Zealand Pharma A/S

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Zealand Pharma Results for Full Year 2024 Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during this session, you will need to press star 1 and 1 on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star 1 and 1 again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Anna Kraskowska, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Alberta. Welcome, and thank you for joining us today to discuss Zealand Pharma's results for the full year 2024. You can also find the related company announcement and annual report on our website at zeelandpharma.com. As described on slide two, I caution listeners that we, during this call, will be making forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties. Turning to slide three and today's agenda, with me are the following members of Zeeland Pharma's management team. Adam Steenspert, President and Chief Executive Officer, Himalaya Davinika, Chief Financial Officer, David Campbell, Chief Medical Officer. All speakers will be available for the Q&A session, along with Eric Cox, Chief Commercial Officer. Moving to slide four, I will turn the call over to Adam Steensberg, President and CEO. Adam?

Thank you, Anna. And thanks to everyone for joining today. 2024 was a transformational year for C-Land Pharma, with significant clinical advancement across our differentiated obesity pipeline. We were excited to share positive data and progress with Petrinitin-1-GLB2 receptor dual agonist and with Cervidotide, a potential best-in-class glucagon-GLB1 receptor dual agonist that is being developed by Boehringer Ingelheim. Turning to slide five, CLAM has an ambition to become a key player in the growing obesity market. And in 2025, we will expand our investments in and continue to focus on delivering on our differentiated mid to late stage obesity pipeline. Furthermore, we remain committed to advance our late stage rare disease programs in congenital hyperinsulinism and short bowel syndrome, where patients are in urgent need for better treatment options. And finally, we are progressing our early stage pipeline of next generation peptide therapeutics in the inflammation space. Moving to slide six, I would like to take a step back and remind everyone why we are so strongly focused on developing new treatment options for people living with overweight and obesity. The obesity pandemic has evolved in just 50 years. We have witnessed a substantial increase in the global prevalence of overweight and obesity rising from about 10% in the 70s to 40 to 50% today. More than 5 million deaths globally are today ascribed to overweight and obesity every single year. We are still in the very early stage of the evolution of the obesity market. And in the United States today, only 2% approximately of eligible patients get pharmacotherapy. The important point on obesity is not only whether you are obese or not, but for how long you have been living with obesity. For many, there is a limit to how long organs can compensate for the effects of obesity before they begin to fail. We know that more than 220 complications and comorbidities are associated with obesity. With the substantial increase in prevalence of overweight and obesity, also among children, I fear that in the coming decades we will see a significant increase in the prevalence of obesity-related comorbidities. The good news is that we now have the first tools available to help address this global healthcare challenge. But we do need many more and better treatment options for the very large and diverse population living with overweight and obesity. This leads me to slide seven. We have seen the approval and successful rollout of the first two once-weekly tier-one-based therapies to address the global healthcare challenges. In phase three clinical trials of longer duration, they have demonstrated potential for 15 to 21% mean weight loss in patients with overweight and obesity, and positive outcomes in several obesity-related comorbidities. On the flip side, tier-one-based therapies are often associated with a number of gastrointestinal adverse events, including nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, and constipation. And data suggest that up to 30% of patients with obesity on a GLP-1 treatment stop within one month before reaching their target dose, and that within one year, 60 to 70% of patients withdraw from treatment. Therefore, we believe there is a significant unmet medical need for therapies that can deliver the same degree of weight loss as the GLV-1 receptor agonist, but with improved tolerability and acceptability, including lower frequency and milder severity of gastrointestinal adverse events, so that patients have a more positive experience and can better achieve and, importantly, maintain a healthy weight loss. Based on clinical data to date, We are confident in the best-in-class potential of our long-acting amylin analog, Petrienside, that we are developing as an alternative to GLV-1-based therapies with the potential to represent a foundational therapy for weight management in the future. And with that, let's move to slide eight as I turn over the call to our chief medical officer, David Kendall, to discuss our R&D pipeline. David?