Ginkgo Bioworks Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:DNA) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

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Jason Kelly: Yeah. And you can think of it like front loading. So I think like, look, this is one of the things I like, I mentioned this during the talk around diversity of options like allows you to play the game differently depending on what’s happening in the environment. So if we’re concerned about like the larger macro environment, and we want to have a bigger margin of safety, absolutely. We can drive deals towards more fees and more milestones. Now as opposed to say, royalties, which, like you could argue pay more, but later, all right, to simplify it, so — or equity. I think the challenge is the fees can have a counter effect with sales. In other words, like the customers get more concerned about the fees than switching from like royalties to milestones.

So it’s a little easier for me to toggle from royalties to milestones without affecting sales, it’s a little harder to drive way higher fees and not get worried about sales. And so we have to just watch that really closely. I think obviously, we would love to do that. If you move towards profitability faster and all the things, but — it is a thing I also — we’re making a big mistake with the margin and safety we have, we slowed down our growth. Like growth is hugely valuable for Ginkgo. It adds code based, it adds foundry scale, it adds future downstream value, like we don’t want to slow down sales because we’re trying to be greedy about fees.

Matthew Sykes: Got it. All right. Thank you very much.

Anna Marie Wagner: Thanks, Matt. All right. Rahul Sarugaser from Raymond James. I’ve opened your line. Go ahead, if you want to unmute.

Rahul Sarugaser: Great. Can you hear me right?

Jason Kelly: Yeah, Rahul.

Rahul Sarugaser: Terrific. Good evening folks. Thanks so much for taking our questions. So it’s great to see ultimate it’s great to see decoupling the milestones from the , so as we now look at that essentially NPV of milestones, and you gave us a case study on Slide 22, which is terrific and good guidance. Should we be thinking of that as sort of kind of the average case study given your previous guidance of around $15 million of NPV per project, when you apply the same variables to that average case study, is it still around $15 million or is it higher? Is it lower? Can you give us just sort of directionality on that?

Anna Marie Wagner: Yes. Rahul, I might jump in and then let Mark and Jason supplement. One of the things we were trying to do with this updated sort of package of information is to give you the tools to look at — look, these are what average royalty rates look like by industry, and this is what that time line looks like. And there’s plenty of data out there around, okay, once a drug makes it to clinic, what is the probability that it gets to customers. And so based on candidly, your assumptions around probabilities of success across the portfolio and then looking at the data that we’re able to provide on a quarterly basis around program mix between industry and between different type of downstream value. We’re hopeful that, that will give you quite a few more tools to make it meant there. It’s a hard exercise even with perfect information, as Jason mentioned, but we’re trying to share the information that we have.

Rahul Sarugaser: Great. That is very helpful. And then just a very quick follow-on question perhaps for you, Mark. There were $17 million in milestones on this quarter. Could you give us a sense for any milestones that you were expecting this quarter in Q4, potentially leaking over into Q1, again, with this decoupling, we need to start actually making some more assessments as to what those — as our estimates as to what those milestones will be in the next quarter?

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