Nanexa AB (publ)

Welcome, Nanexa has released a report for the first quarter of 2026 and next to my studio I have the CEO David Westberg. He will give comments on results and activities as well as preclinical data. An analyst will also be present at the question time afterwards and we will of course take up a whole lot of all the questions that come in in the live chat. Welcome David. Thank you very much. Before you present, it feels like you're going from hot through hotter. How do you describe the situation right now?

I think that was a really good description. We have wind in the sails. There are a lot of good activities at the lab in those areas. The collaboration we have with different companies, and we have the results that I will talk about in a bit, for Semaglutid, and that is really hot. And we have ongoing, I call it discussions, negotiations, you can use different names for it, with a number of companies. It's an intense period, and a fun period, I would say.

Okay, with that, please go ahead and present, and I'll see you in a moment.

Yes, okay. Well, great. Let me start with this picture of... The financial situation, you who have read the report know the figures, we have about 70 million in the cash at the beginning of the quarter. We had a positive cash flow, much thanks to the fact that these options were resolved. that came from last year's emission and we are very positive with 55 million approximately for the transactions. It gave us roughly 50 million. We made a decision yesterday where we resolved the loan by charging against shares and the reason for that is actually, I come to that actually, is that that we want to ensure that we have a very good balance sheet when we enter into real negotiations, so to speak. It also strengthens or extends our runway to about this time or a little longer next year. So it looks good, I think. Then I will go into some technical and preclinical results that have been asked. You know that I presented earlier results from a one-month release profile. This is semaglutide, which we have then applied with ALD, our pharmaceutical application. And then we have made three different coatings on those particles. The basic material is exactly the same, it is spray-dried semaglutide particles. And then we have adjusted the shell composition and exactly how we put the shell on these particles and contains different release profiles. The blue one is suitable for a one-month dosage. The green one for a two-month dosage, that is, every other month. and the red one stretches to be able to be dosed once per quarter. This is the result of rat studies, and rats have a slightly faster metabolism than what mini pigs and humans have. So when you see here that they stretch forward the longest to day 70 something. When you translate it to a clinical injection in humans, it will be much longer. We have done simulations of this and used the Gengse method to simulate from rot data to what this would look like in humans. And then we get these curves that seem a little weak, but I hope you see them. To the left is the one-month form in the middle, two months, and to the right, three months. And then we have compared it with how Veggovis looks today, which is a weekly administration. And that is the curve that goes up and down and up and down and up and down every week. What is important here, when you look at the table, is the value on the far right. The relationship between Cmax and Cmin. What is the relationship between the highest concentration in the blood and the lowest before the next injection? Weekly marketed semaglutide is VEGOV. It has a ratio of around 1.8, the difference between 1.7 and 1.9. So it's a form of goal setting that we have had, that we should at least manage it. And that would be great, but here you see that for the monthly deposit we are at 1.2. It is really, really low. And you can see on the blue curves, which are our simulated plasma profile, where you have simulated to the left that you give the dose once a month, in the middle that you give a dose once every other month, to the right, that you give a dose every third month. Then you see that the conditions are very low, 1.2, 1.5 and 1.5 also for Once Quarterly. This is a very, very good result and I think I want to stick out the hook and say that at least for Once Quarterly we are completely unique. I would actually think that we are unique also for Once Monthly. This has been done without affecting the active substance semaglutide itself. Other long-acting injectables formulations, then you connect molecules to semaglutide so you get a completely different molecule that you administer. And then they are disconnected during the journey in the blood. But this is a much simpler way to do it all. So we are very proud of this and have received a very good response for this data set. Let's move on to what we are doing with Moderna and other companies. We are in a phase where we are in very pleasant discussions with a number of companies about the GLP-1 segment. Semaglutide, absolutely. Other GLP-1s as well. And then I come back to why we did this, that we resolved the loan with shares. We want to strengthen our balance sheet, simply for this type of discussions or negotiations. So it's both intense and very fun, I think. It is of course a bit frustrating that things take time, but that is probably the case for everyone who works in this industry with this type of activity. Collaboration with Moderna, you know the company, it is a prominent company within the R&A business. And they have signed an agreement with us for a number of five different MRNAs. And we have started working with the first one. And it's going very well, we think. We have one at our company and one at theirs. We have meetings about every other week and the results are starting to flow forward here now. So it looks really good, I think. In the future, we will hopefully reach the first milestone. I don't think it will be this year, I think it will be next year. But it also opens up for them to start a collaboration with us for the rest of the active mRNA medicines. So that's really good. As for the rest, as you know, we signed an agreement in August. I have received a lot of questions about that. It is also a large company and where we work with an indication that has a very, very large market. We write here exceeding one billion US dollars. It is actually bigger than that. But bigger than that, it can be as much as you want, but we are happy to write over one billion US dollars. We also have very good progress in the collaboration. We are discussing how we can accelerate the next steps in this collaboration. It is under discussion here and now. We will see when that decision is made. It is a bit linked to how their internal decision processes look in this company. But it is two very, very good ongoing collaborations that are really fun. And back to business development, the focus we put on it looks good. That was the whole thing, actually. So I'm open for questions. I think there might be one or two.

Thank you very much for that, David. The nice data you present is fantastically interesting. We're going to start this Q&A session by letting in Johan Widmark from Emergers. Welcome, Johan, and please ask your questions to the company.

Okay, great. Thank you very much. Hi, David. Hi. I was going to start by asking about Moderna, if I understood correctly. The report says it's good here, but that the first milestone can be reached sometime next year. But is it also true that you won't start the next project without reaching this milestone? Or are there other... You have quite strong test results in your back. Are you dependent on reaching the first milestone before starting something in parallel?

Yes, that's what I can say. That's how the agreement is written, so to speak. They have a freedom, of course, that if they want to start already before, we don't say no to that. But I don't think you should expect that, but it will happen either at the same time or shortly thereafter.

Okay, thanks. Then I also thought, it has sailed up here, what Eli Lilly is doing with this Rethadrutide, if I pronounce it correctly. But it's this triple agonist segment with GLP-1, GIP and glucagon receptors. Is this something that you are exposed to in any way, or how do you look at this?

It's a part of the entire market for motobesitazel and type 2 diabetes. It will be both... Excuse me. Both... We are not dependent on whether it is a single mechanism or a dual or triple mechanism. We could work with all three, given that we have... We are independent of what API it is. It is an interesting... an interesting project they are running, and there will be several of that type in the future. I can't go into whether we are directly exposed or not in the current situation.

Okay, I understand. Thank you very much, that's all I had.

Yes, thank you Johan, thank you. Yes, thank you very much for that Johan Vidmark at Emergers. As I said, a lot of questions have come in. I'm going to try to put them together so we don't make it more complicated than it needs to be. But I can start with a question. You have been at two events during the quarter, the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference in San Francisco and BioEurope in Lisbon. What did you get from these two events?

What can I say? We had both discussions with companies that we already discussed and we also got in touch with a number of other companies, some of which we have had discussions with before and some of which are completely new to us. It can be seen that there is a wide spectrum of indications that these companies represent and where there is a great interest for long-term injectables and where they see that pharmaceutical technology could possibly fit very well That's the short answer to that question.

We're running out of viewer questions here. Given your stated strategy to wait for the best deal, how do these discussions move forward in practice and how do you move forward in the need for strategic sustainability against expectations at the end?

Yes, that is of course a question of balance. We keep the doors open and run a number of parallel processes. We think we are moving forward in all of them. We will one day face a choice where we choose someone to go on with, so to speak, for further closures, so to speak, of some kind of contract. But it's a balance just between how far we will go to get the absolute best and how fast we want to have a contract. We could probably have written a contract for a long time ago, I would say. But we see it as important and we think we have a good asset in this GLP-sphere and with Semaglutide, who is a market leader, together with Thyrse Partido from Lilly. Next question.

With regard to the company's capital-intensive expansion plans, can you develop how large upfront payments you are aiming for in the coming GLP-agreement to secure the financing of production?

No, I can't go into numbers. I don't want that actually. That would be stupid.

Sorry. How do you see Novo Nordisk's recently approved solution for some delivery without a cooling process? Is this a development that leads to the specific stability benefits that Pharmacel aims for?

This is probably a long-term work from Novo, where they have gotten through more stability data and been able to increase the label with room temperature storage for longer periods of time. But it is not room temperature storage, as I understand it, for the entire logistics chain. It's still there, at least in my opinion. But it shows how important it is. It really does. And it's something that lies ahead, that you can get both convenience for the patients, and not have to have a refrigerator. We all know how hard that can be. But the big gain I think in the future, especially when there will be some competition in terms of prices and so on, is to be able to cut costs in the logistics chain. And we assess that you will be able to do that with pharmaceutical-based GLB-1.

Thank you. Chairman Göran Ando, we said in the last interview that you expected you to have some exciting things to present during the first half of the year on the business development front. Is this still your expectation?

Yes, I would like to say that. Something like that. With a slap in the face because we don't control all processes, oddly enough.

A follow-up question. You have the need to use Ando's competencies in business development up to the 30th of June. Is it wrong to assume that this is specifically related to the first half of the year?

It is an intensive period we have now. We have hired Bridget Lacey, who is extremely experienced. Göran has a history in this area that is completely unique. We work intensively, all three of us.

Thank you. We go back to the pre-clinical part. You have come a long way with hemagglutin. Have you started or what is the next step? Is it mini-cow?

Yes, mini-cow is part of a development, typically. As I mentioned, rats have a little faster metabolism, so it's wise to go through mini pigs to humans. These are things we also do in parallel with these discussions we have. It's not that the discussions are dependent on any result in Minigris, but it's still the case that we prepare. We want to prepare in order to be able to accelerate on that day. The day the fog has dried, if it comes that far, you never know, but that's how we prepare.

The translation that you do from the Rotte studies, I remember we talked about it earlier, that you say that it is quite validated, you know quite certainly that it is this translation formula that works.

Yes, but this is a common method, absolutely, to use. and many others, so to speak, in order to be able to translate data to humans and so on. We are quite convinced that this will look something like this. But everything will show up later when we run clinical studies. But it looks very, very good and I feel safe with this simulation.

If you look at other potential or upcoming partners, ongoing partners, If you think of similar molecules, will it require the same precise and detailed clinical studies, or will you be able to rely on these that you are now carrying out?

For every substance that you use to make a product, it will require Separate studies with just that substance. That said, we learn a lot from these studies. If it is a similar substance, we know how to do it. But to build what is called a dossier, or all documentation that goes into the authorities to get a product approved, it must be separate with the specific drug.

But you will be more effective in that work?

Yes, exactly.

If we move on to the Ascendis business, in the fall, the size of the business that is unlikely for Nanexa was assessed. Is that assessment still there and how can you comment further on Ascendis?

But for those of you who don't know, NOVO did a business with Ascendis. They have a technology where they just connect another molecule to semaglutide and in that way extend the elimination speed in the plasma. It's a technology that Ascendis has used in a different indication with a different molecule, and it's a marketable product nowadays. They have, so to speak, a more mature technology, you could say. And that's why I have expressed it as such that we should not expect that we will get the same type of upfront and size of contracts as they got. It is quite reasonable to think. However, one could say that you saw the data that I just presented. It is unique data and we are in a very hot area. So yes, we'll see where we end up, quite simply.

There is of course a lot of discussion about agreements, dialogues and this. The investment community thinks that it has been communicated a little differently, that we have gone into real negotiations and then it is back in talks. How can you develop that to make it understandable for investors what phase you are in now?

Yes, we are in... How should I express this? If I want to write negotiations, I could probably say that we are in negotiations. I have perhaps used the expression that we are in a very positive dialogue. I have used that we have a good conversation and we have a positive process. And somewhere it leads to a negotiation, of course, and how far we are. I want to be a little diffuse there because it is so much... It's very balanced. I would like to invite the collective to talk about exactly what we do, but that's not possible, of course, since we are in the situation we are in. Unfortunately, I may be a little diffuse, sorry, but that's up to the game. But we look positively at the future and positively at the dialogues or negotiations that we have.

Can you say anything about the size of these companies? That's another common question. Is it the same size as Novo Nordisk and up, or can you say anything about that?

No, I don't do that. I put the lid on right now.

Okay, but if we then take, there are some questions about the conversion of loans.

How can you comment on that? In the end of March, we had SEK 73 in the cash register. If we paid the loan back, it would have been SEK 53 and we would have spent money because we drive the company forward. I don't even want a negotiation to be close to having some kind of short runway or need for other financing. I want us to be as strong as possible. Therefore, I and the board have simply It is decided that this is best for the company.

What is the concrete roadmap for scaling up the production from clinical test batches to commercial volumes? What feedback do you get from partners regarding scaling up?

That's a good question. The ongoing activities here are very concrete. We are counting on being able to bring in new equipment and machines towards the end of the year in our premises in Uppsala. Our chief technical officer, Morten Roth, who is also one of the founders, spent the whole last week with a company that we will cooperate with on this. And it looks very, very good. We have initial data from running in a larger scale, and it is a 10 times larger scale than what we have today. It is a scale that will be able to be taken through all clinical studies and pivotal STAB studies and everything. Then we are already looking at another 10 times larger scale that we expect could be a production scale during launch. So those plans are being finalized for every day that goes, I would say. So it's a very good process there.

So if we say that there will be a bump into a number of, first write agreements, but then also the studies so that you come to the commercial phase, then you will have time to build up that capacity in Uppsala.

Yes, in Uppsala we see a possibility, we will also look, or not look, we are already looking at other possibilities as well, both Both in Sweden and in Uppsala. The site we are on has a number of locations that might be suitable for expansion. We are also looking at the possibility in the future, and this is long-term, to build up production capacity in the USA. The whole pharmaceutical industry is quite up-to-date now, and why not for us as well? It's too early to start building it now, but we're planning to make it possible as well. Then, depending on which partner we sign contracts with, it can happen that they want to take home the production and they have the production on their sites. The collaboration we have now with developers, suppliers and equipment also allows that. We are really building for success even there.

An interesting question here. The same old question. According to you, what is the most important signal to the market from the report?

I think our two important signals are partly that the semaglutide data that I just showed And that we have these ongoing discussions, negotiations, whatever you want to call them, I think is a very That's probably the signal I would take with me from here if I were a shareholder, which I am as well.

Thank you. One last question. Göran is now engaged on June 30. If there are shortages and his skills continue to be needed, is he available? Do you have any such option?

Yes, he will be available. He is. But this is a... That is one thing to be a chairman and what you can calculate with how much time you spend. This is another. It will be able to be extended in case it is needed. Absolutely.

Okay, thank you very much David Westberg, CEO of Nanexa for performance and answers to all questions. Good luck in the future.

Yes, but thank you very much and thank you for all the questions, I should say.