NeoGenomics, Inc. (NEO) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning and welcome to the 2021 NeoGenomics, Inc. Annual Meeting of the Stockholders. I would like to introduce, Mark Mallon, CEO of NeoGenomics, Inc.

Thank you. Good morning and welcome to the 2021 Annual Stockholder's Meeting of NeoGenomics. I'm Mark Mallon, CEO of NeoGenomics. It is my great pleasure to welcome you here today for this meeting and to introduce Mr. Doug VanOort, our Chairman of the Board. Doug?

Well, thank you, Mark, and welcome, everyone. We're excited to be hosting this meeting virtually, which allows us to be more inclusive and reach a greater number of stockholders. As is customary, we will conduct the business portion of our meeting first and answer questions at the end of the meeting. Though we may not be able to answer every question, we will do our best to provide a response to as many as possible. It is now 10:00 a.m. Eastern Standard time on May 27, 2021, and this meeting is officially called to order. We would like to welcome members of our Board of Directors, including Ms. Lynn Tetrault; Mr. Kevin Johnson; Dr. Alison Hannah; Mr. Steve Kanovsky; and Mr. Michael Kelly. We would also like to introduce you to the senior members of the management team in attendance today. Mr. William Bonello; Mr. George Cardoza; and Ms. Jennifer Balliet. Now it is my pleasure to introduce Kathryn McKenzie, our Chief Financial Officer, who will act as Secretary of the meeting. I will turn to her with any procedural issues that may arise.

Thank you, Doug. We are also joined here today by Bruce Rucks and Bree Hillman, representative of our independent auditors, Deloitte & Touche LLP. I have been appointed by the Board of Directors to serve as inspector of elections. My role is to certify the results of all voting accomplished before the meeting as well as recording and certifying all votes registered at this meeting. After the formal [Audio Gap] and certifying all votes registered at this meeting. After the formal meeting has been adjourned, we will provide time for general questions. Only validated stockholders may ask questions in the designated field on the web portal. Out of consideration for others, please limit yourself to one question. A webcast playback will be available 24 hours after completion of the meeting. However, no one attending via the webcast or telephone is permitted to use any recording device. I will now turn it back to Doug.

Thank you, Kathryn. This annual meeting has been duly called in accordance with the provisions of the bylaws of the company and the relevant laws of the Nevada Revised Statutes. The Board of Directors fixed March 31, 2021, as the record date for determining stockholders entitled to vote at this meeting. An Affidavit has been delivered attesting to the fact that, either a notice of Internet availability of the note of the meeting, the proxy statement and the 2021 annual report to shareholders or the documents themselves were mailed on or about April 15, 2021, to all stockholders as of the record date and will be incorporated into the minutes of this meeting. The stockholder list shows that as of the record date, there were 117,046,693 shares of common stock outstanding entitled to vote at this meeting. We were informed by the inspector of elections that there are represented in-person or by proxy shares of common stock, representing 108,350,790 votes or approximately 92.6% of the voting power on the record date. Since this represents more than a majority of the voting power of all issued and outstanding stock entitled to vote on the record date, a quorum is present for purposes of transacting business. I will now turn it over to Kathryn for a summary of the proposals.

Thank you, Doug. I will now present the matters to be voted on. The first proposal is to elect 9 board members for a 1-year term ending on the date of the next annual meeting of stockholders or until their successors are elected and qualified. The nominees for election to the Board are Douglas M. VanOort, Mark W. Mallon, Lynn A. Tetrault, Bruce K. Crowther, Dr. Alison L. Hannah, Kevin C. Johnson, Stephen M. Kanovsky, Michael A. Kelly and Rachel A. Stahler. All of whom currently serve on the Board and all of whom have advised the company of their willingness to serve as a member of the Board, if elected. We will now turn to the second proposal that is set out in the notice of this meeting. The proposal is the advisory vote to approve the compensation paid to our named executive officers as described in the proxy statement. We will now turn to the third proposal that is set out in the notice of this meeting. The proposal is to approve the Second Amendment of the Amended and Restated Equity Incentive Plan. We will now turn to the fourth proposal that is set out in the notice of this meeting. The proposal is to ratify the appointment of Deloitte & Touche LLP as our independent registered public accounting firm for the fiscal year ending December 31, 2021. I will now turn it back over to Doug VanOort.

The polls are open. Any stockholder who hasn't yet voted or wishes to change their vote may do so by clicking on the voting button on the web portal and following the instructions there. Stockholders who have sent in proxies or voted via telephone or internet and do not want to change their vote, do not need to take further action. I'll pause for a moment. [Voting]

Now that everyone has had the opportunity to vote, I now declare the polls for the 2021 Annual Stockholder Meeting closed. Kathryn?

Thank you, Doug. Based on the preliminary vote totaled, the nominees for election for the Board of Directors have each been elected. The compensation paid to our named executive officers has been approved by advisory vote. The Second Amendment to the Amended and Restated Equity Incentive Plan has been approved and the appointment of Deloitte & Touche LLP as the company's independent registered public accounting firm for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2021, has been ratified. The proposals acted upon by the stockholders and the final voting results of such proposals will be set forth on our Form 8-K to be filed by the company with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Doug?

Thank you, Kathryn. There being no further business to come before the meeting, this annual meeting of the stockholders of NeoGenomics, Inc. is hereby adjourned. Thank you for attending. And now Mark Mallon, our CEO, will give a brief presentation followed by our question-and-answer session. We'll turn it to you, Mark.

Thank you, Doug. I shall now present the management summary of our -- the current state of our business and our future outlook. Following the presentation, I look forward to answering any questions you may have during our Q&A session. If we go -- move to the next slide, this is the normal, okay. I got to say, the normal forward-looking statements. You can see our website for more information. And then the next slide. So 5 weeks into this job, new job as CEO, I can absolutely say that I've never seen a more committed, passionate company, all focused on 1 purpose, saving, and changing the lives of cancer patients. You can really feel the urgency and importance of this task when you step on the floor of our labs. Every employee absolutely understands that there is a cancer patient. There's doctor, waiting for the results of our test, waiting for the vital answers these tests will provide to physician so they can make the right choices for treatment for their patients. It's not an exaggeration to say that the rest of this patients or -- our patients lives really begins when they receive these test results from NEO and every employee within the company understands that. And I'm so excited by the incredible capabilities, the science, the talents that NEO has across the company, across the world, but I have to say, I'm most impressed by their culture and specifically, the values. This is the secret sauce to NEO's success. Every lab in the U.S., or many of them have great technology. But it's an incredibly complex business, and it's the people and how they work together that really makes the difference for patients and for our ability to continue to grow and create great value for our shareholders. I joined NEO because of these reasons and because I believe that NEO can become the leading cancer testing and information company. Having seen the passion, seeing the culture and the capabilities I'm even more confident that we absolutely can do this. Next slide, please. So NEO truly is uniquely positioned in the cancer diagnostics market. We are 100% focused on cancer and helping improve how we can diagnose and understand cancers, so physicians can make the best possible choices for their patients. We have 3 synergistic businesses with the largest cancer lab in the U.S. in the largest cancer market in the world. We have a leading Pharma Services business and a fast-growing Informatics business. They each leverage and build up the strength and the capabilities of each other. Doug often refers to this as our Flywheel for Growth, and they are all in and of themselves, driving double-digit growth. And they're all leveraging NEO's core strength, starting with the Community Oncology. As a company, we have now, after the first quarter, we can say, we were at about a $500 million a year annual run rate. We were profitable in -- again, in 2020, with generating $35 million of profit. And this ability to fund our own innovation and growth is another unique aspect of the strength that NEO brings to the oncology market. Next slide, please. As I said, NEO has 3 core businesses. And these 3 labs, these core businesses really, though, come together as 1 lab. I mentioned we're the leader in the U.S. and largest cancer testing company here. We have a broad line -- actually, the broadest line a vast base in test over 750, covering all modalities, including some of the newest technologies, next-generation sequencing, liquid, and liquid biopsy. And we are the leader in customer satisfaction. In Pharma Services, we're rapidly becoming the go-to lab in pharmaceuticals. Now I had a chance to spend most of my career working in the pharmaceutical business. And I can understand why NEO is so successful because we have what pharma wants in a partner in conducting their research and development programs, quality, speed, flexibility, and total customer focus. Third, we have our Informatics business, which provides insights and answers leveraging one of the largest cancer diagnostic databases in the United States, maybe in the world, with 1.6 million patients. No clinical provides the data and testing capabilities to make pharma and information services really possible. It really magnifies the impact they have on our -- those customers. But Pharma and Information services they're going to be part of shaping the future of cancer testing, really shaping our future market and determine really what tests will be used. So in a sense, NEO is playing a role, not only in leading and winning today in this cancer market but is really actually going to lead the shaping of the cancer diagnostic market of the future. It's a 2-way synergy. It's absolutely truly is a flywheel for growth. And this -- all of this really to go to the next slide, has led to remarkable growth. You can see from basically the last 10 years, growing from less than $100 million in annual sales over $400 million last year. And we've done this through 2 ways. We've grown leveraging those great capabilities organically, leveraging those great capabilities, I told you about, but also inorganically, really smart, and strategic acquisitions, building the scale of the company. So not only can we continue to sustain growth in our core business and in the new businesses, but now have positioned ourselves to bring on leading-edge innovation in the diagnostic business, which I'll say more about in a few moments. And truly, this has really led to a remarkable growth. We can go to the next slide. And we're investing to make sure we can continue that growth. We have a network of 13 laboratories, state-of-the-art laboratories around the country, with a new one, that will be coming online at the end of this year. This is a photo of our new Fort Myers headquarters and lab that includes, almost completed and will be, as I said, coming online at the end of this year. And this network gives us tremendous flexibility, really an ability and capacity to continue to grow in the U.S., but especially also internationally, where we have labs in Switzerland, Singapore, and China. Next slide, please. And we're confident in making these investments and continuing to invest in this business because the oncology testing market truly is one of the best places to be in life sciences and health care. The underlying market growth rate is estimated to be 6% to 8% over the years -- next few years ahead. The demographics of the world, absolutely driving this with -- as people are aging and living longer, they are seeing more cancer. And fortunately, those cancer patients are living longer. And most importantly is that, the new treatments more and more require -- more precise diagnosis with a really being able to characterize exactly as possible the characteristics of the tumor, the cancer the patient have. So that physicians can absolutely match the best possible personalized medicine for each of those patients. All of this means, is our core business, diagnostics and oncology have a tremendous tailwind -- multiple tailwinds behind it to generate growth for years to come. Next slide? And so we focus on our core clinical business. Why have we been able to build such a strong position? First, we really have the leading channel to the community. The community oncologist is where the vast majority of cancer patients are, 80% to 85% of these patients. So we're proud of 100-plus commercial team with our customer base over 4,000 hospitals, institution in oncology practices. And with over 120 PhDs and MDs, we have a unique position in a unique set of relationship that we can continue to grow our existing business, but importantly, as you will hear, to bring in new innovation faster than it's ever been done before in bringing the best possible treatments to patients in the community. This is a core strength for NEO in the U.S., but ultimately, is a core strength for our entire set of 3 companies. Next slide. Another core strength is the breadth of our Test Menu. We cover all of the key modalities in cancer testing. As I mentioned, over 700 tests and this includes the fastest growing, which is the molecular test, where we bring -- have a unique position, where we actually try to customize the types of molecular tests, the panels, the number of mutations to be tested and not just molecular, but also adding in the necessary additional modalities to really get the most precise, customized, cost-effective solution for a particular cancer or a particular patient. So it's building in a sense. What we're going to be doing in molecular and with next-generation sequencing is sort of building on the success and strength that we've had as a company. Next slide. And finally, when we think about our core business, you have to recognize the incredible job our employees do to achieve outstanding customer satisfaction. NEO uses Net Promoter Score, which is basically the gold standard in assessing customer satisfaction. Achieving the best Promoter Score within the diagnostics business, really achieving a score of plus 66 on par with some of the best service organizations in the world in any business. It's a remarkable achievement and strength. Next slide. And so altogether, in our core clinical business, basically, it creates in and of itself, a strong, profitable, growing business that allows us to self-fund innovation and growth. And that really is powering the next 3 growth engines, next-generation sequencing, the newest technology in oncology diagnostics, our Pharma division which represents today already more than 15% of the company revenue, up from almost basically a nominal level in just 5 years ago. We are absolutely global player, one of the leaders, and we're growing that business, certainly to consistently above 20%. In the most recent time period, actually, we grew 30% year-on-year. And then the newest division is the Informatics business, which is also a fantastic start. I'll say a couple of words about that. Next slide. So Pharma Services, as you can see, we really bring all the key ingredients to what a pharmaceutical company is looking for when they entrust on us some of the most important work that is done in supporting the development of a new medicine. Finding the right patients and assessing how well those patients is doing on the therapy. Because all of these capabilities, we had a record-setting backlog of almost $220 million in the first quarter, in addition to that run rate of $75 million on an annual basis. Actually, I can say that, I believe we now are past 50 active companion diagnostic test. That gives you a sense of how quickly we're growing that portion of the Pharma business. It's tremendously exciting set up. It also puts us at the forefront of new technology. It's through these partnerships, that's sort of the next generation of medicines that will be the core of our clinical business going forward will be generated. Next slide. I mentioned Informatics. You can see the numbers across the page. I won't go through all of them, but I can tell you each one of them really is remarkable. And I don't think, can be easily matched by many companies, if any, around the globe. I mentioned the 1.6 million patients. In some cases, we've got 5 years of historical beta. That's really an incredible longitudinal database to be less leveraging. And across the board, those are just absolutely leading sources of information or scale of information that we can use that basically answer key questions for particularly pharmaceutical companies and payers, but a broad set of customers. Next slide. And in particular, probably the most common service that we're offering and is really driving very rapid growth in the past 2 years, it's helping pharmaceutical companies find the right medicine. This is the [ newest medicines ] being matched basically at a personal level where you have to understand what the mutations are in particular cancer that a patient has to understand whether the medicine, because the medicine has been designed to treat those specific mutations. This -- finding those mutations and finding the patients that have them is the most critical part of being able to run a clinical study and then ultimately launch a medicine successfully in the cancer market. I think it is not an exaggeration to say that all roads lead to being able to find patients, getting a study enrolled, completing it quickly and getting it launched successfully. In that sense, for new medicines and pharmaceuticals all roads lead to NEO. Next slide. And that's why you have a picture like this, where you can see the dramatic growth quarter-on-quarter, both of our revenue and of the backlog. Next slide. But we have more to do. Science and innovation, fortunately, for cancer patients is changing all the time with new and better treatment options coming forward. And we're committed to invest in leading innovation. And this year, to continue our growth, to continue building that remarkable flywheel, we've added 2 exciting pieces of innovation. The first being Trapelo. Trapelo is a service and software company that basically provides diagnostic support to oncologists in helping them decide what is the best diagnostic option for their patients. So oncologists are facing an overwhelming amount of new information that they have to consider when making a decision on what diagnostic tool or tools to use. And Trapelo brings all of the scientific information as well as the reimbursement information for a particular patient into one place, puts it into an information package with a clear set of recommendations for that physician. So that they can feel confident to use the right test and, in fact, start to be able to use sooner some of the newer tests. So Trapelo is going to be a great service. But a real accelerator of actually, I think, our business and even getting patients to access to the latest and the best new technology. And then speaking of new technology, we just announced our most recent acquisition, the acquisition of Inivata. And this is bringing us into two important places, the first being liquid biopsy. We launched last year InvisionFirst-Lung which is the liquid biopsy test for lung cancer. Liquid biopsy offers a number of advantages and complementary features to traditional tissue-based testing and it's going to be a crucial part of the future diagnostics market. And even more critical is we believe Inivata has the leading -- or potentially leading residual MRD, minimal residual disease assay for cancer. And what this is, is a super sensitive assay that basically detects very small fragments of DNA in a cancer patient's blood stream. So that we can determine basically faster and with more clarity, a potential recurrence. Or even to understand sooner than we've ever been able to before to know whether a therapy is even working. And with this information, physicians are going to be able to make better choices on treatments and whether to initiate or end treatments than we've ever been able to do before. The product is called RaDaR. Again, we believe has potentially the highest sensitivity of any of the new MRD assays, maybe if it is as 10x better sensitivity than some of the competitors. So with Inivata, it's moving us really into a whole new area of cancer diagnostics and certainly will be leading us into the future. This new market for minimal residual disease testing could be as big as $15 billion, and we will be one of the players to help develop this market and make a huge difference for cancer patients. Next slide. I'll open the presentation by saying with the purpose and the commitment to our purpose to make a difference for patients with cancer patients' lives. With the values and culture that we have and our capabilities, I am confident that we will be the leading diagnostic company, cancer diagnostic company in the world. And hopefully, through this short presentation, you can see that we've got an incredible position in the right test and the breadth of test to lean, we have a patient database that is second to none, that will help us improve insights for us and for our customers. We are seeing as the preferred partner for all of our customers, physicians, health care organizations and pharmaceutical companies. We are absolutely going to play a part in developing new and innovative diagnostics technology and tests, we are -- our business is -- and our commitment is absolutely the leading and best science to help make the best decisions and provide the best tools for physicians. And we remain focused on our purpose for changing the lives of cancer patients. Thank you very much for your time, and I look forward to your question. Now we'd like to open up for stockholder questions and comments. Please note, again, we will attempt to answer as many questions as time allows, but only questions that are germane to the meeting will be addressed. Okay. Well, thank you again for your time. It seems that we do not have any questions. So I think we will wrap up the Q&A session. And I'll give to Doug to make -- close the meeting. Doug?

Thank you, Mark. Thank you for that terrific presentation. This concludes our meeting of the NeoGenomics 2021 Annual Stockholders. We thank you for your attendance today and for your continued support. Thank you and have a great day.