OmniAb, Inc. (NASDAQ:OABI) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Stephen Willey: Perfect. So I know over the 6 programs to enter the clinic this past year, I think 5 of those were — or 5 of those included downstream participation on the royalty front, right? I think only the Roche asset was a legacy fully paid license. I guess, of the active programs in various stages of discovery and development now, what proportion of those include downstream participation on the royalty? And have you kind of worked through a lot of those fully paid licensing transactions.

Kurt Gustafson: Yes. So Steve, this is Kurt. I’d take you back to kind of what we talked about on our Research and Technology Day kind of back in November of last year. So only about just a handful of our programs involved something where there was a prepaid license or a grandfathered license, if you will, where we don’t have economics. So we said 2% of the entire portfolio. That number still is I don’t think we’ll update that number every quarter, but it still holds as of today. So the vast majority of our programs have downstream economics. Obviously, every program is different, but — there are very few that have this sort of structure that was a prepaid license.

Matthew Foehr: Yes. And I’ll just add a little color there, too, Steve, that all of the — the 2%, which as we do new deals, that number is getting lower on across the portfolio. Those were deals that we inherited, if you will, not ones we would do today generally.

Stephen Willey: Understood. I had forgotten you guys, shared that back in November. And then, Kurt, you’re kind of referencing of expecting substantially lower cash use in 25% year-over-year relative to 24%. I think you kind of talked about that maybe a little bit on the milestone front. But — are there any other drivers there that you guys are thinking about when you think about that 2025 cash use number, is there some kind of royalty component to that as there in ion channel partnership component to that. Would just be kind of curious as to whether or not that’s just all milestones.

Kurt Gustafson: Yes. I think that’s the vast majority. I think I sort of talked about the shape of our revenue and sort of in the near-to-medium term, we think that the vast majority of revenue growth is going to come from milestones. As you start looking further out, say, 3, 4, 5 years out, I think royalties will start to be a bigger part of the revenue growth story. But yes, in terms of the way we’re looking at this, and essentially, Steve, we just — we lay out all of the partner programs and we just sort of estimate what the time lines are. And when we get to kind of 2025, there’s just a lot more catalysts in terms of events that we think could potentially happen. We don’t know for sure whether they happen, but as I kind of talked about, we take a probabilitized approach when we look at those and — but the more events, the more possibilities for additional inflows from milestones.

But yes, I mean, going back to your basic question, there’s nothing sort of — nothing else out there. This is really — the short term is going to be driven by milestone payments.

Stephen Willey: Okay. I appreciate it. And maybe just lastly Matt, you had made a comment, I think, about there being an opportunity for the ion channel and transport of partnerships with Roche and GSK to become more visible to investors, I guess, maybe over the next year or so. Is there anything more that you can just add there with respect to just kind of progress that’s being made or, I guess, anything that you can say, I’m sure Roche and GSK are driving the communication part of this, but…

Matthew Foehr: Yes. And we’ve highlighted before that we’ve got 5 ion channel programs that are active discovery programs with GSK and Roche. Sort of milestones for those 5 programs added up or over $1 billion. They’re in the — generally in the neurodegenerative area, and other areas where ion channels are critical, we do have really a rich heritage there in ion channel discovery and screening they’re all discovery stage. So I want to stress that. But we are excited about the work that’s going on and excited about the progress that we expect to make on those programs this year.

Stephen Willey: Understood. Thanks for taking the questions.

Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Matt Hewitt from Craig-Hallum. Your line is now open.

Jack Siedow: This is Jack on for Matt. We just have one question. It seems like there’s a noted pickup in activity at the end of fiscal 2023. Has that momentum carried through Q1? Or how is the quarter looking so far?

Matthew Foehr: Yes, Jack, thanks. We’ll obviously update on our metrics for Q1 when we report formally. And obviously, we get — we obviously interact with partners every day all the time. And are always working on deals from a business development perspective, but we also get reports from partners at various points during the quarter, off near the end of the quarter. So we’ll report those numbers when we report likely in the May time frame for Q1.

Jack Siedow: Okay, thank you.

Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Robyn Karnauskas from Truist. Your line is now open.

Unidentified Analyst: Hi, this is Alex [ph] on for Robyn. The progress has been really — how is it going — yes, the progress has been really, really great. We’re excited to see, we’re wondering now that the pipeline is more mature, there are more molecules in the clinic, various stages, will anything change with how you approach new partnerships and the deals that you’re considering with new partners? Let us now if the strategy will change at all now that you’re potentially at a different stage than you were before?