Flerie AB (publ)

So, welcome old and new shareholders alike, analysts, media, and all who have shown an interest in FLIRI's Q2 2024 report. What an exhilarating quarter it has been, as you can see from this picture, where four of our top five shareholders were represented. That's Cayelo, the fourth AP fund, myself, and of course, Tomas Eldred. We really did crown the quarter with the ringing of the bell at Nasdaq Stockholm on the 27th of June. That is a date I will always remember. A big thanks to the team and to our advisors for making this happen. We will tell you more about this today, but first let's take a step back and introduce Fleury. because I think, in fact, this is, of course, our very first quarterly report presentation as a listed company, and maybe some of you in the audience are not as familiar with us as others, so let us start there. But first of all, the usual disclaimer, which I'm sure you're all aware of, and please act accordingly. Let me start by saying there is a biotech challenge. The biotech challenge is that even though you can make very significant money in this space. And of course, Fleury is in this space. It is a long and tricky road to success, especially for any singular biotech company. So on this slide, you see a typical journey for the development and commercialization of pharmaceutical innovation or even pharmaceutical services innovation. And there are four main challenges that I'd like to highlight. so firstly it's very hard to evaluate projects in this highly specialized sector also a large capital need is required through a very long development phase and thirdly every step of the way every new stage in this development comes with different risks and you need different people to assess and mitigate those risks so you really need to have a network and fourth the final outcome of any single or singular biotech company is often binary. So this is a difficult journey, but one you can make a lot of money if you do it right. And that's what I want to point out about FLIRi. We do provide a unique opportunity to address these challenges or this overall biotech challenge. Now we've laid the last puzzle piece in our model by becoming listed. You can now take part in our investment strategy. And I really do think Fleury is unique in many ways. I know we're able to address these challenges and in a very efficient and risk mitigated manner. And the first way we do that is, of course, the first challenge. We evaluate companies with a very knowledgeable team, a team that has decades of operational experience in biotech and pharma space, having built many successful companies ourselves. Secondly, with just over 1 billion second cash and other available liquidity, we have strong finances to support further value creation in our portfolio. And when we have exits, we can also invest in selected new companies. This listing allows us to remain evergreen as opposed to a closed-end fund structure, and we also co-invest as syndicates and work hard to continue to build a good relationship with reputable investors globally. The third and fourth challenge we address, of course, we do think every stage has its risks, but by having a diversified portfolio, we spread those risks and we also coach and connect our CEOs so they learn about the risks coming in future stages and so that they can mitigate. And we preferably invest in companies that have multiple shots on goals, typically with a platform technology or a sort of product that can have several applications. And I've proven that this actually works. If you choose right, it does not need to be binary always. It certainly is not binary for us with Fleary's success precisely because of the portfolio approach. And we have had year-on-year increase in portfolio value of 14% per annum since inception in 2011. And that is a good track record, especially over such a timeframe. Up until now, we've created 1.2 billion sec of value, meaning actual gains, proceeds from exits, less the investment costs, and that's behind these figures. We will continue to achieve this through our active ownership model. You can see that on the right-hand side here, board engagement, working on product roadmaps and with platform expansion, facilitating and utilizing our peer-to-peer CEO network, and continuing to create collaborations and synergies within the portfolio and also with our network across the globe. And this is our portfolio. We have built this very carefully with careful active engagement over time. It is not easy to create a well diversified and also differentiate a portfolio like this. And we care greatly to keep roughly 30 companies in the portfolio. At the moment, there are 29 and to keep roughly this distribution across stages as well. If you look at the bottom of the slide, you can see that 66% of our total fair value lies in clinical stages one, two, and three, with the latter two stages, two and three, and even some phase one companies having clinical data in patients. In addition, having 23% of our fair value in commercial growth, as you can see in the last two phases there, shows that almost 90% in total of our total value lies in quite late stages for a typical venture investor. We're not a PE firm and we never will be, I dare say, because our team really has the precise expertise to help on the long and tricky road that I just spoke about. And we've picked companies that already are on roads that are pretty well signposted by those who can read the signs. So I'll give you some examples. It's worth pointing out that if you look at the phase two phase there, Empress Pharma leading the way had their end of phase two FDA meeting, meaning they are now reading the very clear phase three road signs provided by the FDA, and they have a clear path to market. This oral weight loss product has a different mechanism of action to the blockbuster GLP-1s. And we're now evaluating how to create the most value to prove that this EMP16, as it's called, can help with this emerging concept that's called healthy weight loss. And indeed, we think it can. We'd be happy to take questions about this in the Q&A. So please prepare your questions. Another example in the metabolic space is our company Atrogi, a Swedish company also, just like Empros, where in fact our very experienced ex-AstraZeneca board member Anders J. Ekblom is the chairman of the board at Atrogi. Atrogi published encouraging data recently in a reputable journal, now during the quarter, and that shows that they can expand from what they do today, diabetes treatment, to a second program in obesity as well. And as maybe many of you know, diabetes and obesity are very closely linked in many ways. So drug development in one can lead to drug development in another. Again, natrogi has a completely new mechanism of action that is complementary to these blockbuster GLP-1s. I also want to mention Epiendo. They met the clinical endpoints in their phase two study for COPD, and we're close to evaluating a path forward, reading those road signs again, and we're completing a strategic review this summer. I think the anti-inflammatory effect is very encouraging. This is our only company in the respiratory space, which is an area of great unmet medical need. Switching gears to oncology again, MENDES presented encouraging clinical data for both leukemia and ovarian cancer this quarter. They are specialists in dendritic cell biology, and their cellular vaccination approach is leading the way in AML maintenance therapy. Again, a very significant unmet medical need and actually quite a tough nut to crack, but MENDES is managing to be that trailblazer. Well, in phase three, I'll mention Expray. Expray announced that it is working on its fourth product candidate. That's a new amorphous solid dispersion. So it's again in the field of expertise. A new amorphous solid dispersion of cabosantinib, showing that their technology is in fact very widely applicable and a true platform that can keep generating value for many years to come. Again, a good example of the types of companies that we like to invest in. My colleague Mark will be happy to take any questions about the progress we're making in the commercial growth segment later on in the Q&A session. Not in the least also, of course, the collaborations that we've managed to catalyse between Northex Biologics and three of our portfolio companies, keeping the very important CMC development, as it's called, or manufacturing development, close to home. Yeah, you have to remember that with these specialised modern drugs, manufacturing and CMC are becoming a more and more important part of driving success, or for those who neglect it, actually being a driver for failure. So we certainly don't ignore CMC in manufacturing, having that pedigree from Resifarm and Cobra Biologics. And again, Mark can answer any questions around that later on in the Q&A. Well, let's start delving into some numbers, although, of course, Cecilia, our CFO, will take you through the details in a moment. I just want to highlight on the left-hand side of the slide that effectively our net asset value per share actually did go up by 2.1% if you adjust for the transaction and listing costs. And I think it's important to point out because these are one-time costs. Even though we got listed via reverse takeover and then an uplisting, and I think we did this at a very cost-effective way, it still did bring costs along with them that pulled down our change in NOV to essentially unchanged if it's not adjusted. So that's why I wanted to highlight that 2.1% positive development. The other main highlights are we did this reverse takeover and we did an uplisting. Of course, it's amazing. We've reached a NOV of 4.4 billion SEC. That's about 420 million US dollars. The second one is we had an oversubscribed capital raise. That means that we reached our target to have about SEC 1 billion to deploy in our portfolio over time. The third point is that we catalyzed 190 million SEC from other investors into our portfolio during the quarter. Again, just highlighting what I said earlier, that it's important to have this network globally so that we both get evaluation of our companies, but also carry the further development of these companies, not alone, but together with other specialists. and fourth we met endpoints in clinical trials and we built manufacturing alliances and i spoke about that on the previous slide but happy to take more questions in the q a and last but not least we introduced an innovative and practical yearly share redemption scheme during the quarter i think why do i say practical or innovative well because it serves several purposes in a very simple way i think It provides liquidity for shareholders if they want to sell a larger portion. But our main shareholders, T&M Participation and T&M Verwaltning, so effectively Thomas Eldred, that actually agreed not to use this redemption scheme for the first five years. So I think it's especially good in that sense. And secondly, and in addition to this liquidity, it is a clear signal to our shareholders that we believe our valuation of our companies is real, but conservatively assessed, as Cecilia can tell you more in the Q&A. So, in summary, for my section, I will say that we have now very significant assets and of close to 4.5 billion SEC or 420 million US dollars. We have more than 1 billion SEC in available funds that we will use to support, accelerate and build the portfolio. We will deploy approximately 10% of NOV per year going forward and invest that in our current portfolio. At quarter end, our shares traded at a discount of 15.9%. So there is obviously an opportunity to become part of our journey, especially if you tie this back to how I started the presentation. FLIRI really does fill a unique position with our active long-term ownership model and our portfolio approach that addresses this biotech challenge that I spoke about. It really provides significant risk mitigation in this biotech and pharma space. So with this kind of firepower and our differentiated portfolio, we can really make a difference not only for shareholders, but also for patients and their unmet medical needs in everything from oncology to orphan diseases in the immunological, metabolic and also the respiratory space. And last but not least, also in the commercial pharma services space, including manufacturing that supports this entire ecosystem that's that's so important for society. And with that, let's go a little bit more into the details of the numbers. But please prepare your questions. We have a Q&A session and we really welcome your questions. So prepare them in advance. We'll have our colleague Paula moderate that as well. But now over to you, Cecilia, our CFO.

Thank you, Ted. Hi, everyone. Yes, so let's go into the more financial section. And we can start by looking at some of our KPIs. The next slide, please, Ted. Great. So our net asset value was 4.38 billion end of June and 3.42 billion beginning of the quarter. That's an increase of almost 1 billion. Like Ted mentioned, the reverse merger as well as the direct share issue, both carried out in June, brought the company almost 800 million of equity after listing and transaction costs that were more than 100 million actually. And during the quarter, we had a value increase in our portfolio of 172 million. So the increase in net asset value mainly from the reverse merger and capital raise, obviously, but also from a substantial increase in the fair value of our portfolio in the quarter. Net asset value per share was 56.10 sec, which was almost a flat change, like Ted mentioned, during the quarter, so it was a negative 0.3%, but adjusted for the transaction costs again that occurred in the quarter from the reverse merger and the capital raise, which was equivalent to 1.31 sec per share. Net asset value per share in Q2 was 57.41, so that's an increase by 2.1% in the quarter. So, the fair value of our portfolio at the end of June was 3.058 billion. Compared to the beginning of the quarter, it was 2.8 billion, which is an increase by 288 million. So, the increase is due to the value increases of the portfolio, 172 million again, and investments of 130. And shortly, we will talk a bit more in detail of the changes in value and the investments made in the quarter when we look at the segments. The net profit for the quarter was 103 million. So the net profit is the bottom line result. And in Fleury, it's mainly driven by the value changes in the period, in the value changes of our portfolio. And this quarter, they're taking into account the 68 million of transactional listing costs in the quarter that were accounted for in the income statement. And you obviously have some part that goes directly to equity. And that in total is over 100. So looking at the cash and liquidity, end of June we had a cash balance of 882. And after the cash that we received from the reverse merger, the capital raise, and together with the available loan facility, we have more than 1 billion available for future investments to continue to support our portfolio. So let's look at the segments more in detail. If we go to the next slide, we can start, thank you, by looking at the product development segment, which is our largest. So at Q2, the PD segment constituted 76% of the total portfolio fair value. 68% of the fair value in the segment relates to private companies and 32% are listed companies. And when we talk about fair value and our valuation, it's important to keep in mind that we value our private portfolio companies based on the latest financing round. So we do adjust the valuation down if the company is experiencing delays in sales growth or in the development, for instance, or if there is a trial setback or if the financing round that we value according to is a down round. But we don't increase the valuation unless there is a new financing round. So normally the valuation, so the value for the private portfolio companies are unchanged unless there's been a new financing around between the different months. But however, for the companies based outside Sweden, where the investments are denominated in either dollars or euros or pounds, you will see from month to month smaller changes in the value, which is due to the currency fluctuations. So on product development then, the fair value of the segment end of the quarter was 2.365 billion, which compared to beginning of the quarter when it was 2.051, meant an increase of 314 million. Most of that came from increases in the fair value of the segment, 192 million up. And the changes in value come from mainly unlisted companies. Exprey, of course, with an increase of 218 million in the quarter, but also Lipum and Tolerancia developed positively, so they were up by 18 and 15 million respectively, while the share price decreased somewhat for Egetis that reduced 17 million in the quarter. We've also adjusted the value of our shares in the private company Viterra in the quarter by 28 million, so it's a reduction then, of course, This is due to the delays in their development plan and also as the company got feedback from the FDA in the US on the preclinical package required for the coming IDE submission. So we decreased the value somewhat to be conservative. We saw it prudent to reduce the value. However, we continue to believe in the company and we will adjust the value up again when the company reaches its milestones. Investments in the quarter for the PD segment was 134 million, and the largest were 61 million in Lipum, 26 in Mentos, 23 in X-ray and 16 in CAR Medical. So the currency effect in the quarter for the segment was negative, 5 million negative, and that's taken into account in the number change in fair value 192, so that includes the negative 5 million. So we can go to the next slide also, and to look at the development in the quarter for our commercial growth segment. So commercial growth is our second largest segment. At Q2, 22% of the total Fleury portfolio related to commercial growth. And within the segment, 86% of the fair value relates to private companies and 14 relates to one listed company. So, the total fair value for the segment end of the quarter was 617, compared to 636 at the beginning of the quarter, so it's decreased by 19 million. The decrease, as we made no investments in the segment during the quarter, the decrease relates only to the negative share price development for the listed company, Manologica. If we go to the next slide, just briefly touch on the limited partnership segment. This is the smallest one of our segments, so 2% only in terms of portfolio value. And it's also characterized by long-term commitments. So I wasn't going to go into so much detail on this segment, but you are welcome to come with any questions you might have in the Q&A session. So we can move over to the last slide and look at a consolidated income statement. Now, this is just a highlight that the increase in the fair value in the quarter for our portfolio was 172 million as compared to a negative 58 million in Q2 last year. So as you can see, our recurring operating costs are fairly stable. What stands out is definitely the last line, the other operating costs. Of that 68.5, we have 67.8 million that are non-recurring and relate to the listing and transaction costs of the reverse merger and the uplisting in June. So, that wraps up the financial section. So, now we can hand over to our moderator, Paula, for a Q&A session.

Yes, thank you, Cecilia. Good afternoon and welcome to today's Q&A session. If you wish to ask a question, then please click on the raise your hand icon on the toolbar i will then activate your microphone so that you can introduce yourself and also ask your question to the management team it is not possible to access the chat function so please ask your questions verbally by raising your hand let's see if we have any questions the first question is from arvid and i will allow you to try

Aravind Nekander, could you please introduce yourself? You're still on mute. You'll have to unmute.

OK, now I wasn't able to unmute myself, but now I think we should be live. So good afternoon, guys, and thanks for taking my questions. A couple of questions if I may. So first off, if you just could give us some sort of granularity when it comes to your product development companies. it'll be interesting to get your take on the readouts that you view as readouts with the highest potential to impact the fair value of your your portfolio when it comes to the product development companies, sort of the key readouts over, let's say, the next 12 months. That would be very interesting to hear more about. And then secondly, XSpray, I guess, has become a very important holding for you, now being one of two companies representing more than 10% of the net asset value. So I understand, of course, that you're not at liberty of disclosing any hard numbers, but it would be interesting to hear your high-level thoughts on the road ahead. What type of sales ramp up do you expect after the forthcoming approval? Is there still a significant financing needs given their partner strategy? Yeah, all thoughts would be interesting. Thanks.

Thanks, Arvid, for good questions. A whole bunch of questions there. It could take a while to answer, but I'll start on the product development side and then let Mark, jump in on the commercial growth side as well. Why don't we start with Xpray, because it's a relatively simple answer, and you know it's difficult. Obviously, we can't make forward, you know, my team and I are not willing to make any forward-looking statements that, and especially not regarding Xpray and being a publicly listed company. But suffice to say that we have been a long-term supporter of Xpray for a long time, we're the largest shareholder. We think that they now have, you know, because they've announced their fourth product candidate, so basically there are four products in development, that anybody looking at Express should take that into account, that this is truly a platform company with the technology that can be applied to many different areas. You know, whatever the outcome is from the FDA review, which nobody knows, not the company, not us, not anyone. You know, we really firmly believe in this company going forward. They've done a really good job building up their sales capability with Eversana in the US, as well as having their own people on the ground in the US. uh that's all been communicated so again i don't want to make a forward-looking statement about how quickly the sales will ramp up because i a we don't know that and and b that wouldn't be right for me to do but but suffice to say that we've not seen any signals as a the biggest shareholder in x-pray that they're not prepared for it uh quite the opposite we think they're well prepared um so let's just uh wait and see what the fda padufa um date comes with On the other product development side, I would say again, as I've said before, please do look at our website. You can filter all of our companies according to the development stages that their products are in. So there are over 50 products in development in our entire portfolio. And obviously the ones that are most interesting to look at in terms of, you know, serious inflection points are the ones that are in phase one and phase two for the product development segment, because especially those companies that have gone into patients. So some companies do that already in phase one when they do get data from patients that shows that they actually getting some effect data. the patients the companies themselves in some cases have have published when they will achieve those those dates so that's available i don't think we have time to go through all of that right now but it is available on our website to see I personally am excited about EMPROS having had their end of phase two FDA meeting. That means, as I said, they really have their path staked out. They're looking now at how to run a phase three study that could be run by themselves through financing or with a partner. So all options are open there, but it's an exciting time. I think Sintialla with their osteoarthritis phase two and also their clinical trial in um difficult to heal leg ulcers are also in a very exciting time uh at the end of metaclinical endpoints in the respiratory space um you know obviously we've we're looking at um a sort of a strategic review of how the paths you know going forward for epiendo and we'll do that i think the company will complete that during the summer so a tiny forward-looking statement there but i think that's nothing that the company themselves haven't already said so quite excited about that too and yeah and then i've mentioned before genius therapeutics they continue to get their good readout continue to get more data follow-up because their advanced liver cancer patients are of course continuing on the treatment and continuing to survive and therefore you can measure more tumor reduction So, you know, it's very exciting to see if you go back those 30, you know, 36 months ago, how very steadily, you know, these tumors reduced and in some patients they got a complete response. I dare say that that's repeatable and that's repeatable across other indications once they get partnerships with other companies and that will happen at some point. But again, I'm not willing to say that that's going to happen anytime soon. Mark, do you want to fill in a little bit on commercial growth?

Yeah, on commercial growth, I think we've got some exciting projects going on in that area. So I think A3P is starting, in diagnostics, A3P is starting to gain traction in the DAC region and also the US. This is the prostate cancer detection system, which is working quite well. I think the other one that's exciting to watch is SimCell. They're getting some traction as well in their sales numbers, commercialising here. some good growth there. So there are a couple of the ones in there. On the services side, we continue to work on Frontier with KKR and the first investment there is Coriolis. So, you know, real push in the US there. And then Northex as well, our CDMO, continue to develop partnerships both within the group and also externally with other companies as well. So again, good traction there.

Thank you, Mark. Please raise your hands if you want to ask a question. Great. Thanks, guys. Those were all my questions. Thanks, Arvid.

Do we have any other questions?

We're approaching the half hour, but we did take a little longer in our presentations. I'm really happy to take more questions. Please just raise your hand and then we will be able to release your microphone. You will not be able to unmute yourself without raising your hand. Okay, Lasse. Paula will release your microphone momentarily.

Lasse, you should be able to unmute yourself. You have to unmute yourself also, I'm afraid.

I know, I understood. Just a short question. Would it be possible for you to list the shareholding that you have in the respective companies, the percentage or something like that? Cecilia, you can answer that.

Absolutely.

It's available both in the report, I think, on the NAVA page.

Okay, then I missed it.

There should be problems on page three or four. We have a listing of all the companies, our shareholdings, or our percentage, and also their fair value, end of June.

Good, thank you.

Now we have a question from Linus. I will your microphone and now you should be able to speak.

Yes, thank you. Hopefully I'm audible. Yep. So first I wanted to ask if you could give sort of any granularity on cash uses over the coming, say, 12 months or towards the end of the year and sort of the split between commercial growth and product development. And then also, I mean, given now the capital raised in the rearview mirror, if there's any changes that you would sort of ideally make to that composition between commercial growth and product development. Thank you.

Maybe I'll start with just a very high-level answer to that, which is we really like our distribution. So the commercial growth and PD segment distribution will remain the same, roughly the same, obviously, over time. If we do an exit, then there will be a little adaptation of that. But we like this split, roughly. It also changes, of course, if any particular company runs away in their valuation, that will change the distribution as well. But over time, we like this. Cecilia, do you want to say a few words about the sort of deployment in the various segments in general?

Well, in general, it was difficult to say, like I think you mentioned just the split between the two segments. But in general, we estimate that we will deploy going forward around 10 percent of our NAV on an annual basis. And then, of course, that could differ from between the quarters, but that's what we see going forward.

And typically, Mark, I guess you could say something about that. We have one company in the CG segment that is actually profitable. So obviously, they don't need more investment. And as, yeah, do you want to say something about that?

I mean, the fact that there is revenue in the commercial growth companies means that by definition, they probably will need less cash. That's not to say that there isn't a cash burn in them. But I would say in general, it's going to be probably skewed to more to the product development companies that the cash need.

Thank you very much. I don't believe we have any more questions here. Ted, would you like to say a few, concluding your mark?

Yes. Thank you so much for joining the call and thank you for your questions. This will be a recording that will be available on our website, including the presentation, of course. Thanks for taking time out in the middle of July to listen to our first quarterly report as a listed company. We're very excited. And thank you so much for both old and new shareholders for believing in us. Now we're going to prove that we can continue our track record and make it even better. Thank you so much.