NASDAQ:OABI OmniAb Q1 2025 Earnings Report $1.33 -0.05 (-3.62%) Closing price 04:00 PM EasternExtended Trading$1.37 +0.04 (+3.01%) As of 07:16 PM Eastern Extended trading is trading that happens on electronic markets outside of regular trading hours. This is a fair market value extended hours price provided by Polygon.io. Learn more. ProfileEarnings HistoryForecast OmniAb EPS ResultsActual EPS-$0.17Consensus EPS -$0.17Beat/MissMet ExpectationsOne Year Ago EPSN/AOmniAb Revenue ResultsActual Revenue$4.15 millionExpected Revenue$4.49 millionBeat/MissMissed by -$338.00 thousandYoY Revenue GrowthN/AOmniAb Announcement DetailsQuarterQ1 2025Date5/8/2025TimeAfter Market ClosesConference Call DateThursday, May 8, 2025Conference Call Time4:30PM ETUpcoming EarningsOmniAb's Q2 2025 earnings is scheduled for Thursday, August 14, 2025, with a conference call scheduled on Thursday, August 7, 2025 at 4:30 PM ET. Check back for transcripts, audio, and key financial metrics as they become available.Conference Call ResourcesConference Call AudioConference Call TranscriptSlide DeckPress Release (8-K)Quarterly Report (10-Q)Earnings HistoryCompany ProfileSlide DeckFull Screen Slide DeckPowered by OmniAb Q1 2025 Earnings Call TranscriptProvided by QuartrMay 8, 2025 ShareLink copied to clipboard.There are 9 speakers on the call. Operator00:00:00Good afternoon, and welcome to OmniAb, Inc. First Quarter twenty twenty five Financial Results and Business Update Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in listen only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. Operator00:00:17I would now like to turn the call over to Cord Gustafson, OmniAb, Inc. Chief Financial Officer. You may begin. Speaker 100:00:26Thank you, operator, and good afternoon, everyone. This is Kurt Gustafson, OmniAb's Chief Financial Officer, and thank you all for joining our first quarter twenty twenty five financial results conference call. There are slides to accompany today's prepared remarks and they are available on our website at www.omnib.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 the federal securities laws. These forward looking statements involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to be materially different from any anticipated results. Speaker 100:01:02These 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, 05/08/2025. 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 Matt Foehr, OmniAb's President and CEO and Bob Chen, our Vice President of Discovery Systems. During today's call, we'll provide highlights on the company's business and operations, partner and technology updates and our recent financial results. Speaker 100:01:45At 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 200:01:52Thanks, Kurt. Good afternoon, everyone, and thanks for joining us today on our call. 2025 is off to a very good start and is on track with our expectations. Despite some tumble in the broader landscape and in our industry, we're continuing to sign up new partners and our pipeline of partnered programs continues to grow and to progress. Deal flow to start the year has been strong with both platform deals and recent asset based deals, and I've been impressed with the robustness of both the pace and the quality of our deals. Speaker 200:02:29Overall, we believe the foundation of our business is getting stronger. Our technology offering is highly leverageable, it's differentiated and it continues to expand. As we previously announced, we streamlined our operations early in Q1 and we remain focused on creating value for our partners and for all of our stakeholders. We've seen nice progression and favorable data from many of our partners. And today, we're also excited to be talking about another technology milestone for the company, which is the launch of the exploration partner access program that allows OmniAb partners to purchase exploration instruments for use in their own labs. Speaker 200:03:14At OmniAb, we've always been committed to driving innovation to enable drug discovery. Part of this innovation has been the development and refinement of tools that we use in our own workflows that increase speed, accuracy and efficiency. And exploration has been an important part of our work here for many years. We highlighted exploration a couple of years back at an analyst event over in San Francisco, and we've continued to make enhancements to both the hardware and the software while it served as a backbone of our internal screening work. I'll now touch on just a few of our metrics very briefly before I turn the call over to Bob to talk about some of the technical aspects of exploration. Speaker 200:04:01Moving now on to Slide five with active partners. We exited the first quarter with 95 active partners, including new deals with Harvard's Weiss Institute, Takis Biotech and Orion Corporation. The Orion deal is notable as it's related to a single ion channel antibody program. Subsequent to the end of the quarter, we also just signed actually earlier today an asset deal with Angelini Pharma for a small molecule ion channel modulator that targets Kv7.2. You might recall that this was a program that was returned to us from Roche late last year. Speaker 200:04:43As part of our deal with Angelini, we expect to receive a $3,000,000 upfront payment and have the potential to receive over 170,000,000 in contracted milestones and a royalty. Now on to Slide six, the number of active programs also grew in the first quarter. We were pleased to see that the momentum of program additions that we noted in Q4 of last year continued into Q1 of this year. And our total number of active programs grew to three seventy eight at quarter end. I'll note here as we often do that attrition or terminations are obviously a natural part of drug development. Speaker 200:05:27And we saw attrition in Q1 as well, mostly concentrated in the discovery stage as is generally expected. Now on Slide seven, As of the end of Q1, our partners had 33 active clinical programs and approved products. There was one new clinical entrant in Q1 from Genmab, and you'll see it on the pipeline chart in the appendix of today's presentation materials. As we look to the rest of the year, we continue to expect a total of five to seven new entries into clinical development for the year. Slide eight highlights the growth in our portfolio of post discovery stage assets. Speaker 200:06:14In Q1, we saw new assets advance into the preclinical stage of development, a new program enter Phase one, as I just mentioned, and a program that is now shown in Phase three that is an anti PCSK9 antibody called SAL003 with Salubris Pharmaceuticals. That antibody was discovered by WuXi using our OmniRat, and we have a three percent royalty on that Phase three stage program. I also note that Teva recently disclosed progression of TEV-four zero eight from Phase one to Phase two with a new study to evaluate safety and efficacy in adults with celiac disease. In general, it's good to see the continued growth in these post discovery stage assets, which have increased more than 39% over the last couple of years. And we continue to be excited about the diversity, the sizable future milestone potential and the potential therapeutic impacts of the assets in our preclinical stage bucket that's shown here in the orange part of the pie chart. Speaker 200:07:24We expect those will mature and will drive new clinical starts in the future. Here on Slide nine, we've highlighted some select and recent partner updates. A few of these updates and positive data disclosures occurred at last week's AACR meeting. And it's good to continue to see the progression and substantial financial investments by our partners in programs that have been enabled by our technologies. We're also looking forward to a number of partner presentations at the upcoming ASCO Annual Meeting in Chicago, which gets underway on May 30. Speaker 200:07:58And a listing of some of those are also in the appendix of our slide deck today as well. So now on to Slide 10. Bob and I are going to talk in a little more detail about our exploration partner access program that we launched today and that was described in our press release that came out right after the market close. Within our growing ecosystem of partners, there's been increasing recognition of exploration substantial value. And partners have expressed interest in integrating it within the workflows of their own labs. Speaker 200:08:35So after a lot of development and testing, which has included deployment outside of our labs, we think exploration has reached a level of technical maturity where its capabilities and reliability will be an important contributor to the screening instrument space, which we see as a growing area of interest in the industry. We're already in preliminary conversations with some of our partners, and the feedback we've received has been overwhelmingly positive. We think exploration will allow our partners to enhance and accelerate their downstream work. And importantly, this new program also has the potential to create new revenue streams for us as well. Now I'll turn the presentation over to Bob to go a little deeper on some of the key elements of the exploration technology. Speaker 200:09:27Bob? Speaker 300:09:27Thanks, Amanda. I'll pick things up with Slide 12. For the past few years, exploration has been an integral part of our discovery engine, empowering the antibody discovery services for our partners. After seeing this technology in action and the data it produces, our partners have asked, how can we get one of those? These years of supporting partner discovery has also helped us refine and mature the technology. Speaker 300:09:52This growth paired with field testing has validated exploration to a state where the instrument is now available to be offered to partners for use in their own laboratories. As a reminder from our previous analyst research and technology event that Matt referenced, exploration is an AI driven, deep functional screening instrument for analog discovery. Mining primary B cells from immunized animals has always been a tough challenge in therapeutic antibody discovery. Traditional methods can limit antibody diversity and can take weeks to complete. But with exploration, we have simplified the process into three steps. Speaker 300:10:33As shown here on slide 13, the process starts by loading B cells into a unique microcapillary array chip, which features a through hole format with 1,500,000 microcapillaries, each just 40 microns in diameter. These microcapillaries isolate B cells for various assays. Next, the chip is loaded into our instrument, which performs automated imaging of each cell. Using advanced AI computer vision, the instrument detects promising hits that match the desired antibody properties, providing precision and efficiency in identifying the best candidates. And lastly, the hits are recovered using a precise, rapid, touchless laser method to sort cells from the microcapillaries onto a recovery plate. Speaker 300:11:18After recovery, the antibodies are sequenced from the sorted cells. From a technical perspective, as described here on Slide 14, we believe that exploration represents a significant advancement in single B cell screening for antibody discovery. It provides important advantages in fast processing speed, powerful throughput, exceptional hit recovery, and ease of use combined with reliability. Our platform has rapid run times of approximately one point five hours, enabling multiple daily runs and offers 10 times more single cell screening throughput versus other instruments. This screening throughput is paired with the ability to rapidly sort thousands of live cells for large scale repertoire mining. Speaker 300:12:08Along with these advanced capabilities and speed, the instrument was designed to provide simplicity and robustness from installation to training to use. The system features no fluidics at all, which ensures simple setup with minimum maintenance. AI assisted analysis automatically scans images to find hits, leading to faster speeds and less labor and fatigue for users. Since the AI models are trained from expert user input, new users can use this expertise and leverage it, improving ease of use and reducing training. I will now turn it over to Matt to discuss some business elements relating to our exploration launch. Speaker 200:12:52Thanks, Bob. From a business perspective, and I'm now on Slide 15, we expect exploration will increase the diversity of our technology based sources of revenue. The instrument, which is built here in The United States, is available to our partners at a list price of about $500,000 Partners will also need to sign up for a subscription service that will cover proprietary software and maintenance. And in addition, there are proprietary consumables that are used in operating the instrument each time a run is performed. We're really excited about this new offering for our partners. Speaker 200:13:36And while I say all that, I also do want to emphasize that our core business of licensing novel discovery technology to the pharmaceutical industry is and remains the foundation of our strategy. And that is and what has been driving consistent growth in key partner and program metrics for multiple years. That's all unchanged. We see the offering of exploration to our partners as additive and as a natural strategic enhancement that expands and elevates our existing offerings in a highly scalable and highly leverageable way. We think now is the right time to do it as we're quickly approaching 100 active OmniAb partners. Speaker 200:14:19We're highly committed to growing the business with a clear focus on value creation and long term profitability. By consistently prioritizing innovation, efficiency and creating leverage in the business, we aim to enhance our position and deliver sustainable value to all of our stakeholders. We expect the launch of exploration will be accretive to earnings and to cash flow in both the short and the long term. And lastly for me here on Slide 16, you'll see a summary of some of the upcoming technical presentations that we have. We'll obviously be highlighting exploration next week quite extensively at the PEGS conference out in Boston. Speaker 200:15:08And one of our partners who were early adopters through a collaboration will be presenting data related to exploration as well. And with that, let me turn the call back to Kurt for a discussion of our Q1 financial results. Kurt? Speaker 100:15:26Thanks, Matt. Let me start with Slide 18 with a review of our revenue in the first quarter of twenty twenty five. We're reporting a revenue increase to $4,200,000 compared with $3,800,000 for the same period in 2024. This increase was primarily due to higher milestone revenue as a result of the Phase one milestone for the start of GENmAb's ten seventy eight clinical program. This was partially offset by lower service revenue associated with the completion of certain small molecule ion channel programs. Speaker 100:15:57Royalty revenue was also lower for the first quarter of twenty twenty five compared to the same period in 2024. Turning to Slide 19, you'll see our operating expenses for the first quarter of twenty twenty five. Operating expense declined to $23,000,000 from $26,400,000 for the prior year period. To break this down, R and D expense was $12,600,000 compared to $14,600,000 a year ago, with the decrease primarily due to lower stock based compensation expense and lower external expenses associated with small molecule ion channel programs and technology development. G and A expense declined to $7,900,000 from $8,300,000 for the same period in 2024. Speaker 100:16:40The decrease primarily due to lower legal fees and lower stock based comp. On Slide 20, focusing on the bottom section of the P and L, our net loss for the first quarter of twenty twenty five was $18,200,000 or $0.17 per share, and this compares with a net loss of $19,000,000 or $0.19 per share for the same period in 2024. Turning to Slide 21, you'll see our balance sheet as of 03/31/2025. We ended the quarter with $43,600,000 in cash and this was in line with our expectations. Q1 is traditionally our largest cash used quarter and similar to previous years, there are certain seasonal compensation items that occur in the first quarter. Speaker 100:17:27In addition, as we previously disclosed, we implemented a reduction in force in early February. This resulted in approximately $1,000,000 of additional cash outlay in the first quarter. However, we will see the benefit of lower expenses and lower cash use going forward. With regards to guidance for 2025, here on Slide 22, you'll see that we continue to expect that 2025 revenue will be between 20,000,000 and $25,000,000 We have not included any revenue contribution from the launch of the exploration partner access program in our 2025 revenue guidance. At this stage, it's difficult to predict the precise number and timing of instruments that we might sell to our partners. Speaker 100:18:14However, as Matt said, the feedback from some of our early conversations has been quite positive and we believe this program will be accretive to both earnings and cash flow. With regards to operating expense guidance, we now expect operating expense to be in the range of $85,000,000 to $90,000,000 which is lower than our previous range of 90,000,000 to $95,000,000 As a reminder, approximately 40% of our operating expense is non cash expense, which is a result of depreciation, amortization and stock based compensation. We also continue to expect that our cash used in 2025 will be lower than the cash used in 2024. And as a reminder, our cash used in 2024 was $38,900,000 excluding the 2024 ATM issuance. And finally, our guidance on the tax rate remains unchanged at approximately 0%. Speaker 100:19:07And with that, I'd like to open up the call for questions. So operator? Operator00:19:13Thank Your first question comes from Puneet Souda from Leerink Partners. Please go ahead. Speaker 400:19:50Hi. You have Michael on for Puneet. Thanks for taking my question. First has to do with the number of hey, my first question has to do with the number of programs start this quarter. It's very strong. Speaker 400:20:02I think you've matched almost half of what you did all of last year. I was wondering if you could attribute that to any particular trends and whether the strength was balanced across geographies or size of the partner, large pharma versus mid cap? Speaker 200:20:18Yes, Michael. Thanks. Yes. I mean, as I noted in the earlier remarks, we saw as we talked about in our Q4 call, I believe, we saw some nice momentum of adds at the end of twenty twenty four and that continued here in the first quarter of twenty twenty five. I think there are a lot of things that drive it candidly. Speaker 200:20:42It's continued innovation. Obviously, we've launched new technologies and new workflow enhancements over recent years. OmniDAB, which is our single chain antibody technology has driven a lot of interest from new partners. And we continue to see existing partners starting new programs. So it's good to see that. Speaker 200:21:07I always balance that with saying starts and attrition can be lumpy. There are factors like timing of reports that we may get from partners either on a quarterly or biannual or annual basis, right? So some of those things can drive lumpiness in starts and attrition. But overall, it was great to see the momentum in new program additions that we saw at the end of last year continue Q1 as well. So, I think it says a lot about, not only the work that the team is doing, but also the technologies themselves and the innovation around them. Speaker 400:21:47Great. Thank you. And then my second question has to do with the exploration platform. I just wanna make sure if I'm understanding right. So this is exclusively for people who are or partners who are, like have access to your broader platform and not just any, theoretical pharma company. Speaker 400:22:07And I was just wondering what the incremental cost associated with promoting this product will look like and how that balances with the, decrease in OpEx guide that you have. Speaker 200:22:18Yes. Yes. Thanks, Michael. So the first, I'll say, yes, this is a partner access program. So, this is making, OmniAb instruments and, the associated consumables, etcetera, available to those that are in the OmniAb ecosystem of partners, right, which at the end of Q1 was 95 partners. Speaker 200:22:45So that's kind of the answer to the first question. Obviously, updated our guidance on expense today. We've known and have been planning for the exploration partner access program launch for a while. We have positioned our organization and our plans accordingly. So, we're ready for it. Speaker 200:23:10We're positioned for it, and that's kind of built into our financial plans as well. Speaker 400:23:17Thank you very much. Speaker 100:23:19Thanks, Michael. Operator00:23:22Thank you. Your next question comes from Srikripa Devarakonda. Please go ahead from Truist Securities. Speaker 500:23:30Hi, this is Alex on for Cripa. I also have a question on the exploration partner access program. I know you said that the number of potential partners is a little bit speculative at this point in time, but any color or any, you know, benchmarks or, you know, ceiling and floor numbers that you could give, to put a boundary on that would be helpful. I imagine a lot of the partners would have, their own machinery, so maybe they would have to make a decision on whether to upgrade. And then, how fast, you know, would these partnership, discussions happen with respect to the exploration? Speaker 500:24:06You know, do you imagine that it's a you email all the different partners, and it could be of an instant rollout? Or would it take some time to get up and running with each partner? Yes. Speaker 200:24:16Yes. Thanks, Alex. A great question. Obviously, our partner base now has been growing consistently at double digit rates now for multiple years, where as I said, we're up at 95 partners. Realistically, it is a portion of those partners that are the most likely and best candidates for an exploration instrument or exploration instruments depending on the work that they do. Speaker 200:24:49And we know who those folks are. We have the benefit of having deep relationships with our partners. They're very deep technical relationships in some instances multiple years. We understand what their capabilities are. We understand their research interests. Speaker 200:25:07So that informs kind of how we're going to target the different partners. As I mentioned, we've had preliminary conversations with some partners. Those have been overwhelmingly positive and very good. But it is difficult to give any kind of exact numbers at this point. I expect as we get deeper into the launch, we'll be talking more about that here in the future. Speaker 200:25:37Next week we'll be at the PEGS conference in Boston, is a major conference for protein engineering. There'll be multiple presentations about exploration. We'll actually have an instrument in our booth and we'll be talking more about it then. So it's more a stay tuned at this point. But, again, we're excited about being able to offer this to our partners. Speaker 200:25:58We think it will streamline their workflows. It creates new revenue streams for us, only with the instruments, but with the consumables and software maintenance, etcetera. Speaker 500:26:12Thanks. It's great to see all the progress in your development. Thanks. Operator00:26:19Thank you. Your next question comes from Joe Pantginis from H. C. Wainwright. Please go ahead. Speaker 600:26:27Hey, guys. Good afternoon. Thanks for taking the questions. So, congrats on the exploration public launch now. And, wanted to see if I can get a little more color. Speaker 600:26:36Obviously, you focused on a key element of differentiation and that was the time and throughput. Are there any other key differentiators to point to? Speaker 200:26:47Yeah. You know, multiple from a simple sense, Joe, and I'll have Bob can comment and fill in. It's actually a very easy instrument to use and it's highly efficient. Obviously, it interplays very well with big data management that we've talked a lot about as we've rolled out new things like our OmniEAP and our OmniHub platforms. But actually, I'll turn it over to Bob to maybe Speaker 300:27:18I think the top line numbers of kind of the throughput and screening and speed, that's very clear. But I think one thing that to also add is that we've really matured this technology with live discovery campaigns in our hands. So the maturity probably comes from the fact that there's no the technology is designed around a no fluidic system. Right? So very often with these instrumentation, fluidics is a big Achilles heel. Speaker 300:27:42It causes leaks, clogs. It can cause some issues there, but we have a system that's very simple. And that also makes it very easy to use on a daily basis. Right? We really refine the software so that using these AI tools to help you navigate it with a guided scan and everything so that this instrument is approachable even for junior members in the lab. Speaker 600:28:04That's very helpful, actually. Thanks for that. And then I think for someone on the actual lab itself, even having the pitch of less clogs can be very powerful. So just as an addendum to prior question, wanted to see if you guys had any sort of views on the revenue opportunity, number one. And then also considering exploration and the fact that you're a tech heavy company, first, it's nice to hear that the asset is made in The U. Speaker 600:28:31S. But when you look at the individual parts and also all of the supplies needed and what have you for your current platforms, I almost feel awkward in asking this question, but what are the impacts of tariffs right now? And how do you consider this currently or potentially in the intermediate term for your cost? Speaker 200:28:51Yes. Joe, I can comment on tariffs. Kurt can talk through some of the other elements. We really both for exploration and across our business, we really don't see significant impacts to tariffs. For a lot of reasons the exploration instrument and the vast majority of the parts are all here in The U. Speaker 200:29:14S. They're built the instrument is built here in The U. S. We've built our supply chain in that way. Kurt, maybe you want to comment on the other? Speaker 100:29:24Yes. I just think with regards to other things that we use in our business, other lab supplies and things like that, they're fairly straightforward and there's multiple suppliers that we can use. So we really don't see and it's a small part of our overall operating expense. So we see very little impact, if any, from any of these tariffs. Speaker 600:29:45Great to hear. Thanks, guys. Speaker 100:29:49Thanks, Joe. Operator00:29:50Thank you. Your next question comes from Stephen Willey from Stifel Financial. Please go ahead. Speaker 700:29:58Hi, guys. This is Julian for Steve, and congrats on your progress. I just have a question regarding exploration, exploration, platform. So first of all, like, I know I understand that it is available to existing partners through this partner access program. And I'm just wondering if there is any trend. Speaker 700:30:21I I know that Matt just mentioned that there has been, you know, like, ongoing discussions with potential partners. So was there any trend in terms of, like, you know, targets that partners pursue or indications or even the size of the partners, you know, partners like large versus small, mid cap companies, etcetera? And second, like, just out of, like, naive curiosity, would it also be possible in the future to extend this program to, let's say, like, a new partner, not the current partner? So that will be my question. Thank you. Speaker 200:30:59Yeah. Great great questions. I'll take the the second one or the last one first. Part as new partners sign up, they also will have access to, the exploration platform. Right? Speaker 200:31:15And and so, like, for instance, the you know, as we sign new partners, we're always negotiating new deals. Those partners will also get access and the ability to purchase an exploration instrument from us and the ability to purchase, the custom and and proprietary, consumables. So that will, that will continue as we add, new partners. In terms of your question on, you know, specific targets and things like that, that that one becomes, one of the one of the the great things about our position in the industry with now growing platform of active programs at $3.78, nice flow addition of new programs and and these kind of deep relationship partner partnerships is you really do get a a good sense of not only where the industry is, where it's been, where it is now, and and where it's heading. And some of that, we see a lot of diversity as you get deep into our portfolio. Speaker 200:32:24Some of it also relates to the technologies that we launch. We launched OmniDAB a couple of years ago. That with that launch, we definitely saw an uptick in things like CNS disease, infectious disease, use for ADCs and multi specifics, right? So those are all areas that we continue to see of growing interest in the industry. Of course, there's always a consistent interest in oncology, in I and I and a variety of areas and metabolic disease, aging, those kinds of things. Speaker 200:33:01And we see that through our pipeline as well. But I really can't provide specific targets that folks are working on. Generally, those, become, visible as partners enter the clinic, and as they kind of pursue downstream clinical development. Speaker 700:33:21Thank you. Operator00:33:25Thank you. Your next question comes from Matt Hewitt from Craig Hallum. Please go ahead. Speaker 400:33:32Hello. This is Tal calling for Matt Hewitt. So with the new FDA decision to move away from animal testing, where does it put your business prospects, especially with the rollout of exploration platform? Some detail on that would be great. Thank you. Speaker 200:33:48Yeah. So I I think what you're referring to is, there was a FDA announcement around, essentially revising some of the requirements for antibody based medicines from a toxicology screening perspective before they go into the clinic. And so, to be clear, that's that's totally different, from what we are providing, which are transgenic animals that provide broad, bespoke antibody repertoires, in response to antigens that that partners can then screen, right? So this is a totally different part of the industry. It was actually very good to see that announcement from FDA that they were looking at streamlining entry into the clinic, which potentially across the industry, could facilitate antibody based medicines getting into the clinic faster. Speaker 200:34:47So we actually see that generally. I mean, there's a potential benefit there if it, streamlines, timelines for certain partners or certain programs or if it attracts other partners, into an antibody based modality, also has the potential to, perhaps decrease cost for antibody based medicines to get into the clinic, which we see as a benefit as well. There's a there's a scientific foundation for why, this applied to antibody based medicines because when you when you're doing, you know, in vitro work with them, you can get a much better sense of where they're going and what they're doing. And and that's one of the reasons why, I think, foundationally, the FDA made that announcement. So overall, we think that's potentially good news for the industry. Speaker 500:35:43Appreciate it. Thank you. Operator00:35:47Thank you. Your next question comes from Brendan Smith from TD Cowen. Please go ahead. Speaker 800:35:54Hey. This is Jackie on for Brendan. Thanks for taking my question. I guess, also on the bandwagon diving right into the exploration access program, sounds really awesome. Do you intend to build out additional computational or, you know, AI driven platform offerings or data packages for customers as sort of a standalone partner SaaS offering? Speaker 800:36:15And are there any specific models, datasets, areas of white space that you think would be great for your platform to really dive into? Speaker 200:36:23Yeah. Before before Bob comments on that, I'm I'm sure Bob's got all kinds of things he can he can add to that. But I'll I'll just say but first, thanks, Jack, for the question. And and and I think you see, implicit in your question is is the connection between the the various technologies we have launched over recent years. Right? Speaker 200:36:45There's been a lot of intention in what we've been doing when we launched things like our Omni Deep platform, which is a suite of in silico tools that are woven throughout our our discovery platform, including exploration and, importantly, exploration. Last year, we also launched our OmniHub platform, which is a digital platform for data sharing and tool sharing, things like that. But Bob can talk about kind of the ever evolving elements of leveraging AI and big data management and how that Speaker 300:37:18Think a few things there. I think exploration in its core abilities to just look at millions of biological variants and then recover thousands of positive events, right? And to do that, we, of course, use AI tools to support that process, to really kind of understand the image analysis, to help the user get the end profile. But, really, we view exploration overall as a great way to get large amounts of data, large amounts of functional data, in particular in our hands on antibodies against different targets. And so we really view exploration as a way to generate a large amount of data to feed into AI tools, and in our hands, kind of feed into the omni deep. Speaker 300:37:54And then there's an interplay also there of kind of as we use AI tools to select repertoires, to select analyze interest, that those sequence space can actually go back into exploration for testing. Right? So exploration actually has a very unique place to kind of rise some, benefits as AI tools get more and more developed to both make the process discovery easier and also maybe supplement the data collection to feed, new model training. Speaker 800:38:19That's great. Thank you so much for the color, and I'll, hold back for, other people to join in. Speaker 100:38:26Thanks, Jackie. Speaker 700:38:26Thanks, Jackie. Operator00:38:29Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I will now turn the call over to the OmniAb team. Please go ahead. Speaker 200:38:46Great. Thank you, operator. I'd like to thank everyone for joining today's call and for your engagement and your questions. We'll be traveling over the next few weeks to attend various investor conferences and scientific and technical conferences, and we look forward to keeping you updated. Thanks again. Operator00:39:11Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.Read morePowered by Key Takeaways OmniAb launched its Exploration Partner Access Program, offering partners a US-built screening instrument at ~$500,000 list price plus subscription and consumables, aiming to accelerate discovery workflows and create new revenue streams. The company ended Q1 2025 with 95 active partners, 378 active programs, and 33 clinical or approved products, including new deals with Harvard’s Weiss Institute, Takis Biotech, Orion Corp., and Angelini Pharma. Q1 2025 revenue increased to $4.2 million from $3.8 million year-over-year, driven by Genmab’s Phase I milestone, while net loss narrowed to $18.2 million ($0.17/share) from $19.0 million ($0.19/share). 2025 guidance remains revenue of $20 million–$25 million (excluding exploration sales), now expects operating expenses of $85 million–$90 million (down from $90 million–$95 million) and lower cash usage than $38.9 million in 2024. The Exploration instrument uses an AI-driven, no-fluidics microcapillary array to screen up to 1.5 million single B cells in ~1.5 hours, offering 10-fold throughput improvements, rapid laser-based cell recovery, and user-friendly operation. AI Generated. May Contain Errors.Conference Call Audio Live Call not available Earnings Conference CallOmniAb Q1 202500:00 / 00:00Speed:1x1.25x1.5x2x Earnings DocumentsSlide DeckPress Release(8-K)Quarterly report(10-Q) OmniAb Earnings HeadlinesChairman of OmniAb Picks Up 3.0% More StockMay 19, 2025 | uk.finance.yahoo.comQ2 Earnings Forecast for OmniAb Issued By Leerink PartnrsMay 18, 2025 | americanbankingnews.comGold Hits New Highs as Global Markets SpiralWhen Trump took office in 2017, gold was just $1,100 an ounce. By the time he left, it had soared to $1,839. Now… as new tariffs take effect, gold is breaking records again. You've hopefully already seen this in action… but gold is surpassing $3,000 per ounce for the first time EVER.May 27, 2025 | Premier Gold Co (Ad)OmniAb Showcases Innovative High-Throughput Single B-cell Screening xPloration® Platform at the 21st Annual PEGS Boston SummitMay 13, 2025 | businesswire.comIs OmniAb, Inc. (OABI) the Low Risk High Reward Stock Set to Triple by 2030?May 10, 2025 | insidermonkey.comOmniAb, Inc. (NASDAQ:OABI) Q1 2025 Earnings Call TranscriptMay 10, 2025 | msn.comSee More OmniAb Headlines Get Earnings Announcements in your inboxWant to stay updated on the latest earnings announcements and upcoming reports for companies like OmniAb? Sign up for Earnings360's daily newsletter to receive timely earnings updates on OmniAb and other key companies, straight to your email. Email Address About OmniAbOmniAb (NASDAQ:OABI), a biotechnology company, engages in the discovery and provision of therapeutic antibody discovery technologies in the United States. The company's technology platform creates and screens diverse antibody repertoires and identify optimal antibodies for partners' drug development efforts. Its OmniAb platform is the biological intelligence of proprietary transgenic animals, including OmniRat, OmniChicken, and OmniMouse that have been genetically modified to generate antibodies with human sequences to facilitate development of human therapeutic candidates. The company's OmniFlic, a bispecific rat, and OmniClic, a bispecific chicken, designed for discovery of bispecific antibody applications; OmniTaur, which provides unique structural characteristics of cow antibodies for complex targets; and OmniDeep, a suite of in silico, an AI and machine learning tools for therapeutic discovery and optimization through various technologies and capabilities. 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There are 9 speakers on the call. Operator00:00:00Good afternoon, and welcome to OmniAb, Inc. First Quarter twenty twenty five Financial Results and Business Update Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in listen only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. Operator00:00:17I would now like to turn the call over to Cord Gustafson, OmniAb, Inc. Chief Financial Officer. You may begin. Speaker 100:00:26Thank you, operator, and good afternoon, everyone. This is Kurt Gustafson, OmniAb's Chief Financial Officer, and thank you all for joining our first quarter twenty twenty five financial results conference call. There are slides to accompany today's prepared remarks and they are available on our website at www.omnib.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 the federal securities laws. These forward looking statements involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to be materially different from any anticipated results. Speaker 100:01:02These 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, 05/08/2025. 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 Matt Foehr, OmniAb's President and CEO and Bob Chen, our Vice President of Discovery Systems. During today's call, we'll provide highlights on the company's business and operations, partner and technology updates and our recent financial results. Speaker 100:01:45At 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 200:01:52Thanks, Kurt. Good afternoon, everyone, and thanks for joining us today on our call. 2025 is off to a very good start and is on track with our expectations. Despite some tumble in the broader landscape and in our industry, we're continuing to sign up new partners and our pipeline of partnered programs continues to grow and to progress. Deal flow to start the year has been strong with both platform deals and recent asset based deals, and I've been impressed with the robustness of both the pace and the quality of our deals. Speaker 200:02:29Overall, we believe the foundation of our business is getting stronger. Our technology offering is highly leverageable, it's differentiated and it continues to expand. As we previously announced, we streamlined our operations early in Q1 and we remain focused on creating value for our partners and for all of our stakeholders. We've seen nice progression and favorable data from many of our partners. And today, we're also excited to be talking about another technology milestone for the company, which is the launch of the exploration partner access program that allows OmniAb partners to purchase exploration instruments for use in their own labs. Speaker 200:03:14At OmniAb, we've always been committed to driving innovation to enable drug discovery. Part of this innovation has been the development and refinement of tools that we use in our own workflows that increase speed, accuracy and efficiency. And exploration has been an important part of our work here for many years. We highlighted exploration a couple of years back at an analyst event over in San Francisco, and we've continued to make enhancements to both the hardware and the software while it served as a backbone of our internal screening work. I'll now touch on just a few of our metrics very briefly before I turn the call over to Bob to talk about some of the technical aspects of exploration. Speaker 200:04:01Moving now on to Slide five with active partners. We exited the first quarter with 95 active partners, including new deals with Harvard's Weiss Institute, Takis Biotech and Orion Corporation. The Orion deal is notable as it's related to a single ion channel antibody program. Subsequent to the end of the quarter, we also just signed actually earlier today an asset deal with Angelini Pharma for a small molecule ion channel modulator that targets Kv7.2. You might recall that this was a program that was returned to us from Roche late last year. Speaker 200:04:43As part of our deal with Angelini, we expect to receive a $3,000,000 upfront payment and have the potential to receive over 170,000,000 in contracted milestones and a royalty. Now on to Slide six, the number of active programs also grew in the first quarter. We were pleased to see that the momentum of program additions that we noted in Q4 of last year continued into Q1 of this year. And our total number of active programs grew to three seventy eight at quarter end. I'll note here as we often do that attrition or terminations are obviously a natural part of drug development. Speaker 200:05:27And we saw attrition in Q1 as well, mostly concentrated in the discovery stage as is generally expected. Now on Slide seven, As of the end of Q1, our partners had 33 active clinical programs and approved products. There was one new clinical entrant in Q1 from Genmab, and you'll see it on the pipeline chart in the appendix of today's presentation materials. As we look to the rest of the year, we continue to expect a total of five to seven new entries into clinical development for the year. Slide eight highlights the growth in our portfolio of post discovery stage assets. Speaker 200:06:14In Q1, we saw new assets advance into the preclinical stage of development, a new program enter Phase one, as I just mentioned, and a program that is now shown in Phase three that is an anti PCSK9 antibody called SAL003 with Salubris Pharmaceuticals. That antibody was discovered by WuXi using our OmniRat, and we have a three percent royalty on that Phase three stage program. I also note that Teva recently disclosed progression of TEV-four zero eight from Phase one to Phase two with a new study to evaluate safety and efficacy in adults with celiac disease. In general, it's good to see the continued growth in these post discovery stage assets, which have increased more than 39% over the last couple of years. And we continue to be excited about the diversity, the sizable future milestone potential and the potential therapeutic impacts of the assets in our preclinical stage bucket that's shown here in the orange part of the pie chart. Speaker 200:07:24We expect those will mature and will drive new clinical starts in the future. Here on Slide nine, we've highlighted some select and recent partner updates. A few of these updates and positive data disclosures occurred at last week's AACR meeting. And it's good to continue to see the progression and substantial financial investments by our partners in programs that have been enabled by our technologies. We're also looking forward to a number of partner presentations at the upcoming ASCO Annual Meeting in Chicago, which gets underway on May 30. Speaker 200:07:58And a listing of some of those are also in the appendix of our slide deck today as well. So now on to Slide 10. Bob and I are going to talk in a little more detail about our exploration partner access program that we launched today and that was described in our press release that came out right after the market close. Within our growing ecosystem of partners, there's been increasing recognition of exploration substantial value. And partners have expressed interest in integrating it within the workflows of their own labs. Speaker 200:08:35So after a lot of development and testing, which has included deployment outside of our labs, we think exploration has reached a level of technical maturity where its capabilities and reliability will be an important contributor to the screening instrument space, which we see as a growing area of interest in the industry. We're already in preliminary conversations with some of our partners, and the feedback we've received has been overwhelmingly positive. We think exploration will allow our partners to enhance and accelerate their downstream work. And importantly, this new program also has the potential to create new revenue streams for us as well. Now I'll turn the presentation over to Bob to go a little deeper on some of the key elements of the exploration technology. Speaker 200:09:27Bob? Speaker 300:09:27Thanks, Amanda. I'll pick things up with Slide 12. For the past few years, exploration has been an integral part of our discovery engine, empowering the antibody discovery services for our partners. After seeing this technology in action and the data it produces, our partners have asked, how can we get one of those? These years of supporting partner discovery has also helped us refine and mature the technology. Speaker 300:09:52This growth paired with field testing has validated exploration to a state where the instrument is now available to be offered to partners for use in their own laboratories. As a reminder from our previous analyst research and technology event that Matt referenced, exploration is an AI driven, deep functional screening instrument for analog discovery. Mining primary B cells from immunized animals has always been a tough challenge in therapeutic antibody discovery. Traditional methods can limit antibody diversity and can take weeks to complete. But with exploration, we have simplified the process into three steps. Speaker 300:10:33As shown here on slide 13, the process starts by loading B cells into a unique microcapillary array chip, which features a through hole format with 1,500,000 microcapillaries, each just 40 microns in diameter. These microcapillaries isolate B cells for various assays. Next, the chip is loaded into our instrument, which performs automated imaging of each cell. Using advanced AI computer vision, the instrument detects promising hits that match the desired antibody properties, providing precision and efficiency in identifying the best candidates. And lastly, the hits are recovered using a precise, rapid, touchless laser method to sort cells from the microcapillaries onto a recovery plate. Speaker 300:11:18After recovery, the antibodies are sequenced from the sorted cells. From a technical perspective, as described here on Slide 14, we believe that exploration represents a significant advancement in single B cell screening for antibody discovery. It provides important advantages in fast processing speed, powerful throughput, exceptional hit recovery, and ease of use combined with reliability. Our platform has rapid run times of approximately one point five hours, enabling multiple daily runs and offers 10 times more single cell screening throughput versus other instruments. This screening throughput is paired with the ability to rapidly sort thousands of live cells for large scale repertoire mining. Speaker 300:12:08Along with these advanced capabilities and speed, the instrument was designed to provide simplicity and robustness from installation to training to use. The system features no fluidics at all, which ensures simple setup with minimum maintenance. AI assisted analysis automatically scans images to find hits, leading to faster speeds and less labor and fatigue for users. Since the AI models are trained from expert user input, new users can use this expertise and leverage it, improving ease of use and reducing training. I will now turn it over to Matt to discuss some business elements relating to our exploration launch. Speaker 200:12:52Thanks, Bob. From a business perspective, and I'm now on Slide 15, we expect exploration will increase the diversity of our technology based sources of revenue. The instrument, which is built here in The United States, is available to our partners at a list price of about $500,000 Partners will also need to sign up for a subscription service that will cover proprietary software and maintenance. And in addition, there are proprietary consumables that are used in operating the instrument each time a run is performed. We're really excited about this new offering for our partners. Speaker 200:13:36And while I say all that, I also do want to emphasize that our core business of licensing novel discovery technology to the pharmaceutical industry is and remains the foundation of our strategy. And that is and what has been driving consistent growth in key partner and program metrics for multiple years. That's all unchanged. We see the offering of exploration to our partners as additive and as a natural strategic enhancement that expands and elevates our existing offerings in a highly scalable and highly leverageable way. We think now is the right time to do it as we're quickly approaching 100 active OmniAb partners. Speaker 200:14:19We're highly committed to growing the business with a clear focus on value creation and long term profitability. By consistently prioritizing innovation, efficiency and creating leverage in the business, we aim to enhance our position and deliver sustainable value to all of our stakeholders. We expect the launch of exploration will be accretive to earnings and to cash flow in both the short and the long term. And lastly for me here on Slide 16, you'll see a summary of some of the upcoming technical presentations that we have. We'll obviously be highlighting exploration next week quite extensively at the PEGS conference out in Boston. Speaker 200:15:08And one of our partners who were early adopters through a collaboration will be presenting data related to exploration as well. And with that, let me turn the call back to Kurt for a discussion of our Q1 financial results. Kurt? Speaker 100:15:26Thanks, Matt. Let me start with Slide 18 with a review of our revenue in the first quarter of twenty twenty five. We're reporting a revenue increase to $4,200,000 compared with $3,800,000 for the same period in 2024. This increase was primarily due to higher milestone revenue as a result of the Phase one milestone for the start of GENmAb's ten seventy eight clinical program. This was partially offset by lower service revenue associated with the completion of certain small molecule ion channel programs. Speaker 100:15:57Royalty revenue was also lower for the first quarter of twenty twenty five compared to the same period in 2024. Turning to Slide 19, you'll see our operating expenses for the first quarter of twenty twenty five. Operating expense declined to $23,000,000 from $26,400,000 for the prior year period. To break this down, R and D expense was $12,600,000 compared to $14,600,000 a year ago, with the decrease primarily due to lower stock based compensation expense and lower external expenses associated with small molecule ion channel programs and technology development. G and A expense declined to $7,900,000 from $8,300,000 for the same period in 2024. Speaker 100:16:40The decrease primarily due to lower legal fees and lower stock based comp. On Slide 20, focusing on the bottom section of the P and L, our net loss for the first quarter of twenty twenty five was $18,200,000 or $0.17 per share, and this compares with a net loss of $19,000,000 or $0.19 per share for the same period in 2024. Turning to Slide 21, you'll see our balance sheet as of 03/31/2025. We ended the quarter with $43,600,000 in cash and this was in line with our expectations. Q1 is traditionally our largest cash used quarter and similar to previous years, there are certain seasonal compensation items that occur in the first quarter. Speaker 100:17:27In addition, as we previously disclosed, we implemented a reduction in force in early February. This resulted in approximately $1,000,000 of additional cash outlay in the first quarter. However, we will see the benefit of lower expenses and lower cash use going forward. With regards to guidance for 2025, here on Slide 22, you'll see that we continue to expect that 2025 revenue will be between 20,000,000 and $25,000,000 We have not included any revenue contribution from the launch of the exploration partner access program in our 2025 revenue guidance. At this stage, it's difficult to predict the precise number and timing of instruments that we might sell to our partners. Speaker 100:18:14However, as Matt said, the feedback from some of our early conversations has been quite positive and we believe this program will be accretive to both earnings and cash flow. With regards to operating expense guidance, we now expect operating expense to be in the range of $85,000,000 to $90,000,000 which is lower than our previous range of 90,000,000 to $95,000,000 As a reminder, approximately 40% of our operating expense is non cash expense, which is a result of depreciation, amortization and stock based compensation. We also continue to expect that our cash used in 2025 will be lower than the cash used in 2024. And as a reminder, our cash used in 2024 was $38,900,000 excluding the 2024 ATM issuance. And finally, our guidance on the tax rate remains unchanged at approximately 0%. Speaker 100:19:07And with that, I'd like to open up the call for questions. So operator? Operator00:19:13Thank Your first question comes from Puneet Souda from Leerink Partners. Please go ahead. Speaker 400:19:50Hi. You have Michael on for Puneet. Thanks for taking my question. First has to do with the number of hey, my first question has to do with the number of programs start this quarter. It's very strong. Speaker 400:20:02I think you've matched almost half of what you did all of last year. I was wondering if you could attribute that to any particular trends and whether the strength was balanced across geographies or size of the partner, large pharma versus mid cap? Speaker 200:20:18Yes, Michael. Thanks. Yes. I mean, as I noted in the earlier remarks, we saw as we talked about in our Q4 call, I believe, we saw some nice momentum of adds at the end of twenty twenty four and that continued here in the first quarter of twenty twenty five. I think there are a lot of things that drive it candidly. Speaker 200:20:42It's continued innovation. Obviously, we've launched new technologies and new workflow enhancements over recent years. OmniDAB, which is our single chain antibody technology has driven a lot of interest from new partners. And we continue to see existing partners starting new programs. So it's good to see that. Speaker 200:21:07I always balance that with saying starts and attrition can be lumpy. There are factors like timing of reports that we may get from partners either on a quarterly or biannual or annual basis, right? So some of those things can drive lumpiness in starts and attrition. But overall, it was great to see the momentum in new program additions that we saw at the end of last year continue Q1 as well. So, I think it says a lot about, not only the work that the team is doing, but also the technologies themselves and the innovation around them. Speaker 400:21:47Great. Thank you. And then my second question has to do with the exploration platform. I just wanna make sure if I'm understanding right. So this is exclusively for people who are or partners who are, like have access to your broader platform and not just any, theoretical pharma company. Speaker 400:22:07And I was just wondering what the incremental cost associated with promoting this product will look like and how that balances with the, decrease in OpEx guide that you have. Speaker 200:22:18Yes. Yes. Thanks, Michael. So the first, I'll say, yes, this is a partner access program. So, this is making, OmniAb instruments and, the associated consumables, etcetera, available to those that are in the OmniAb ecosystem of partners, right, which at the end of Q1 was 95 partners. Speaker 200:22:45So that's kind of the answer to the first question. Obviously, updated our guidance on expense today. We've known and have been planning for the exploration partner access program launch for a while. We have positioned our organization and our plans accordingly. So, we're ready for it. Speaker 200:23:10We're positioned for it, and that's kind of built into our financial plans as well. Speaker 400:23:17Thank you very much. Speaker 100:23:19Thanks, Michael. Operator00:23:22Thank you. Your next question comes from Srikripa Devarakonda. Please go ahead from Truist Securities. Speaker 500:23:30Hi, this is Alex on for Cripa. I also have a question on the exploration partner access program. I know you said that the number of potential partners is a little bit speculative at this point in time, but any color or any, you know, benchmarks or, you know, ceiling and floor numbers that you could give, to put a boundary on that would be helpful. I imagine a lot of the partners would have, their own machinery, so maybe they would have to make a decision on whether to upgrade. And then, how fast, you know, would these partnership, discussions happen with respect to the exploration? Speaker 500:24:06You know, do you imagine that it's a you email all the different partners, and it could be of an instant rollout? Or would it take some time to get up and running with each partner? Yes. Speaker 200:24:16Yes. Thanks, Alex. A great question. Obviously, our partner base now has been growing consistently at double digit rates now for multiple years, where as I said, we're up at 95 partners. Realistically, it is a portion of those partners that are the most likely and best candidates for an exploration instrument or exploration instruments depending on the work that they do. Speaker 200:24:49And we know who those folks are. We have the benefit of having deep relationships with our partners. They're very deep technical relationships in some instances multiple years. We understand what their capabilities are. We understand their research interests. Speaker 200:25:07So that informs kind of how we're going to target the different partners. As I mentioned, we've had preliminary conversations with some partners. Those have been overwhelmingly positive and very good. But it is difficult to give any kind of exact numbers at this point. I expect as we get deeper into the launch, we'll be talking more about that here in the future. Speaker 200:25:37Next week we'll be at the PEGS conference in Boston, is a major conference for protein engineering. There'll be multiple presentations about exploration. We'll actually have an instrument in our booth and we'll be talking more about it then. So it's more a stay tuned at this point. But, again, we're excited about being able to offer this to our partners. Speaker 200:25:58We think it will streamline their workflows. It creates new revenue streams for us, only with the instruments, but with the consumables and software maintenance, etcetera. Speaker 500:26:12Thanks. It's great to see all the progress in your development. Thanks. Operator00:26:19Thank you. Your next question comes from Joe Pantginis from H. C. Wainwright. Please go ahead. Speaker 600:26:27Hey, guys. Good afternoon. Thanks for taking the questions. So, congrats on the exploration public launch now. And, wanted to see if I can get a little more color. Speaker 600:26:36Obviously, you focused on a key element of differentiation and that was the time and throughput. Are there any other key differentiators to point to? Speaker 200:26:47Yeah. You know, multiple from a simple sense, Joe, and I'll have Bob can comment and fill in. It's actually a very easy instrument to use and it's highly efficient. Obviously, it interplays very well with big data management that we've talked a lot about as we've rolled out new things like our OmniEAP and our OmniHub platforms. But actually, I'll turn it over to Bob to maybe Speaker 300:27:18I think the top line numbers of kind of the throughput and screening and speed, that's very clear. But I think one thing that to also add is that we've really matured this technology with live discovery campaigns in our hands. So the maturity probably comes from the fact that there's no the technology is designed around a no fluidic system. Right? So very often with these instrumentation, fluidics is a big Achilles heel. Speaker 300:27:42It causes leaks, clogs. It can cause some issues there, but we have a system that's very simple. And that also makes it very easy to use on a daily basis. Right? We really refine the software so that using these AI tools to help you navigate it with a guided scan and everything so that this instrument is approachable even for junior members in the lab. Speaker 600:28:04That's very helpful, actually. Thanks for that. And then I think for someone on the actual lab itself, even having the pitch of less clogs can be very powerful. So just as an addendum to prior question, wanted to see if you guys had any sort of views on the revenue opportunity, number one. And then also considering exploration and the fact that you're a tech heavy company, first, it's nice to hear that the asset is made in The U. Speaker 600:28:31S. But when you look at the individual parts and also all of the supplies needed and what have you for your current platforms, I almost feel awkward in asking this question, but what are the impacts of tariffs right now? And how do you consider this currently or potentially in the intermediate term for your cost? Speaker 200:28:51Yes. Joe, I can comment on tariffs. Kurt can talk through some of the other elements. We really both for exploration and across our business, we really don't see significant impacts to tariffs. For a lot of reasons the exploration instrument and the vast majority of the parts are all here in The U. Speaker 200:29:14S. They're built the instrument is built here in The U. S. We've built our supply chain in that way. Kurt, maybe you want to comment on the other? Speaker 100:29:24Yes. I just think with regards to other things that we use in our business, other lab supplies and things like that, they're fairly straightforward and there's multiple suppliers that we can use. So we really don't see and it's a small part of our overall operating expense. So we see very little impact, if any, from any of these tariffs. Speaker 600:29:45Great to hear. Thanks, guys. Speaker 100:29:49Thanks, Joe. Operator00:29:50Thank you. Your next question comes from Stephen Willey from Stifel Financial. Please go ahead. Speaker 700:29:58Hi, guys. This is Julian for Steve, and congrats on your progress. I just have a question regarding exploration, exploration, platform. So first of all, like, I know I understand that it is available to existing partners through this partner access program. And I'm just wondering if there is any trend. Speaker 700:30:21I I know that Matt just mentioned that there has been, you know, like, ongoing discussions with potential partners. So was there any trend in terms of, like, you know, targets that partners pursue or indications or even the size of the partners, you know, partners like large versus small, mid cap companies, etcetera? And second, like, just out of, like, naive curiosity, would it also be possible in the future to extend this program to, let's say, like, a new partner, not the current partner? So that will be my question. Thank you. Speaker 200:30:59Yeah. Great great questions. I'll take the the second one or the last one first. Part as new partners sign up, they also will have access to, the exploration platform. Right? Speaker 200:31:15And and so, like, for instance, the you know, as we sign new partners, we're always negotiating new deals. Those partners will also get access and the ability to purchase an exploration instrument from us and the ability to purchase, the custom and and proprietary, consumables. So that will, that will continue as we add, new partners. In terms of your question on, you know, specific targets and things like that, that that one becomes, one of the one of the the great things about our position in the industry with now growing platform of active programs at $3.78, nice flow addition of new programs and and these kind of deep relationship partner partnerships is you really do get a a good sense of not only where the industry is, where it's been, where it is now, and and where it's heading. And some of that, we see a lot of diversity as you get deep into our portfolio. Speaker 200:32:24Some of it also relates to the technologies that we launch. We launched OmniDAB a couple of years ago. That with that launch, we definitely saw an uptick in things like CNS disease, infectious disease, use for ADCs and multi specifics, right? So those are all areas that we continue to see of growing interest in the industry. Of course, there's always a consistent interest in oncology, in I and I and a variety of areas and metabolic disease, aging, those kinds of things. Speaker 200:33:01And we see that through our pipeline as well. But I really can't provide specific targets that folks are working on. Generally, those, become, visible as partners enter the clinic, and as they kind of pursue downstream clinical development. Speaker 700:33:21Thank you. Operator00:33:25Thank you. Your next question comes from Matt Hewitt from Craig Hallum. Please go ahead. Speaker 400:33:32Hello. This is Tal calling for Matt Hewitt. So with the new FDA decision to move away from animal testing, where does it put your business prospects, especially with the rollout of exploration platform? Some detail on that would be great. Thank you. Speaker 200:33:48Yeah. So I I think what you're referring to is, there was a FDA announcement around, essentially revising some of the requirements for antibody based medicines from a toxicology screening perspective before they go into the clinic. And so, to be clear, that's that's totally different, from what we are providing, which are transgenic animals that provide broad, bespoke antibody repertoires, in response to antigens that that partners can then screen, right? So this is a totally different part of the industry. It was actually very good to see that announcement from FDA that they were looking at streamlining entry into the clinic, which potentially across the industry, could facilitate antibody based medicines getting into the clinic faster. Speaker 200:34:47So we actually see that generally. I mean, there's a potential benefit there if it, streamlines, timelines for certain partners or certain programs or if it attracts other partners, into an antibody based modality, also has the potential to, perhaps decrease cost for antibody based medicines to get into the clinic, which we see as a benefit as well. There's a there's a scientific foundation for why, this applied to antibody based medicines because when you when you're doing, you know, in vitro work with them, you can get a much better sense of where they're going and what they're doing. And and that's one of the reasons why, I think, foundationally, the FDA made that announcement. So overall, we think that's potentially good news for the industry. Speaker 500:35:43Appreciate it. Thank you. Operator00:35:47Thank you. Your next question comes from Brendan Smith from TD Cowen. Please go ahead. Speaker 800:35:54Hey. This is Jackie on for Brendan. Thanks for taking my question. I guess, also on the bandwagon diving right into the exploration access program, sounds really awesome. Do you intend to build out additional computational or, you know, AI driven platform offerings or data packages for customers as sort of a standalone partner SaaS offering? Speaker 800:36:15And are there any specific models, datasets, areas of white space that you think would be great for your platform to really dive into? Speaker 200:36:23Yeah. Before before Bob comments on that, I'm I'm sure Bob's got all kinds of things he can he can add to that. But I'll I'll just say but first, thanks, Jack, for the question. And and and I think you see, implicit in your question is is the connection between the the various technologies we have launched over recent years. Right? Speaker 200:36:45There's been a lot of intention in what we've been doing when we launched things like our Omni Deep platform, which is a suite of in silico tools that are woven throughout our our discovery platform, including exploration and, importantly, exploration. Last year, we also launched our OmniHub platform, which is a digital platform for data sharing and tool sharing, things like that. But Bob can talk about kind of the ever evolving elements of leveraging AI and big data management and how that Speaker 300:37:18Think a few things there. I think exploration in its core abilities to just look at millions of biological variants and then recover thousands of positive events, right? And to do that, we, of course, use AI tools to support that process, to really kind of understand the image analysis, to help the user get the end profile. But, really, we view exploration overall as a great way to get large amounts of data, large amounts of functional data, in particular in our hands on antibodies against different targets. And so we really view exploration as a way to generate a large amount of data to feed into AI tools, and in our hands, kind of feed into the omni deep. Speaker 300:37:54And then there's an interplay also there of kind of as we use AI tools to select repertoires, to select analyze interest, that those sequence space can actually go back into exploration for testing. Right? So exploration actually has a very unique place to kind of rise some, benefits as AI tools get more and more developed to both make the process discovery easier and also maybe supplement the data collection to feed, new model training. Speaker 800:38:19That's great. Thank you so much for the color, and I'll, hold back for, other people to join in. Speaker 100:38:26Thanks, Jackie. Speaker 700:38:26Thanks, Jackie. Operator00:38:29Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I will now turn the call over to the OmniAb team. Please go ahead. Speaker 200:38:46Great. Thank you, operator. I'd like to thank everyone for joining today's call and for your engagement and your questions. We'll be traveling over the next few weeks to attend various investor conferences and scientific and technical conferences, and we look forward to keeping you updated. Thanks again. Operator00:39:11Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.Read morePowered by