlined company with a different stock price and a $1 billion valuation. We have about half the number of employees as before and a reconstituted management team and board. However, our core business model is unchanged. We are profitable and cash flow positive, and our outlook is very promising. Our business is to provide drug research tools, and our financial growth is primarily fueled by sharing in product revenue in the form of royalties on pharmaceutical products. Global sales of our major royalty-bearing assets are growing, and we have an economic interest in a large portfolio of late-stage assets that are on the cusp of potential major data readouts or regulatory determinations. The potential and promise for what LIGAN has to offer investors is as compelling as ever. As for OmniAb, as of last month, this was our wholly owned antibody drug discovery business unit. Now it is operating as a completely separate public company. I'm very proud of what we achieved at Ligand over the past seven years to build the OmniAb business, and we are pleased to see the spin-out completed. The spin-out successfully achieved the objectives that we have talked about for the past 12 months, and the company is very well positioned with its partners to be a major industry player for years to come. The spin-out efficiently separated the R&D business into a fully functioning, well-capitalized company. The company post-spend cash position is about $95 million, with expectations for $35 million of additional capital from partner milestone payments due upon the anticipated launch of TeclistaMap in the coming months. Annual revenue is projected to grow based on its existing portfolio and recently approved royalty-backed programs. OmniApp has a major new strategic investor with Avista Healthcare, owning about 15% of the company. And importantly, OmniApp is reconfigured with a new board of directors and management team with deep domain expertise and a dedicated focus on driving the best in antibody drug discovery. A quick comment on an administrative matter. The spin-out resulted in Ligand stock being split. All Ligand shareholders at the time of the split retained the exact same number of shares in Ligand, but Ligand investors at the time of the spin-out also received shares in the new company called Omnia. Specifically, for every one share of Ligand, shareholders received about 4.9 shares of Omnia. This might seem very basic, but it is worth pointing out to all shareholders, especially smaller shareholders, to look at your brokerage statement as you now have shares in a whole new company to go along with your Ligand shares. In this moment of transition, I want to express thanks to my former colleagues, in particular Matt Foer and Charles Berkman, for the extraordinary contributions they made to Ligand over the past decade and longer, helping build Ligand along the way into the fine company it is today. They are the core of the new executive leadership team at OmniApp, and I wish them all continued success running that company. Of course, I also want to say it is a pleasure to be working with the new leadership team here at Ligand. Matt Kornberg, who you all know, has stepped up to serve as president and COO. Tavo Espinoza has been with us for over six years and has assumed the role of CFO. And Andrew Reardon has recently joined our team as our new chief legal officer. I'm delighted to be working with this tremendous group of seasoned professionals, and I know each of them shares my enthusiasm for what the future holds for Ligand. Now, with this transition, we are eager to get out to meet with shareholders in person to update them on the newly reconfigured business. In addition to attending investor conferences over the next two weeks, we will be hosting an analyst and investor event in New York City in the middle of December. Currently, we are targeting December 13th, and the specific information for that event will be announced within the next two weeks. We encourage investors to consider joining us in person, or if that is not possible, to log in virtually. With that, I will now turn the call over to Tavo for a review of our financial performance.