OmniAb, Inc.

is being recorded. I would now like to turn the call over to Kurt Gustafson, Omniab Inc. Chief Financial Officer. You may begin. Thank you.

Thank you, Operator, and good afternoon, everyone. This is Kurt Gustafson, Omniab's Chief Financial Officer, and thank you all for joining our first quarter 2024 Financial Results Conference call. There are slides to accompany today's remarks, and they're available in the Investors section of our website at Omniab.com. Before we begin, I'd like to remind listeners that comments made during this call will include forward-looking statements within the meaning of the federal securities laws. These forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to be materially different from any anticipated results. These forward-looking statements are qualified by the cautionary statements contained in today's press release and our SEC filings. Importantly, this conference call contains time sensitive information that is accurate only as of the date of this live broadcast today, May 9, 2024. Except as required by law, OmniAB undertakes no obligations to revise or update any forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances after the date of this call. Joining me on the call today is Matt Foer, OmniAB's president and CEO. During today's call, Matt and I will provide highlights on the company's operations, partner and technology updates, and our recent financial results. And at the conclusion of our prepared remarks, we'll open the call to questions. With that, I'll turn the call over to Matt.

Thanks, Kurt. Good afternoon, everyone, and thanks for joining us today on our first quarter call. With consecutive quarters showing growth across some key business metrics, I'm proud of OmniApp's progress over the last 18 months, which put us on track for a successful quarter and positions our business and our pipeline very well for a strong year here in 2024. Our performance during the first three months of the year reflect both the continued diversification of our partnership base and the expansion of our global presence. OmniApp's team remains highly focused on our strategic plans. We're creating greater visibility for our validated technologies and we're committed to driving innovation to create long-term value for our stakeholders. We're excited about the opportunities that lie ahead and we're confident in our prospects for technology and business growth and progression in the coming years. I'll quickly review our business metrics starting here on slide number five. We ended Q1 2024 with 80 active partners. Three new platform license agreements were signed during the quarter. including new agreements with a very well-funded Boston-based venture-backed startup, with Immunobiochem Corporation, and with the University of Georgia. We're committed to continued expansion of our diverse partnership base. And as you can see here, we've nearly doubled our number of active partners net of attrition since 2018. Our technology platform continues to become more visible and continues to expand. And with our recent technology launches and plans for continued innovation, we believe we're well positioned to potentially accelerate this growth of partners. We also saw some growth in active programs this quarter, net of attrition, with the number of active programs increasing to 327, as we show here on slide number six. We experienced a slightly higher level of program attrition in Q1 as compared to recent quarters, all of which was in the discovery stage with one exception that I'll discuss in a moment. The discovery stage attrition in Q1 was mostly attributed to a pipeline realignment by a single Asia-based partner. And given the net increase in programs in the quarter, that was obviously positively counterbalanced by new program starts from other partners based here in the U.S. and in Europe. We saw some really nice active program progression in the quarter as three programs successfully transitioned from discovery to preclinical stage. And I'll mention again that we define preclinical stage programs as ones that are confirmed to be in pre-IND studies by our partners with the intention of entering human trials. And at the end of Q1, we had a record 18 programs in preclinical. And that's the most that we've ever had at that stage. And as shown here on slide six, we also saw one program transition from the phase one to the phase two category per disclosures by our partner. Moving now to slide number seven, as we mentioned frequently, attrition is a natural part of our business and of drug discovery and development generally. In 2023, we didn't have any attrition in our clinical stage programs. But in Q1, we saw the discontinuation of one program at Roche, and that is reflected here on this slide. Roche discontinued a phase one program as part of what they've termed a broader internal portfolio shaping initiative there that they've discussed publicly in some level of detail. In addition, they disclosed that the decision wasn't related to safety, to efficacy, or quality of the program. And I note that the program is one that was subject to a legacy fully paid license, so this has no impact at all on future milestones or royalties that are due to OmniAB. Based on discussions with our partners, we continue to expect four to six new entries into clinical development for novel OmniAB-derived antibody-based programs this year. Here on slide number eight, I'll touch on select partner updates and some upcoming catalysts for this year. Immunovant reported that global phase three clinical trials for bataclomab in myasthenia gravis and thyroid eye disease are progressing and that they remain on track for top line data readout in the second half of 2024 for myasthenia gravis and in the first half of 2025 for thyroid eye disease. They also expect initial period one data from the phase two B clinical trial of bataclomab in chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy, or CIDP, in the second or third quarter of this year. Hanol Biopharma, in collaboration with Immunovant, is already running a phase three study for Bataclomab in generalized myasthenia gravis in Japan, and reported that a clinical trial notification was approved to initiate a phase three study in thyroid eye disease in Japan. Moving to IMVT-1402, Immunoband announced plans to initiate four to five potentially registrational programs for IMVT-1402 over their next fiscal year, and also plans on initiating trials in 10 indications for IMVT-1402 over their next two fiscal years. At the recent AACR conference, Merck presented preclinical data for M9140, which is a novel ADC with a topoisomerase 1 inhibitor payload targeting CCAM5 expressing tumors. M91-40 demonstrated high potency, strong anti-tumor activity, and bystander effect in vitro and in mouse models. A first in human phase one study to evaluate the safety, tolerability, PK, and preliminary clinical efficacy is in patients with advanced solid tumors is now ongoing. And lastly, GenMab disclosed that they expect to announce acosunlumab phase two data in second line non-small cell lung cancer in the first half of the year, and data are now expected at ASCO. And we, like many others who are focused on the oncology space, are really looking forward to that update and data. GENMAB has also already disclosed plans to initiate a global phase three study of acosunlumab in second line non-small cell lung cancer later this year. The ASCO clinical meeting starts at the end of the month and will run through June the 4th. Here on slide number nine, you can see some of the presentations that are planned by our partners relating to new clinical data for OmniAB-derived programs. I know, too, that this slide does not include all of the presentations by our partners at ASCO, but we've listed the ones that we feel are the most worth highlighting for you. And on my last slide here, slide number 10, I'd like to highlight a few upcoming scientific presentations by our team. We're committed to creating greater visibility for our differentiated technology platform and highlighting innovations and new workflow enhancements that benefit our business and create value for stakeholders. With an expanded business development presence, we're actively involved in more scientific conferences now than ever before. Next week, we'll be at the PEGS Protein and Antibody Engineering Summit in Boston, where Bob Chen will present new data on methods to facilitate rapid and efficient discovery of bispecific antibodies, leveraging the biological intelligence of our engineered transgenic animals, the deep screening capabilities of our exploration platform, and the machine learning and AI in our OmniDeep offering. And you also see here other conferences and presentations that we have coming up in the next eight weeks or so at the Antibody Engineering and Therapeutics Conference in London and the World ADC Asia Conference in South Korea. I also want to mention a recent peer-reviewed publication by our scientists related to chicken-derived VHH antibodies in the Journal of Immunology, which came out in digital form very recently and creates further visibility for our Omnidab technology that we launched in Q4 of last year. OmniDAB is attracting new partners, and it's opening new market opportunities for us, and it's currently in use by multiple industry and academic partners. Before I hand the call back over to Kurt, I want to say that with the successful establishment of OmniAB as a standalone entity, And with a positive growth outlook, we remain on track to deliver on our goals and leverage the efficiencies of our prior investments in the business. As a company, we're committed to addressing the most critical challenges of antibody-based drug discovery and plan to continue to enhance our technology offerings. And we're excited to do that within our efficient and highly scalable business model. And with that, let me turn the call back over to Kurt for a discussion of our first quarter financial results. Kurt?