OmniAb Q4 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Quartr
Provided by Quartr
March 18, 2025

There are 8 speakers on the call.

Operator

Good afternoon and welcome to OmniAb Inc. Fourth Quarter and Full Year twenty twenty four Financial Results and Business Update Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. Following the presentation, we will follow the formal presentation. A question and answer session will take place.

Operator

As a reminder, this conference 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.

Speaker 1

Thank you, operator, and good afternoon, everyone. This is Kurt Gustafson, OmniAb's Chief Financial Officer, and thank you for joining our fourth quarter and full year twenty twenty four financial results conference call. There are slides to accompany today's prepared remarks and they're available in the Investors section of our website at www.omniab.com. Before we begin, I'd like to remind listeners that comments made during this call by management will include forward looking statements within the meaning of federal securities laws. These forward looking statements involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to be materially different from any anticipated results.

Speaker 1

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, 03/18/2025. Except as required by law, OmniAb undertakes no obligation 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 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.

Speaker 1

At the conclusion of the prepared remarks, we'll open the call to questions. And with that, let me turn the call over to Matt.

Speaker 2

Thanks, Kurt. Good afternoon, everyone, and thanks for joining us today. Starting now with Slide four, I'm pleased to report strong performance and momentum in 2024 as we achieved double digit percentage growth in both the number of active partners and the number of active programs that leverage our technology. Our partners' clinical stage programs are advancing, and we're encouraged by the progress that they're making. We introduced new technologies and enhancements that are positively impacting our partnerships and driving efficiencies in our increasingly scalable business.

Speaker 2

These innovations are not only differentiating our business, but are also attracting new partners and creating opportunities for significant future growth potential. Potential key royalty assets are beginning to come into focus along with other building blocks of value that we expect will drive our growth in the coming years. As we look ahead here in 2025, we're excited about the opportunities we're seeing and we're confident in our plans. This schematic here on Slide number five provides a bit of an outline along with some details on how we view our business and how one can look at the interconnected elements of value here in OmniAb. Starting with the upper left corner, our novel platform technologies continue to differentiate us and create new partnerships and also drive our existing partners to start new programs.

Speaker 2

We have deep relationships with a growing number of partner companies, and those relationships create a unique vantage point in the industry that informs our thinking about new technology innovations and launches as well as any strategic technology acquisitions. We now have a long track record in this area. Value creation really starts with the additions to our pipeline as mentioned in the center of the slide. And here we've driven double digit percentage growth over multiple years and have done so through a variety of industry macro environments, which I think is a statement about the resilience of our model and the broad applicability of our technologies. As programs progress into clinical development, as depicted on the top of the circle on the right side of this slide, they generally start to become more publicly visible.

Speaker 2

And those programs will generally drive realization of contracted milestone payments. And ultimately, we expect some of these programs will advance to become royalty bearing assets, which is a core element of value. A royalty is defined simply as a percentage of top line revenue, and royalties can create steady streams of durable cash flows that increase with higher product sales. There are a number of factors that drive value for a particular royalty asset, including the partner and their level of investment, elements of the program as it becomes a product, and its commercial potential or total addressable market, which can be impacted by things like the number of indications or the number of geographies that are being pursued. Any of these elements or a combo of them can drive significant value at various points in a program or product's lifecycle.

Speaker 2

As more programs progress, our platform continues to have more visibility across the industry and continues to be even more validated, and we believe that also drives more additions to the pipeline. We're highly committed to our model and are focused on building value for all of our stakeholders in this highly leverageable business framework. I'll touch now on a few of our key business metrics starting here on Slide number six with active partners. We're pleased to report an 18% year over year growth in the number of active partners, showing our ongoing efforts to expand and diversify our partnership base. As of 12/31/2024, we had 91 active partners.

Speaker 2

In the fourth quarter, we added new platform licenses with Insight Corporation and Photinia Biosciences, and new commercial partners included NBP Pharma and Tayo Pharma. As shown in the call out box pie charts, our partner diversity spans academia, commercial and discovery partners. And you also see a breakdown, geographic breakdown of our partners here as well. Our growing partner count reflects the industry's strong interest in our technologies and is also a recognition of our dedication to innovation and collaboration. Over recent years, we've shown steady growth in active partners through various cycles in the biotech and pharma sectors.

Speaker 2

Turning now to Slide number seven. We also saw robust year over year growth in the number of active programs at a 12% increase. As of December 31, the number of active programs increased to three sixty two net of attrition. We had a particularly productive fourth quarter in terms of additions. Last year, as we have seen and as was reported more broadly in the industry, some pharma companies strategically realigned and reprioritized their therapeutic programs and pipelines.

Speaker 2

While these realignments are frequently driven by goals to concentrate on more impactful areas of research as well as to adapt to evolving market demands and regulatory landscapes, they often reflect attrition as an inherent aspect of the drug development process. As shown in the callout bar graph, we had 31 terminations and 69 active program additions in 2024. I think it's really important to note here that more than 98% of our active programs have contracted future economics to us, which positions us well to create future value for our shareholders. Now on Slide eight, as of December 31, the number of active clinical programs and approved products by partners was 32. Our partners have now initiated or completed over 200 separate human clinical trials with OmniAb derived programs, which is an indication of their significant investment and conviction around the programs.

Speaker 2

These trials span a range of therapeutic areas, including oncology, immunology and other indications. This extensive downstream clinical activity highlights the trust and the confidence our partners have in the novel therapeutics that are coming out of our platform. In 2024, '5 on the ab derived programs entered the clinic. In Q4, a new J and J program targeting GPRC5D and Intellect Pharma's anti C40 agonist program both entered Phase I clinical trials. Based on dialogue with our partners, we see potential for approximately five to seven new entries into clinical development for novel OmniAb derived programs in 2025.

Speaker 2

As I just mentioned, in 2024, '5 novel OmniAb derived programs entered the clinic. And here on Slide nine, you see those new clinical additions on the top part of the slide, which includes programs with Teva, Merck KGA, Genmab, J and J and Inno Lake. In 2024, we also saw five programs exit clinical development, shown on the bottom part of this slide, resulting in a flat net year over year growth in active clinical programs. Clinical attrition programs included two from Genbab, which were removed from clinical development in Q3 and Q4, but remain active in earlier stages according to company disclosures. While the Roche and Amgen programs reported in Q1 and Q4 of last year are no longer active, they have minimal to no impact on the value of our partnered portfolio due to the lack of any remaining economics to us.

Speaker 2

And overall, while the attrition of certain programs reflects the dynamic nature of the drug development process, the addition of new clinical entrants highlights ongoing innovation and the potential of our technology for discovering new therapeutic options. So together, they sort of highlight both the challenges and the opportunities in therapeutic discovery and development. Slide 10 highlights the annual growth in our portfolio of post discovery stage assets. And I will mention here that we are excited about the diversity and potential therapeutic impacts of the assets in our preclinical stage bucket shown here in the orange slice of the pie chart and hope to be able to shed more light on its specific contents and programs that are in that orange slice in the coming quarters. Here on Slide 11, you'll find what we are now calling our prior format for showing clinical stage and later partnered pipeline programs.

Speaker 2

Over time, the pipeline has been getting a bit large for this traditional format and recognizing the opportunity for improvement, we're now introducing a new format for presenting our partnered clinical pipeline. The new format is here on Slide 12 and provides an overview of clinical and commercial programs organized from Phase I through to late stages and approvals displayed from left to right. Program placement is based on a program's most advanced clinical status, and this layout only includes programs where OmniAb has future or remaining economic interests. By excluding clinical and commercial stage partner programs that do not have future or remaining economic benefits to us, such as teclistamab or tiragolumab, we aim to focus attention on financially impactful programs. We think this layout will help stakeholders more quickly synthesize the value of our clinical and commercial stage pipeline.

Speaker 2

Also, it gives us the ability to easily highlight new and additional indications and geographies that are being pursued by our partners. We believe that by clearly presenting these elements, we'll better illustrate the unique value proposition of each individual program. Now, I'll touch on just a few recent partner highlights. Our press release that was issued this afternoon covers some additional updates from Q4 and recent months, but I wanted to spotlight a few specific programs that we see as standouts. Slide 13 reviews Genmab's acasenlimab, which is a bispecific antibody that targets PD L1 and four-1BB.

Speaker 2

Genmab recently and I believe for the first time highlighted a potential $1,000,000,000 market opportunity for acasenlimab in non small cell lung cancer, emphasizing the addressable patient populations in The U. S, Japan and The EU. They're pushing forward with the last stages of clinical development of acasenlimab and announced that a Phase III trial as a second line therapy in non small cell lung cancer is now enrolling patients. Genmab also expects to provide an additional Phase II data update for acasunlimab this year, and we potentially expect that at ASCO. On Slide 14, you can see that Eta has highlighted continued progress in their now more prominent innovative medicines pipeline and have been showcasing advancements with omni rat derived TEV-four zero eight and omni chicken derived TEV-two seventy eight.

Speaker 2

Four zero eight is a potent anti IL-fifteen neutralizing antibody that's currently being developed for the treatment of celiac disease and vitiligo. And two seventy eight, which is an anti PD1 IL2 fusion protein, is being developed in oncology. Moving on now to Slide number 15, where we have ImmuneVance programs, IMVT1402 and vadaclumab. Vadaclumab is a promising anti FcRn monoclonal antibody for treating autoimmune diseases. And IMBT1402 is a next generation anti FcRn antibody that's designed for deep IgG reduction with minimal side effects.

Speaker 2

We think these assets are poised for significance, driven by large total addressable markets with multiple indications. Amiivant describes IMPC1402 as a potentially best in class, highlighting its but promising therapeutic potential. They recently outlined several near term milestones and catalysts for both IMVT1402 and vadafumab. They're currently enrolling patients in pivotal Phase IIb studies for Graves' disease and difficult to treat rheumatoid arthritis for IMVT1402. They plan to initiate registrational programs for three additional indications by March thirty one of this year and aim to evaluate IMVT1402 in a total of 10 indications by March thirty one of next year.

Speaker 2

For vadoclumab, as you can see here, aminivant expects multiple data readouts and some that are in the very near future. Evaluate Pharma published an industry report at the beginning of this year that included a summary of their analysis of the 10 most valuable R and D programs on a net present value basis across the entire pharmaceutical industry. And we were happy to see batiklumab and IMVT1402 both highlighted on that top 10 list. Now on Slide number 16. As we look ahead now in 2025, we anticipate several catalysts that will drive our continued growth and position the business for success.

Speaker 2

Pipeline expansion and advancement remain key elements with significant progress expected in clinical and future royalty programs. We're excited about the potential for new deals that are in progress and the launch of novel technologies that we think should have a substantial impact on the industry, with more on those launches to be revealed during the year. We focused on and looked to further leverage our relationships and what we call the OmniAb ecosystem of partners that we've created over the years. This allows us to think about and analyze the economic returns for technology expansion and technology launch options that are available to us. And I think the tech launch options that we've invested in and are planning on this year can create significant opportunity and potential returns, and we're excited about that.

Speaker 2

Our partner base has continued to grow and diversified, providing a solid foundation for sustained expansion. And with a clear business model that's now positioned to be leveraged more efficiently, we think we're well equipped to create value for our stakeholders and achieve our strategic objectives. And with that, let me now turn the call back over to Kurt for a discussion of our fourth quarter financial results and our 2025 outlook. Kurt?

Speaker 1

Thank you, Matt. I'll start with Slide 18 with our revenue in the fourth quarter of twenty twenty four. Total revenue increased substantially reaching $10,800,000 compared with $4,800,000 for the same period in 2023. This increase was primarily due to higher license and milestone revenue driven by new deals and the clinical advancement of our partner programs. Service revenue declined as we completed work on certain small molecule ion channel programs that were then transitioned over to the partner.

Speaker 1

Regarding royalties, typically, we receive sales data from our partners on a lag. So, we record royalty revenue based on estimated net sales of our partners' products. When we do receive the final sales data, any difference between our actual results and the prior estimates are adjusted in the period in which they become known. In the fourth quarter, we received an update on some information regarding the sales of sudumelumab and zembrolumab in China during 2024 and accounted for that downward adjustment in the fourth quarter to reflect this new information. Turning to Slide 19, let's take a look at our operating expense.

Speaker 1

Operating expense in the fourth quarter would have been lower than the prior year period if not for a $2,700,000 impairment charge related to certain small molecule ion channel intangible assets. The impairment charge was a result of a shift in our focus for ion channels from small molecules to antibodies. This shift resulted in the impairment of certain small molecule related and tangible assets. For R and D and G and A expense, both decreased versus the prior year primarily due to lower stock based compensation expense and reduced outside expenses as we continue to drive efficiencies in our business. We take a look at the quarterly P and L on Slide 20 and focus here on the bottom part of the P and L.

Speaker 1

Our net loss for the fourth quarter of twenty twenty four was $13,100,000 or $0.12 a share versus a net loss of $14,100,000 or $0.14 per share in the prior year period. So, moving on to Slide 21, you can see that for, the full year, total revenue increased when excluding the $10,000,000 milestone related to the first commercial sale of teclistamab in The EU that was recorded last year. The increase then in license and milestone revenue excluding this $10,000,000 was driven by advancement in our partners' clinical programs and new licensing deals. Service revenue declined slightly year over year primarily due to the completion of certain ion channel programs, which was slightly offset by an increase in our service revenue for our antibody discovery work. Additionally, royalty revenue was lower than the prior year, primarily due to the highly competitive PD-one, PD L1 market dynamics in China, which led to lower product sales.

Speaker 1

Going over to Slide '22. Full year operating expense was lower in 2024 compared with 2023. Our R and D expense was flat, while the G and A expense decreased mainly due to non recurring consulting and service costs in 2023 related to our spin out as a public company as well as lower legal and stock based, comp expenses. And also note that the total impairment charges taken during the year was $3,800,000 moving on to Slide '23, if we take a look at full year P and L and once again focus on the bottom part of the schedule, the net loss for 2024 was $62,000,000 or 0.61 per share compared with the net loss of $50,600,000 or $0.51 per share for 2023. On to Slide 24, if you break out the year by quarter, you'll note a few things.

Speaker 1

First, as we had previously guided, revenue was weighted toward the second half of the year and you'll also note a general trend of both lower R and D expense and lower G and A expense over time. And as I'll discuss in a moment, we expect this trend to continue into 2025. On the amortization of intangibles, this is usually fairly stable, but we had a couple of impairments,

Speaker 3

one in

Speaker 1

the second quarter and one in the fourth quarter, that caused those particular quarters to deviate from their baseline. Turning to Slide 25, you'll see our balance sheets for both 2024 and 2023. The company is well capitalized and we exited 2024 with $59,400,000 in cash, which was at the top end of the guidance range that we provided during our last earnings call. As we mentioned on our Q3 earnings call in November, we had raised $11,400,000 in net proceeds off of the ATM. Most of this was in the third quarter, but a portion was in the fourth quarter.

Speaker 1

We have not raised any additional amounts off the ATM program beyond what we reported at that time. I also want to point out one other item on the balance sheet as it will relate to some of the guidance we are introducing today. The third line down in the liabilities section is deferred revenue. Most of this was placed on the balance sheet years ago prior to Omnia becoming a standalone company from upfront payments received for the small molecule ion channel licenses. As we complete work on those programs, the revenue is recognized and the deferred revenue balance is reduced as it amortizes over the research terms of those projects.

Speaker 1

You'll note that this balance is now down to just $2,500,000 as a final topic, let's turn to Slide 26, where we introduce our 2025 financial guidance. This is the first time we've ever provided revenue guidance and this guidance is based on information that our partners have disclosed to us as well as information that our partners have disclosed publicly about their programs. Based on this information, we expect that 2025 revenue will be in a range of $20 to $25,000,000 But I want to draw your attention to the lighter shaded regions of the bars, on the graph on the left. Note that a significant portion of the revenue in 2024 was non cash. In fact, close to one third of the revenue earned last year did not result in actual cash received in that year.

Speaker 1

A significant portion of our service revenue has been the amortization of deferred service revenue that I just mentioned. One of the primary factors driving the revenue decline in 2025 is that this non cash portion of service revenue is decreasing. And in fact, from a cash perspective, we actually expect an increase in the amount of cash that we will receive from our partners in 2025 compared to the cash that we received in 2024. So, while revenue may be decreasing, it's only the non cash piece that's causing the decrease. Moving to operating expense, I mentioned the strategic shift we made in our ion channel business focused on antibodies.

Speaker 1

This shift also resulted in an alignment of our specific staffing needs with the amount and type of work we're doing in this area and resulted in a reduction to our ion channel related headcount earlier this quarter. While this will result in some charges in the first quarter, we still expect our operating expense for the year to decrease in 2025 relative to 2024. More specifically, total operating expense is expected to be in the range of $90,000,000 to $95,000,000 I also want to point out that historically, about 40% of our operating expense has been noncash, primarily from the amortization of intangibles and stock based compensation, and we expect 2025 to be similar. As for our cash use, we expect our cash use in 2025 to be lower than in 2024, excluding the proceeds from our 2024 ATM issuance. As a point of reference, our cash use in 2024 was $38,900,000 when you exclude the $11,400,000 of proceeds from the ATM.

Speaker 1

One additional comment about our tax rate. While our tax rate might fluctuate from quarter to quarter, we expect the full year effective tax rate in 2025 to be around 0% as our valuation allowance is expected to largely offset the tax benefit associated with our net loss. This tax benefit will eventually be realized when the company becomes profitable. While the biotech industry is certainly going through some volatility, our business has continued to perform well. The leadership here at OmniAb have run businesses for many years and we're committed to growing the business while at the same time staying fiscally responsible to position us for continued success.

Speaker 1

And with that, I'll open up

Operator

the call for questions. Operator? Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question and answer session. Your first question comes from the line of Joe Pantginis from H.

Operator

C. Wainwright. Your line is now open.

Speaker 4

Hey, guys. Good afternoon. Thanks for taking the questions. Couple, if you don't mind. So first, Matt, with regard to attrition rates, obviously, this is a normal part of biotech drug development.

Speaker 4

Just curious, I might assume that a lot of it or the majority has to do with clinical development moves, number one. But are there any attrition numbers that might be due to technical issues?

Speaker 2

Yes. Thanks, Joe. No, I wouldn't describe attrition as related to technical issues at all. In this, the attrition we saw last year, we talked through the year about Big Pharma pipeline realignment, which was pretty widely reported through the year. I think a lot of dynamic changes in the Big Pharma space have led many of the Big Pharma's to focus more on efforts where they can really be differentiated and maybe even in some instances to aim even bigger in CNS and areas like that.

Speaker 2

So that caused, I think, some of the big pharmas to realign their clinical pipelines. But beyond that, I think the rest of the attrition that we saw, I would characterize as kind of normal types of attrition that you see in the various stages of drug development. Of note, Q4 was a really strong quarter for us in terms of additions, and I think that has positioned us well for this year. So that was generally good to see.

Speaker 4

No, that's very helpful. And I assume that. I just wanted to ask. And then in your prepared comments and in your slide deck, you gave a little bit of a tease of new tech rollouts this year. So curious, any further information you can share and does it come from any of your existing platforms or the sort of brand new rollouts of tech?

Speaker 2

Yes. Great question, Joe. Thanks. I mean, we think our commitment to innovation is really a significant competitive advantage. One, we've seen that now over the years and we hear it from partners as we're talking to them.

Speaker 2

And we have been investing actively in innovation for the last few years and those investments that we have made are informed by really deep relationships with our partners. That helps us form our thoughts on both and also form our technical and our business conviction around new technologies and workflow enhancements that we consider innovation that can really drive value. In recent years, we launched OmniDAV, which is an engineered chicken with a human framework for discovering novel single domain antibodies. That has attracted a significant number of new partners. It's driving some nice growth in our active programs.

Speaker 2

And it's also substantially diversifying therapy areas that are being pursued by our partners into CNS and radiopharma and other areas. But when we think about innovation, I also include things like OmniDeep, which we launched in recent years also, which is a suite of in silico tools, AI and machine learning elements that are woven throughout our tech platform, but are also thriving new programs, creating new opportunities. And then after that, we launched OmniHub at the end of last year, which is a platform for bioinformatics tools that enhance our workflows for our partners and the feedback on OmniHub has been candidly fantastic. So it's a long lead and to answer your question, this year, we're really excited about the new technologies that we're planning to launch. I think they can impact our ecosystem of partners and the industry more broadly.

Speaker 2

And I'll just say generally that the things we launched this year fall very much within our strategy and the themes that we've talked about previously in terms of they'll enable discovery of high quality candidates more quickly and efficiently, They're highly scalable, expand our existing partnerships and I think will attract new partners as well and will continue to differentiate us. So, the only other, I guess, detail I'll give, I mean, we've generally launched new things around key scientific conferences, and that's worked well for us. And that generally includes the PEGS Protein Engineering Conference in May in Boston and the AET conference that is very late in the year down in San Diego. So just kind of some general details there. I hope that helps.

Speaker 4

No, it certainly does. And one more quick question, I guess, and it might be a little self deprecating. The simplistic answer is a yes, no or irrelevant. Do you think that in these current volatile markets that Kurt alluded to and we all know about, do you think there's any sort of push for additional pipeline and development where you might see added cash deployment from partners?

Speaker 2

Joe, I mean, as we look at our business and the metrics that we track, it's a business that's been resilient and has done well in a variety of cycles. And I think there's a lot of reasons for that potentially. The technologies and the needs that they serve, different cycles like sub cycles that exist within the industry around therapy areas or approaches to research, whether that's internalization or externalization, etcetera. And the good news about our platforms is that they're scalable, they can be used in a flexible fashion in a variety of ways. So I feel like we're kind of well positioned in just about any landscape.

Speaker 2

I don't know, Kurt, anything you'd add?

Speaker 1

I agree.

Speaker 4

Fantastic. Thanks for indulging all my questions, guys.

Speaker 1

Yes. Thanks, Joe.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Puneet Souda from Leerink Partners. Your line is now open.

Speaker 3

Yes. Hi guys. Thanks for the questions here. So first one on the card, if you could clarify on the $20,000,000 20 5 million dollars guide, just assuming what's are you expecting cash and non cash within that too? Or is that all cash?

Speaker 3

And maybe if you can elaborate, you provided a number of programs here. Any upside you're baking in from those programs? And I know it's always hard to say how much is collaboration revenue versus license revenue, but maybe you can provide context because this is the first time you're providing this guide.

Speaker 1

Yeah. So, Puneet, the 20 to 25 is a gap number. So we're trying to compare gap to gap. But what I was trying to point out was if you think about why the 2025 number is going down relative to 2024, a big chunk of that, of 2024 was this service revenue, right? Dollars 6,000,000 was the amortization of service revenue, which is non cash.

Speaker 1

And that's the piece that was going away. I kind of pointed to the balance sheet. If you take a look at deferred revenue on the balance sheet, that the balance at the end of the year is only $2,500,000 So, we recognized $6,000,000 of deferred revenue last year. There's only $2,500,000 left to recognize on the balance sheet. So that's one of the big things that's going down and that's non cash anyway.

Speaker 1

So, I was trying to just provide some color on that, but specifically the 20 to 25 is a GAAP number, in terms of what we would expect to report.

Speaker 3

Got it.

Speaker 1

Keith, you asked about, kind of the differentiation. At this point, I don't think we're breaking out in that revenue, the difference between milestones versus service revenue versus royalties. But you could allude or you could, based on my remarks, you know that kind of the deferred service revenue is a piece that's certainly going down next year based on the comments that I've made.

Speaker 3

Got it. Super, that's helpful. And then I know academic is a smaller piece of your partner contribution, but just wondering if you're seeing any of the impact there, obviously a volatility in the markets, but more importantly, just a lot of NIH worries and whatnot. So just wondering if you're seeing any decline there?

Speaker 2

Yes. Puneet, this is Matt. Thanks for the question. I mean, obviously, there's been in regard to NIH funding, obviously, a lot of wide reporting on how changes there can or might impact academic research now and in the future. At this point, we've not seen that impacting how our ecosystem of academic partners are collaborating with us.

Speaker 2

But we're continuing to watch that space. We are in active dialogue with prospective academic partners now, and those discussions have progressed despite some of the headlines and some of the dynamic nature of the landscape. And I guess I'll also add, we'll report our numbers and new partnerships for this year when we report Q1 in May. But we actually just signed a new leading academic institution to a new deal in the last week or so with a group that's very interested in leveraging our OmniDab technology for a variety of pretty impactful areas. So that was a good thing to see.

Speaker 2

But we'll continue to watch the space.

Speaker 3

Got it. And then one more for me. You talked about fourth quarter being especially productive for additions. Has that continued into the first quarter here now into March? Thank you.

Speaker 2

Yes. I think for some of that, Puneet, in terms of the work that we're actively starting, I'd say generally, yes, it's we do get reports on other elements of our tech that come later. And so hard to say exactly. I don't know, Kurt, anything you need to add?

Speaker 1

Yes. I think Puneet, in terms of you know, just like it is with milestone revenue, right, it can be lumpy over the quarters. And specifically for this data, it's a function of when we get reports in from partners on what they're working on. Some of these don't, you know, companies, they only report quarterly. We have a few instances where they only report annually.

Speaker 1

So, be careful about reading too much into any single quarter, in terms of what's happening there. Obviously, the general trend for the year is very positive and we're looking for that to continue. But I'm not sure I would sort of try to take a ruler and draw lines based on what happened in Q4.

Speaker 3

Helpful. Okay. All right. Thank you.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Matthew Hewitt from Craig Hallum Capital Group. Your line is now open.

Speaker 5

Good afternoon. Thanks for taking the questions. Maybe first up and I just want to make sure I was reading the slides correctly. So I think you're expecting five to seven new clinical entrants this year. I would assume that most, if not all of those would trigger milestones.

Speaker 5

And then one of the slides says you've got four, that are now in Phase three. As we look out and I'm not asking for guidance, but as we look out at '26, '20 '7, it would appear that I mean as those kind of get through the clinic, there's an opportunity to see a nice step up in not only the milestones upon approval if that happens, but also in royalties. Am I thinking about that correctly?

Speaker 2

Yes. Matt, I can comment. I'm sure Kurt will have a comment just on the overall metrics that you're talking about. Obviously, we've shown a new view of our pipeline chart, right, to really focus only on the programs that have downstream economics. So and to answer your question generally, generally when a program starts a clinical trial, that will trigger a milestone in some manner.

Speaker 2

And I say it like that because every contract I mean, there can be differences in a variety of contracts. If you look across all of our programs, over 98% of them have downstream economics to us, right? So that's, I think, an important thing to keep in mind. There are programs now we've kind of pulled out of our pipeline visual representation, but for historical comparative reasons are in our overall metrics. Some of those are in later stages of development.

Speaker 2

Again, deals we that were done a long time ago that we inherited. But, yes, hopefully, that answers your question on milestones.

Speaker 5

It does. And then maybe shifting gears a little bit, it sounds like you've had some really positive feedback on OmniHab. I know last quarter you said that you had completed kind of a beta run or a beta test with a partner and then you're going to present data in December. Are you now enrolling or signing up customers or partners to that product? And if so, how should we think about the ramp of that over the year?

Speaker 5

Thank you.

Speaker 2

Yes. Thanks, Matt. So yes, partners are using OmniHub today. We on our last call, I think in November, we mentioned the fact that we'd already done some data work with early adopters, if you will. But we launched OmniHub in December at the AET conference down in San Diego.

Speaker 2

And the receptivity and the feedback has been great on that. It allows us to, within the digital format, share data and tools and things like that with our partners. And it's kind of a natural evolution and extension of our technologies as we have one, start sharing more data with more partners, have introduced things like OmniDeep, which is our suite of in silico tools that are woven throughout our platform. OmniHub was a natural technological expansion for us that we launched in December and has been going real well.

Operator

Your next Your next question comes from the line of Kripa Divarakonda from Truist Securities.

Speaker 6

So on the two licenses with, I think Insight and Portinia that you reported in Q4, could you give us any additional color either on the therapeutic areas, the indications or the platforms that they might use? And from a therapeutic area perspective, you previously had noted that Omnidap opens up a lot more possibilities, especially you mentioned neuroscience as well as oncology. Can you talk about if the trend is continuing or if it has expanded or there have been any kind of changes in that? Thank you.

Speaker 2

Yes. Akripa, thanks. On Therapeuria evolution, OmniDab, as we launched it in November of twenty twenty three, And it certainly has contributed to an uptick of partners who are interested in and are pursuing CNS targets, what I'll describe as high value CNS targets. We definitely also have partners using OmniDab with a focus on oncology and in multi specifics in areas like that, but it has certainly increased the diversity of our discovery pipeline with additions of CNS. We also see real interest in radiopharma as well.

Speaker 2

As far as both Insight and Virginia, I can't really comment on the areas that they're interested in with our platforms other than to say they have broad platform access, which gives them access to multiple species to our proprietary screening technologies and other downstream technologies and workflows. So, that's what I got for you on that.

Speaker 6

Okay, great. Thank

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Stephen Willey from Stifel. Your line is now open.

Speaker 7

Hi guys, this is Tully on for Steve. And thank you for taking the question. So, just to start with, I have a question on your preclinical discovery program. So among these five incremental or in total 20 preclinical program, Is there any particular platform that over represents the others? In other words, like I'm trying to gauge, you know, like any particular platform that's attracting more attention from customers?

Speaker 7

So that's my first question and I'll ask the second one later.

Speaker 2

Great. Thanks, Cleon. It's as far as the 20 programs in the preclinical phase, I'll just say generally, we're really pleased with the diversity of therapy areas in there. Broad therapeutic interests, really impactful indications where there are significant unmet medical need. There also is a mix in there of our source technologies, whether that's our omni rodent technologies, our bispecific technologies, omni flick and omni click, as well as our chicken based technologies as well.

Speaker 2

So, yes, it's a nice mix of diversity. Generally, as those programs enter the clinic, that's when there's more information out there about the specific targets that partners are pursuing, how they're approaching their clinical development, etcetera. And we expect we'll be able to talk more about that through the year as programs graduate from the preclinical phase to the clinical phase.

Speaker 7

Okay, great. Thank you very much. That's helpful. And my second question is actually related to one of the like advanced assets. So sudimalumab, you know, partnering with Keystone.

Speaker 7

So can you please remind me of the downstream economics related to that asset? Because Keystone sounds like they've been making significant progress on the commercial side. So the reason I'm asking this question is I'm wondering if potential royalty payment is actually embedded in 2025 guidance, revenue guidance at all.

Speaker 1

Well, I can tell you that the royalties for both sudumilumab and zembrolumab are 3% globally. So, that's the answer to that question. In terms of the guidance, I guess, the guidance includes revenue from milestones and the service revenue and royalties, although I think we don't really have a lot of insight into sort of what sales are going to be in those territories. So, I'm not sure there's a lot of upside baked into our guidance for that kind of thing.

Operator

There are no further questions at this time. I will now turn the call back over to Matt Please continue.

Speaker 2

Great. Thank you all for joining our call today. We appreciate the engagement and the questions. We'll look forward to keeping you updated on our progress and to speaking to you next quarter. So in the meantime, again, we appreciate your interest in OmniAb and have a great day.

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.

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Earnings Conference Call
OmniAb Q4 2024
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