Kodiak Sciences Inc. (KOD) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, and welcome to the Kodiak Sciences 2020 Annual Meeting of Shareholders. I will now turn it over to Dr. David Perlroth (sic) [ Dr. Victor Perlroth ].

Good morning. This is Victor Perlroth, and I'm the Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of Kodiak Sciences Inc. I'm very happy to welcome you to the Kodiak Sciences 2020 Annual Stockholders Meeting. The meeting will now officially come to order. The time is 9 a.m. Pacific on Monday, June 8, 2020, and the polls are now open for voting on all matters to be presented. As you know, we are hosting today's meeting through the Pluralsight Virtual online platform hosted by Mediant Communications. This meeting is being recorded and will be available via webcast on our corporate website for 1 year after the date of the annual meeting at www.kodiak.com. Before we proceed with the formal business of the meeting, I'd like to introduce you to a few of the Kodiak leaders with us virtually today. John Borgeson, our Senior Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Secretary; Jason Ehrlich, our Senior Vice President, Chief Medical Officer and Chief Development Officer; [ Gordon Chiu ], our Executive Director of Finance. I'd also like to introduce Lindsey Piziali, PricewaterhouseCoopers, the company's independent registered public accounting firm; Chris Eydt of Mediant; and Carlton Fleming of Cooley, the company's outside legal counsel, who are also in attendance virtually and available to respond to appropriate questions as needed. We'll proceed with the formal business of the meeting in the order set forth in the notice of annual meeting and proxy statement. We will first present the 2 proposals submitted for approval by our Board. We will take questions related to the proposals after all of the proposals have been presented, after which we will announce the preliminary results of the voting. As I mentioned earlier, the polls are open for voting on all matters to be presented. Each share of common stock is entitled to 1 vote. After I describe each item to be voted on, we will close the polls. We will not accept ballots, proxies, revocations or changes after the closing of the polls. If you have already submitted your vote by proxy and do not wish to change your vote, you do not need to vote now and your shares will be voted as previously instructed. If you intend to vote and have not already done so, you must submit your vote online now in order for it to be counted. If you have not voted, I encourage you to vote online at this time. After the formal part of our meeting has concluded, we will answer any appropriate questions you may have. You should now all have a copy of the rules of conduct for this meeting. In order to conduct an orderly meeting, we ask that you follow these rules. Stockholders who are attending this meeting with the valid link received after pre-registering with the control number included in the notice of annual meeting, proxy card or voting instruction form, may submit questions or comments for the Q&A portion of this meeting through the text box located on the virtual meeting screen. We will try to answer questions submitted that are germane to the proposals and/or this meeting as and if we have time. Mr. Borgeson will evaluate incoming questions and during the Q&A portions of the meeting will read germane questions out loud before we respond. Please submit your questions now to make sure they are received in a timely fashion for our review and response. Will the Secretary please report at this time with respect to the mailing of the notice of the meeting and the stockholders list?

I have at this meeting a complete list of the holders of record of the company's common stock on April 9, 2020, the record date for this meeting. A list of stockholders of record is available for inspection by stockholders of record during this meeting for any reason germane to this meeting. Included in the e-mail sent to shareholders just shortly before this meeting is a link where you can access the shareholder list. You must enter your previously provided control number to access the list. I have also an affidavit certifying that on April 28, 2020, a notice of Annual Meeting of Shareholders of the company was deposited in the United States Mail to all stockholders of record at the close of business on April 9, 2020.

At this time, I'd like to introduce [ Gordon Chiu ], the company's Executive Director of Finance, who is present virtually. I'm appointing Mr. [ Chiu ] to act as inspector of election at this meeting. Mr. [ Chiu ] has taken and subscribed the customary oath of office to execute his duties with strict impartiality. We will file this oath with the records of the meeting. His function is to decide upon the qualification of voters, accept their votes and when balloting on all matters is completed, to tally the final votes. Will the Secretary please report at this time with respect to the existence of a quorum?

I have been informed by the inspector of election that proxies have been received with 39,113,417 of the 44,452,701 shares of common stock outstanding on the record date, which represents approximately 87.99% of the total number of outstanding shares. This constitutes a quorum for the meeting today, and we may now carry out the official business of the meeting.

We will now proceed with the formal business of this meeting. After all of the proposals have been described, we will answer any questions related to the proposal submitted online. As a reminder, we ask that any comments or questions during this portion of the meeting pertain only to these proposals. Please submit any questions as soon as possible for our review. There are 2 proposals to be considered by the stockholders at this meeting. The first item of business is the election of 3 Class II directors to serve until the 2023 annual meeting and until their successors are elected. The nominees for Class II directors are Taiyin Yang, Bassil Dahiyat and Charles Bancroft. The second item of business today is the ratification of the selection by the Audit Committee of the Board of Directors of PricewaterhouseCoopers as the independent registered public accounting firm of the company for the fiscal year ending December 31, 2020. That was the final proposal for today's meeting. We will now review if there are any questions submitted about the proposals before we close the polls. As a reminder, we will only review and answer questions at this time that pertain to these proposals. Please note that our discussion today may include forward-looking statements, and our actual results may differ materially from those described here. Additional information concerning factors that could cause such a difference can be found at our most recently filed quarterly report on Form 10-Q and annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2019. John, are there any questions?

We do have a question, Victor. The question from a shareholder is what is the 5-year outlook for Kodiak.

The question is what is the 5-year outlook for Kodiak. Well, Kodiak is a biotech company engaged in drug development and in particular, the research and development of medicines for ophthalmology, and in particular, retina. We're engaged in the development of new retinal medicines. And our lead medicine is called KSI-301, and it's built on top of our ABC Platform, our antibody biopolymer conjugate platform. We also have other medicines in our pipeline that are also built on our ABC Platform for ophthalmology and retina. Our second medicine is called KSI-501, and we have medicines further behind in the pipeline, called KSI-601 that is also built on our ABC Platform. In terms of growth for Kodiak over the next 5 years, a critical component is the progression of our lead compound KSI-301. It's in the middle of 1 registrational study, and we're in the process of initiating an additional 3 to 4 registrational studies or pivotal studies or Phase II or Phase III studies in September of this year or certainly in the third or fourth quarter of this year. And so a key component of Kodiak's growth will be the progression of KSI-301 through the pivotal program to generate pivotal data, which we hope to be able to share with regulators in the United States and globally for the approval and licensure and commercialization of KSI-301 and our other earlier compounds in development. So if we can accomplish our 2022 vision of submitting a BLA for KSI-301 in 2022 towards approval in 2023, followed by a subsequent commercialization, our hope and our objective will be to be a commercial company within the next 5 years on a global basis. Thank you.

That's all.

There are no further questions. The time is now 9:09 a.m. Pacific and the polls are now closed for voting. May we have the results of the voting?

The report of the inspector of election covering the proposals presented at this meeting is as follows: The proposal to elect Dr. Yang, Dr. Dahiyat and Mr. Bancroft as Class II directors of the company is carried. The selection of PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP as the company's independent registered public accounting term for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2020, is ratified.

This concludes the formal portion of today's meeting, and the annual meeting is now adjourned. That is all the time we have for today. It appears there are no additional questions. Thank you again for your attendance at today's meeting and for your continued support of Kodiak.