CureVac N.V. (CVAC) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Extraordinary General Meeting of Shareholders of CureVac N.V. My name is Chris Tanner. I'm the Chairman of the Audit Committee and a member of the Supervisory Board of CureVac NV. I've been appointed by Jean Stéphenne, the Chairman of our Supervisory Board, to chair today's extraordinary general meeting on his behalf. First, allow me to introduce Dr. Alexander Zehnder, who's been nominated for appointment as Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, at this meeting; and Dr. Myriam Mendila, who has been nominated for appointment as Managing Director and Chief Development Officer at this meeting. Dr. Zehnder and Dr. Mendila will have the opportunity of introducing themselves to you when it's time to vote on their respective appointments. Also present in person today are Dr. Franz-Werner Haas, our outgoing CEO; Dr. Marco Rau, our General Counsel, who will act as Secretary of today's meeting; and our Dutch Notary, [indiscernible]. Before proceeding, I will now give the floor to the Secretary, who will discuss certain legal formalities relating to today's meeting.

Thank you, Chris. For the record, I note that today's meeting has been convened with due observance of all applicable provisions of U.S. and Dutch Law and the Company's Articles of Association. At this meeting, 159,164,046 shares, and the company's capital are represented, representing approximately 71% of the company's issued share capital. The meeting will be conducted in English. We are live streaming this extraordinary general meeting. However, please note that shareholders and others following the live stream will not be able to vote or ask questions. As an aid in the preparation of the minutes of this meeting, the proceedings will also be recorded. I now give the floor back to the Chairman.

Thank you, Marco. Before proceeding to the next item on the agenda, we'll determine the voting procedure for this meeting. The voting proxies granted to the representatives of NautaDutilh have already been tabulated and are cast in accordance with the instructions included in those proxies. Voting by other shareholders will take place by show of hands. After each vote, I will announce the voting results and determine whether the resolution has been passed or not. Unless there're any questions regarding to the method of voting, we will now proceed with the second item on the agenda. Are there any questions? The second item on the agenda is the appointment of Dr. Alexander Zehnder as Managing Director of the company. Our current CEO, Dr. Franz-Werner Haas, has resigned as Managing Director and CFO as effective March 31, 2023. I would like to take the opportunity to extend my deepest thanks to Dr. Haas on behalf of the entire Supervisory Board for his exceptional leadership, tireless commitment and outstanding dedication to the company. He led the company in truly difficult times. Thank you very much. Contingent upon Dr. Haas' resignation, our Supervisory Board has made a binding nomination to appoint Dr. Zehnder as Managing Director of the company for a period starting April 1, 2023, and ending at the Annual General Meeting of the shareholders of the company to be held in 2026. Dr. Zehnder will serve as the company's Chief Executive Officer. Further information on Dr. Zehnder is included in the explanatory notes to the convocation notice for this meeting. Dr. Zehnder is present at today's meeting. Before I give Dr. Zehnder the opportunity to say a few words to introduce himself, I would like first to give the floor to Dr. Haas.

Thank you, Chris. And a warm welcome to everyone to this Annual General Meeting, this extraordinary one, also from my side. I would like to start by saying that it has been a great privilege and an honor to shape and lead this amazing company for more than a decade. Over the past 23 years, and as the earliest pioneer in the mRNA field and technology, CureVac developed a proprietary foundational technology related to all aspects of the field, including mRNA design, delivery and manufacturing. When the world was paralyzed by the COVID-19 pandemic, these decades of scientific research, innovation and efforts to be spent played an essential role to ensure mRNA was ready to be a game changer for modern medicine to deliver a safe and efficacious life-saving medicines. As a company, we did not hesitate to venture into an uncharted territory of late-stage mRNA clinical developments and large-scale mRNA manufacturing. And while we made significant progress, we also learned a great deal and had to make some important and tough decisions along the way. I considered my greatest achievement as a CEO to have led this company through these challenging COVID-19 times and into subsequent transformation, in which we have fundamentally reset our organization and significantly grown our operational bandwidth. At the core of this reset, we have not only advanced, but also brought our most valuable assets into a strong alignment, which is our technology, our product development pipeline and our manufacturing, which was not easy. Based on the integration we achieved of these assets, we were able to execute on our broad clinical development programs on COVID-19 and flu in collaboration with our valued partner, GSK. The recently reported clinical data strongly validates the power and the great potential of our proprietary mRNA platform opening the door to new opportunities in the development of effective vaccines and therapeutics. With the achievement of this critical milestone, CureVac is now entering into a new chapter of its corporate development. I would like to thank you as shareholders, the Supervisory Board and fellow management board members, but also all mRNA people at CureVac for their trust and support during this truly exciting and inspiring journey. It was a pleasure to work with such exceptional and dedicated teams. Thank you. We have emerged as a much stronger, broader, more resilient and more capable company, which we are today. Today, our technology is secured by one of the broadest and deepest and most diverse intellectual property portfolios in the entire field. Our product development is faster and more efficient. Our manufacturing landscape is set to allow for a seamless shift between large-scale manufacturing for clinical purposes and pandemic preparedness and small-scale manufacturing for personalized medicine, the latter referred to as the mRNA Printer. As I'm now handing over the leadership to you, Alexander, CureVac is stronger than ever, and I am immensely proud of what we have achieved together. I'm convinced that Alexander's expertise and commercial experience will add a lot to the shape of the future success of CureVac and the development expertise of, you, Myriam, and to develop new drugs on the basis of what we have been building during the last past years. Thank you, and please let me now hand over to you, Alexander.

Thank you, Franz. Ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon, good morning to everybody in the room and on the webcast. First, let me begin by expressing my appreciation and respect for the exceptional work that you, Franz, have done to shape the company for more than a decade as a member of the CureVac Management Board and most importantly, during your tenure as CEO in the challenging times of the global-19 (sic) [ COVID-19 ] pandemic. Today, I'm taking the leadership of a company that is poised to make the next critical step in the transformation from a research-oriented biotech to a fully integrated commercial biopharma company. Our proprietary and clinically validated mRNA technology platforms forms the foundation to address some of the world's most challenging diseases with innovative vaccines and therapeutics. Our end-to-end capabilities ranging from research to clinical development and scalable manufacturing positions us well to be one of the leading companies in this promising field. At this inflection point for the company, I'm convinced that my experience in bringing practice-changing medicines to the market, building pipelines and shaping organization will enable us to make CureVac to the next level as a relevant commercial player. I'm a medical doctor by training, and I've been working in the pharmaceutical industry for more than 20 years across different companies, cultures and diseases in role of increasing complexity and responsibility. I had the great fortune to learn and grow at industry institutions such as Roche, Genentech and Sanofi, where I held product development and commercially focused positions across multiple business units and functional areas. Before joining CureVac, I led the global oncology franchise at Sanofi, where I was responsible in shaping one of the key future growth drivers for the company, rebuilding the portfolio, strengthening the organization, launching new medicines as well as representing the organization. I'm thrilled to bring my strategic vision and strong operational and commercial experience to the leadership of CureVac. mRNA technology has every potential to deliver practice-changing medicines and revolutionized treatments in the years to come. I'm truly inspired by CureVac's legacy as the pioneer of mRNA technology and its vast potential. I look forward to working with all the exceptional RNA people to deliver value to our shareholders and bring medical innovation made by CureVac to people and patients worldwide. With this, I would like to give the floor back to the Chairman.

Thank you, Alexander. Before we turn to vote on Dr. Zehnder appointment, I will now allow questions from the audience. Are there any questions on this topic. If there are no questions, I will put this agenda item up for voting. I remind the meeting that the voting proxies given to NautaDutilh are cast in accordance with the instructions and included in those proxies. Please raise your hand if you vote in favor of this agenda item. [Voting]

Please raise your hand if you vote against this agenda item. [Voting]