NovaBridge Biosciences (NBP) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good day, and welcome to the I-Mab Business Update Call. [Operator Instructions]. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded and will be available for replay on the company's website. I would now like to turn the call over to PJ Kelleher from LifeSci Advisors. Please go ahead, Mr. Kelleher.

Thank you, operator. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining the I-Mab business update call, which follows the press release issued today at 4:05 p.m. Eastern. Please note that this presentation and discussion is being recorded and will be available in the Investors section of the company's website for the next 30 days. Some of the statements made on this call will include forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual results could differ materially from those stated or implied by these forward-looking statements due to risks and uncertainties associated with the company's business, including those set forth in the Risk Factors section of I-Mab's annual report on Form 20-F for the year ended December 31, 2024, and any other filings that may be made with the SEC. In addition, any forward-looking statements represent our views as of today, October 16, 2025. I-Mab undertakes no obligation to revise or update any forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances after the date of this conference call. Now I would like to hand over the call to I-Mab's Chief Executive Officer, Dr. Sean Fu. Sean?

Thank you, PJ. Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to I-Mab's business update call. I'm Sean Fu, Company's CEO. I'm excited to have the opportunity to share with you I-Mab's business transformation strategy and our plan for the next phase, accelerated growth. Joining me today are members of the senior management team of I-Mab. We're happy to have Executive Chairman, Mr. Fu Wei; Chief Financial Officer, Kyler Lei; I-Mab's subsidiary company, Visara, Co-Founder and Executive Chairman, Emmett Cunningham; and I-Mab's Chief Business Development Officer, Sean Cao. Now to tell you more about I-Mab's business transformation, I would like to turn the call over to our Executive Chairman, Mr. Fu Wei. Fu Wei?

Thank you, Sean. Good afternoon, and good morning, everyone. Hopefully, I'm the only one dialing from Asia, which is only 5:00 a.m. now that shows you how diligent the firm is. And my name is Fu Wei, Founder and CEO of CBC Group, and I have co-founded 12 biotech companies across U.S. and Asia. And most importantly, I recently became the Executive Chairman of I-Mab. I'm very excited to be here. It will mark the next chapter of I-Mab because what we are trying to achieve will bring significant impact to our biotech industry and the patients globally. Please allow me to start company presentation. Please turn to Page 3, company overview. Looking at the keywords in the subtitle, number one, Global. We are building I-Mab into a global operating business with operations in Asia, with operations in China and the U.S. The second keyword, we are building I-Mab into a platform company. This is not a single molecule business nor a single TA-focused business, but will be a platform. And lastly, this is going to be a paradigm-shifting business. This will bring significant impact and will be business model innovation with Derek to lead. Next slide. What is the background of the I-Mab transformation and what we are trying to do. China is rising as a global powerhouse in biotech innovation, as we know. China, since the past 5 years, the number of clinical trials grew significantly, especially in the most recent year. It is already #1 in the world, surpassing U.S. And more importantly, if you see the clinical trial out-licensing BD value, this year is a remarkable year. The total number of transaction value is $94 billion in 2024 and year-to-date, it's $51.9 billion. It contributes more than 60% of the global licensing deal value in Q1 2025. And in my view, this is irreversible. The China efficiency, speed and productivity and more importantly, the quality being recognized by the global big pharma. Next slide. I-Mab today, the NovaBridge marks the evolution into the next stage. If you recall, when I-Mab was just IPO-ed, it is a clinical stage China biotech. And moving into the past 2 years, 2023 to 2024, we are focused. We become a U.S. clinical stage biotech company. We are having three assets in the clinical stage. And today, we are moving into Chapter 3.0. We are becoming a China/U.S. and the global biotech platform. This will help us to take advantage of the productivity, the efficiency of the discovery capability in China and also take advantage of the clinical resources in China and while leveraging on our capabilities in the U.S. clinical development and also the market. Next slide. What is the core differentiation we are having? NovaBridge will be the first hub-and-spoke gateway connecting global markets. As we described, we are a biotech company started from China, Asia, and we built our clinical capability in the U.S. in the past 2 years. And we are a global firm, deep rooted in both markets. And we are building the core hub, which is on the BD capability in and out. We have a deep access screening capability into all the leading discovery engines on China side. And we have existing partners such as ABio-X, AskGene, AffaMed, Everest Medicine and also companies in Korea like ABL Bio. And at the same time, we have the clinical development capability out of the U.S. We understand how to run translational medicine differentiated clinical trial to maximize the value of each of the molecule. At the same time, we have a bespoke solution providers. We can choose to work company to company collaboration, licensing in and out, we can build NewCo. We can even consider acquisitions where the molecule is really outstanding. And at the same time, our business development capability in the U.S., our past track record, our network supported by CBC will help us to find the best home for each of the molecule down the road as well. So this hub-and-spoke platform specializing in bridging Asia innovation to the global markets and the type of capability we warehouse from BD-in to BD-out and to clinical development capability really differentiates NovaBridge. Next slide. We are not a single molecule platform, and we started from immunology, oncology, and we have a very differentiated CLDN18 and 4-1BB. And we have a very good pipeline in the IO company. However, today, our colleague will give you an announcement, introduce our next TA focus, which is ophthalmology. This is where we begin. And based on our BD-in capability and the continued building of the clinical development capability, we will move into new TAs as our capability grows. Next slide. How to make this business model successful? In my view, it is always capabilities first. And then with the capabilities, we will look for the right molecules and create value over each of the molecules over the below three triangular angles. Number one is our clinical development and translational development capabilities. We are building capabilities over clinical first. Then we know how to screen each of the TA, how to screen each of the modality, where the opportunities are and how to make sure we understand to run a clinic's differentiated clinical trial and maximize each of the molecule with the best set of data. And then our clinical development capability is a brain. We will guide our BD-in team, which is empowered by the CBC Group. CBC is the largest asset management firm in biotech health care in Asia. We have the best access to all the leading biotech companies. And we invested over 30 early-stage biotech companies in the past 18 months' time. And we screened more than a few hundred biotech companies. So this wide deal access under the guidance of the clinical development capability will help us not miss a single great molecule in the market and also make us a very appealing partner in front of the discovery companies that consider out-licensing to us. And the third is the BD-out capability. As you probably know, we have control incubated more than 12 biotech companies. And each of them are in active discussions with a big pharma. And we have a regular dialogue with each of them. We understand what's their needs timely. And therefore, our BD-out licensing capability is far beyond a single molecule company. Don't even talk about our past track record and being a reliable partner with a big pharma that make us a more appealing long-standing partner in front of each of them. Next slide. You will ask, there are many different kinds of players in this space try to take advantage of this opportunity by bringing innovations from Asia, from China to U.S. to the rest of the world. What's the differentiation for I-Mab or NovaBridge? This slide probably best demonstrates our capabilities. Talking about the core capabilities from asset sourcing to asset development to exit in front of MNCs, U.S. biotech or other NewCos, we all stand in a very strong position. Local innovation access, we are deeply rooted in Asia. As I shared, as an investment house, we have screened more than a few hundred biotech companies every year. We have a deep leasing investment team/BD team working on the ground day-to-day. Talking about capital strength, we are not only having sufficient cash runway. We are also able to develop bespoke capital solutions, not only paying them upfront fee, milestone fee, we are able to build NewCo with them. We are able to do share swap with them. We are able to develop a hybrid solution for those discovery biotech engines who deeply believe the future. They can take equity, they can take cash. And we have a very nimble decision-making process as well. At the same time, our scientific translation capability is equivalently as good as those multinational companies. Talking about exit and spin-off as an investment house, that's naturally built into our DNA. And we believe we can do the value maximization through our deal execution capability. Next page. You may ask what is the stage of the molecule that you will pull trigger? And what is the stage that you will decide to make an exit and what's your value creation process. From this diagram, you can tell, in our view, discovery and preclinical development, which is more or less commoditized activities in the emerging market. China has thousands of early-stage biotech companies with discovery capability. Even Korea, we understand there are more than 500 biotech companies in the discovery business. So we don't want to compete in that stage. Therefore, our in-licensing strategy will start from clinical stage assets. And our focus is to make a clinical stage of assets into proof-of-concept clinical trials, which is 5 to 10x value creation process. We will acquire early-stage assets with a well-defined proof-of-concept pathway. Our goal is within 2 years, maximum 3 years that we can put early-stage molecule into -- to finish a proof-of-concept clinical trials. After we see the POC clinical data, we can then selectively decide whether we move those POC molecules into the late-phase development. which is going to give you 2 to 3x of value creation, but in large scale. If we have high conviction, we deeply believe this is a uniquely positioned molecule, and we will work on the late-stage development as well to maximize the value for the shareholders. The examples of giva, later on my colleague, Mr. Sean Fu, will share with you. And also the newly taken on molecule VIS-101, the ophthalmology molecule, is all similar case. Next slide. Every successful strategy needs to be executed with the team. Apart from myself, who is purely from investment background, however, participate in the funding process of a 12 biotech company. I'm supported alongside by Sean Fu, who has tons of experience in the biotech space. And more importantly, we together participate in several founding history of biotech companies such as [ Rx ] ABio-X. And he's the CEO of NovaBridge. And together with Sean, we have Dr. Phillip Dennis, who is our Chief Medical Officer, who successfully lead the development of giva. And Kyler, who recently joined us is our CFO, who has tons of experience in running public market investor relationships. In his past two companies, each of them are over USD 15 billion market cap. They did a great job in communicating the strategy to the public investors. We are very thrilled to bring him on board for the next chapter of NovaBridge. And Claire is our Senior VP and Clinical Development Lead, who stays with the company since the very beginning. Her execution in the Giva clinical operation, her knowledge about both China and the U.S. will be very instrumental in our clinical development for the future molecules for NovaBridge. And this is not the end. The big task requires a much wider group of talents to support. And we are in the process to bring more impactful talents to join our journey to make NovaBridge into the next chapter. Thank you. Sean Fu, please continue with the pipeline overview.

Thank you, Fu Wei. That's a wonderful introduction. Thank you very much. And now we pivot into pipeline overview. I'll walk you through the IO assets and beginning with givastomig. Next slide, please. I will say before we jump into the detailed data of givastomig, I will say this exciting strategy is built on the existing portfolio of highly differentiated innovative clinical stage assets, Giva being one of them. And you can think about the new strategy as providing investors with a -- in addition to return opportunities from the new strategy, the BD in and outs and clinical POSs that Mr. Fu Wei just introduced to you. So if we take a look at the assets now, let me bring back the Giva story in front of you. Next slide, please. Givastomig, as many of you know, is a potential best-in-class Claudin 18.2 4-1BB bispecific antibody. And this molecule has a unique design. It was a highly potent Claudin 18.2 site, which give us the potential to have a wide range of a Claudin 18.2 expression selection. And it has a silenced Fc component. So there's no ADCC or CDC that give us the potential to minimize unintended systematic immune reactions. And also, it has a conditional 4-1BB agonist component, which it was designed to induce localize the T cell activation in tumor microenvironment. So these attributes give us a unique position to have a molecule that potentially have one, favorable safety profile in combination with the standard of care in such as first-line oncology settings. Second, superior efficacy and robust response data potential and also wide range of Claudin 18.2 expression level coverage. So these are highly differentiated properties, and let me walk you through our clinical observations. Next slide, please. So when you look at the safety data of Giva in combination with nivo and chemo, which is the current standard of care for frontline metastatic gastric cancer, and you compare that against Phase III studies that led to the approval of nivo chemo and zolbetuximab. You will see that the Giva in combination showed no discernible additional tox signal on top of standard of care in nivo chemo across the board when you look at AST, ALT increase, neutropenia or nausea and vomiting. Now if you compare Giva in combination against the Zolbe, you clearly see a more benign safety profile for the GI-related safety, for example, nausea and vomiting, especially for grade 3 and above observations. Next slide. We also observed a robust efficacy signal. And when you look at the ORR across three doses, we showed 71% of response rate in comparison to the Phase III study of nivo chemo, which was 47% and zolbetuximab, which was 40%. It's a small number of patients, but we realized that's 17 patients. But if you try to understand the response as a function of either PD-L1 level or Claudin 18.2 level, you see response signals really across those subset of populations. So if you take a look at the middle column, the bottom, we showed a 2x2. So whether you look at the PD-L level high versus low or Claudin level high versus low, especially on the lower right, you see we have four patients that's considered low, low in both PD-L1 and Claudin and 3 out of the 4 responded when you look at the ORR. On the right-hand side of the slide, this is the waterfall. Immediately, you see every single patient had their target lesion reduced in size in our clinical studies. In particular, I want to point out that the three patients that had low Claudin level, which is defined by Claudin level less than 75% and all three of them showed responses. So this is what I mean a robust efficacy signal. Small number of patients, but robust nonetheless. Next slide, please. So now we are conducting -- I'm not seeing slides advancing. So now we are conducting a portfolio of clinical studies to investigate givastomig in gastric cancer and also other Claudin 18.2 positive malignancies. So if we focus on gastric cancer, we're obviously continuing the expansion study in combination with nivo chemo. And importantly, we are launching a randomized Phase II comparing two doses of Giva in combination with nivo chemo against nivo chemo, right? This is in a randomized fashion. It is a robust study design with 180 patients into those three groups, and we're looking at PD-L1 positive patients greater than 1 in CPS score and very broad range of Claudin 18.2 expression level. So that's 1% above 1 plus in a staining intensity. So this is the largest Claudin 18.2 expression range that I know of, of any Claudin 18.2 assets in clinical development. So we're going after a broad range of the population in a robust Phase II randomized clinical study. The study is expected to achieve first patient in first quarter of 2026. We're also conducting a number of other studies. For example, we're looking at patients with low Claudin and low PD-L1. These patients are not eligible for Zolbe and they're not eligible for ICI. Therefore, these patients are unmet medical needs, a group with significant unmet medical needs. So we're taking a look at whether Giva can help. And we're also conducting an IIT study with an investigator in Japan, Dr. Shitara, who is a PI of zolbetuximab's Phase III study. And in that study, we're looking at the neoadjuvant setting, locally advanced GI tumors. And the beauty of this study is, it going to provide us with tumor samples before and after treatment. So allow us to test Giva assumption that we actually can achieve or whether we can actually achieve localized T cell activation in tumor microenvironment. As I said, we are moving beyond gastric cancer. We're initiating studies in other Claudin 18.2 positive malignancies, including biliary tract cancer or cholangiocarcinoma and pancreatic cancer. Next slide. I also want to touch upon the commercial opportunity of Giva. And if you think about the number of patients, it's a significant numbers. We're talking about for HER2-negative, Claudin positive and just in U.S., EU and Japan, we're talking about over 100,000 patients, right, per year. And Giva, as I said, is the first asset that have been studied in clinical setting against IO chemo in the United States. When you compare Giva in terms of patient population against, say, Zolbe, Zolbe's label is in combination with chemo for patients with Claudin 18.2 expression in 75% of the tumor cells or higher with 2-plus standing intensity. And our clinical study starts with 1% and 1 plus staining intensity. And also, we are combining Giva with IO chemo. So in those two dimensions, Claudin and PD-L1, we are expanding on the scope, the population coverage of Zolbe. And as a result, we forecast the top sales of Giva in the territories that we have rights to be about USD 2 billion. Now the opportunity doesn't stop there. If you look at the market potential of gastric cancer, pancreatic or biliary tract cancers, these opportunities are significant. And we are conducting studies to evaluate potential application of Giva in those spaces and the opportunity there could be $3 billion or higher. So this is a very significant and exciting marketplace for Giva to play. Next slide. Now we're going to pivot a little bit. Consistent with I-Mab's or now NovaBridge's strategy to bring China and Asia innovations to the world, I'm happy to announce or tell you more about the acquisition of VS-101. This is a bifunctional biologic targeting VEGF-A and ANG2 for wet AMD and DME. And this acquisition was accomplished through a newly established subsidiary, we call it Visara. I-Mab paid $37 million for a controlling share of this asset's global rights. And to tell you more about VS-101 and Visara, I would like to invite Visara's Co-Founder and Executive Chairman, Emmett, to the mic. Emmett?

Thank you, Sean, and very nice job on your presentation. So I'd like to cover in turn VIS-101, the medical need, the commercial landscape, the clinical results, which, as you'll see, are quite exciting and then the key upcoming milestones. Next slide, please. As you can see here on the left, the prevalence of the diseases that VIS-101 is intended to treat is quite high. Neovascular macular degeneration on the left and diabetic macular edema on the right, together are well over 40 million patients worldwide today and growing. If you add to that the additional indication of retinal vein occlusion and some smaller indications, it approaches 50 million worldwide. Those indications today are treated by the branded medications shown on the left, Lucentis, Eylea, high-dose Eylea and Vabysmo. And they, over the time of commercialization, have grown from several billion dollars to well over $10 billion. And I should note here that this is the branded market. It's a very unique market in that off-label use of bevacizumab accounts for more than 50% of this market. And so in aggregate, it would be somewhere between $20 billion and $30 billion worldwide if that were given at the same cost as the unbranded medication. Next slide. Here, what we've done is tried to break down this commercial landscape over time and by the major therapeutics on the left. And what you can see is this 20-year evolution from Lucentis to Eylea and now high-dose Eylea and Vabysmo. And there are several important points here. First, if you look at each of these molecules, Lucentis, Eylea, Vabysmo, they all essentially have the same label for the three indications I mentioned, DME, AMD and RVO. So why have they performed differently in the market? They performed differently in the market largely based on pharmacokinetic and biologic reason to believe that they would do better and then clinical experience that they, in fact, perform better trying and are more durable. And so you see Eylea superseded Lucentis and now in turn, Vabysmo is superseding Eylea, both Eylea and Eylea HD. The next important point is that the market has now evolved from mono inhibitors, a single VEGF-A inhibitor, Lucentis, Eylea, Eylea HD to the bispecific dually acting Vabysmo or faricimab, which adds to it inhibition of ANG2. In my personal opinion, the market will always be based, first and foremost, on VEGF-A inhibition, but we've now transitioned to a multifunctional market which allows for better drying of the retina and more durable action. And that's shown on the right, where you can see the revenues for Lucentis to Eylea and now Vabysmo are growing at the rate shown here from about $2 billion to now approaching $5 billion. Some estimates have Vabysmo going between $10 billion to $15 billion at peak sales over the next decade. Next slide. So this is a complex and perhaps the most important and exciting slide in at least my portion of the deck. So let me take a second to orient you. There are two graphs here, obviously. The one on the right is previously published. It's the stairway trial of Vabysmo by Genentech, Roche. And the one on the left is our molecule. It's near complete Phase II, but still emerging data. So the first point is this is cross-trial comparison and needs to be taken in that context. The second is that our trial, while nearly complete, and we expect it to be complete by the end of the year, is not totally complete. If we turn first to the graph on the right, what we have plotted here is time on the horizontal axis, that's in weeks and in vision, that's corrected vision on the vertical axis. And you see three lines, two with faricimab at 6 milligrams, that's the approval dose and one with ranibizumab, the first-in-class agent that I mentioned earlier at its approval 0.5 milligrams. And you can see that these lines are very similar and track over time to about 8 to 10 letters of gain in treatment-naive patients. So a very important point. That's the standard, the gold standard for a Phase II trial. At the bottom, what you'll notice the yellow arrows, they indicate injections. So in all of these patients, they were given a month -- 4 monthly injections to induce them to therapy to stabilize them before they were given them no injections, as you can see here for 12 weeks to see how durable the treatment was in a sense. And you can see for the 12 weeks, the lines stayed pretty stable and did pretty well. That's the comparator, that's Vabysmo. Let's turn now to VIS-101. And you can see we have two curves. The top curve, the blue curve would be the direct comparator. These are treatment-naive patients that have received three loading injections. So that's an important point, 3 as opposed to 4. And you can see we are at the upper end of the three curves on the left. We are at 10 letters or better in each instance with albeit less induction injections, fewer induction injections. The next important point is that we -- because we had fewer induction injections over the same time period, we can call our patients for the additional month out to 24 months, and you can see we remain durable at that time. The next point I'd like to make is related to the orange curve, which were the pretreated patients. The stairway trial did not have pretreated patients. So we had the benefit of being able to stratify them and look at the pretreated patients. And you can see even they had a vision gain of between 6 and 8 letters, suggesting that when you extend to dually acting agents, you can get considerable vision improvement in patients who are on otherwise monotherapy with the anti-VEGF-A agents. And that, of course, is an enormous switch market from the patients currently receiving VEGF-A therapy and moving forward. Next slide. So -- where do we go from here? Shown on the left are the key milestones. As I mentioned, the Phase II trial is ongoing, very nearly complete, should read out top level at the end of this year, latest first quarter next year. And then we'll be preparing for our Phase III studies globally, which we anticipate initiating in 2026. Once initiated, it's typically a year to enroll, a year to complete. So within two years of that, we will have top line Phase III data. And that sitting in this pole position of being second in class and as I've tried to share with you, perhaps best-in-class, makes this a tremendously exciting opportunity. Next slide. What we've shown here are two pieces, the corporate structure, which has been alluded to earlier, but not spelled out in detail on the left and in my own background on the right, which I'll end with. As you can see on the left, this is, as you've heard now, the NovaBridge strategy. It is financing and strategic input from NovaBridge on the left, a core and valued asset out of China here from AffaMed and then a highly incentivized management team, which will bring this forward and execute through a Phase III data and approval, each of which has its own equity position. As for myself, I've been in this space for 35 years. I've been a very active innovator entrepreneur and investor for 25 of those years. I recently retired from my position at Blackstone and have been focusing on company creation, and I couldn't be more excited than to help the team here create Visara, which I think will be one of the best ophthalmology companies in the world. Thank you very much. I'll hand it back to you, Sean.

Thank you, Emmett. That's super exciting. Now for a minute, let me also close the pipeline overview with two more products that we currently have in the pipeline very quickly. Next slide. We have another 4-1BB bispecific coupled with PD-L1 and this molecule binds to PD-L1 for activation of 4-1BB in the tumor microenvironment. That becomes a designed theme. And this molecule in a monotherapy study in heavily pretreated population on average, three line of prior therapies showed a 27% ORR. And compare that to Acasunlimab developed by Genmab against the same two targets, PD-L1 and 4-1BB, they showed ORR of 6% to 13%, 14%. And importantly, out of the people who responded, we saw 70% of the responders actually had prior PD-L1 exposure. So that really highlights the potential of this molecule to be positioned as a follow-on to patients whose tumor are resistant or relapsed from prior line of PD-1 treatment. So that's a very exciting space. What we are doing now is to conduct a clinical study to optimize dosing regimen in order to maximize therapeutic window. And that study is ongoing with readout expected in the second half of 2026. Next slide, please. Yes. So uliledlimab, this is a potential best-in-class CD73. And in preclinical studies, it showed it has no hook effect in comparison to the lead asset currently in Phase III development, oleclumab. And more interestingly to me, at least, when added to PD-1 therapies for CD73 high patients, you see a markedly higher ORR compared to those as a CD73 low. So what's happening right now is that a Phase II randomized study is being conducted in China patients comparing CD73 uliledlimab plus a China PD-L1 versus in a randomized session -- fashion versus China PD-1 and pembrolizumab. And this study is conducted in selected CD73 high patients. So this is along the logic that we believe by selecting the right patients using the right biomarker, we can potentially increase the probability of success in IO agents. So this is an exciting compound along those line of logic that we're testing in a randomized fashion in clinical studies. So I think this is an exciting time really for I-Mab and NovaBridge. And moving on to the next slide, I think it's important. We also look at the strategic advantage of NovaBridge going forward, partnering with CBC Group. So for that purpose, I invite back our Executive Chairman, Fu Wei, to comment on strategic advantage. Fu Wei?

Thank you, Sean. Please turn to Page 28. As I shared, CBC is Asia's largest and most impactful health care asset manager. We manage over $10 billion. But what's more important, in the past 5 years, we have executed more than 40 BD transactions, and we have 20-plus global MNC partnerships in place. And it is very important to all of the investors as well that I want to emphasize CBC and CBC affiliated public listed company will make sure that we have the best interest alignment with each of the investors, and we are making sure the best practice of governance is also in place. And this well set of governance and also our global reach network and deal closing experience will help I-Mab NovaBridge move into the next stage with a good track record to start with. Next slide. This is a high-level introduction about the team and talents across Asia and also the global execution team as well. Next slide. I want to also share with you our systematic approach to scoring assets. Year-to-date, the team has identified more than 550 opportunities. We engaged with 116, and we are in active discussion for nonbinding term sheet for 39. And as of today, we closed one transaction. So we are always taking this systematic screening approach, institutionalized approach to make sure that we don't miss any great opportunities and all the underwriting are in the best practice as well. To conclude, we deeply believe bring Asia innovation, bring the productivity, efficiency in the clinical trial resources, discovery capability from Asia to service the global patients is going to be an impactful journey. And we welcome all of you to be part of this journey together with NovaBridge. Thank you. Thank you very much. Now I turn the call to PJ for Q&A.

Operator?

[Operator Instructions] Our first question is from Daina Graybosch with Leerink Partners.

This is a big change. And I wonder what you would say to an investor who's recently come in to I-Mab because they have appreciation for your lead Claudin 18.2, 4-1BB asset, giva and now all of a sudden finds themself invested in a radically different company. Is that a poor assertion on my side that this is radically different? And why should that investor that was investing in a single asset with near-term data readouts stay for this broader opportunity?

Okay. Thank you for the question, Daina. I think I can share my perspective and others can feel free to jump in here. Daina, as I alluded to earlier, I think this is a transformation for I-Mab and NovaBridge, and we are really building on the existing pipeline that we have. And we agree with you that we're -- the Giva, the ragi and the CD73 has tremendous value. And we're committed to continue to advance the existing clinical programs around Giva. I showed you the comprehensive portfolio of clinical developments. We're committed to all of those, right? And also the ragi clinical studies and CD73 clinical studies. So for investors came in for asset data readouts in the future, I will say the following: that this investment opportunity is an add-on. This is an in addition to theme for their investment thesis. And we are not taking anything away. Instead, we're adding to it the significant growth and upside opportunity associated with the innovation translation associated with business development and capability build in the long run. So you already see our licensing program from -- for Visara VIS-101, Emmett talked about the exciting data. And this is the type of asset we're going to continue to bring in and will create value based on that.

Okay. Maybe one follow-up. Since the CBC is very new to me, and you threw up some of your previous investments in your capabilities. I wonder if you could point us to what you think are the most important deals that you've done that we should do our diligence on to better understand your team's capability.

Fu Wei, please.

I think the most relevant case study I want to share here is Everest Medicine. CBC started 11 years ago. At the time, China innovation or Asian innovation is far behind the U.S. Since 2016, 2017, we believe how to bring innovation from U.S. to Asia is a big opportunity. And in as short as 3 years, we screened 700 biotech companies in the U.S. We managed to bring eight innovative drugs to service the patients in Asia, including the top two from Immunomedics, including Etrasimod from Arena, et cetera. And today, more than three drugs already are in the market. And this company is called Everest Medicine, okay? And today, the capability of the West and the East is definitely shifting especially in Asia and China, the biotech discovery and clinical capability is rising and with higher efficiency and productivity. So we are transforming I-Mab into a platform, the reverse business model of Everest is bringing innovation from Asia to the U.S. So this is actually a very relevant track record that we are very familiar with, and we did a very good job. Thank you.

Our next question is from Christopher Liu with Lucid Capital Markets.

Congrats on the strategic transformation. In terms of bringing on additional spokes to the platform here, how should we think about the timing of those potential new additions and whether or not you'll be looking to go after a broader range of therapeutic areas or want to focus in on more specific therapeutic areas?

Fu Wei, do you want to comment on this question about the timing and the scope for future BD-in?

Sure. We are pivoting -- we made the decision to pivot into this strategy things a few months ago, okay? And ophthalmology is the first one. To add on, we do screen a deep pipeline into ophthalmology already. Since we've already built the best-class execution capability from BD to clinical development and especially with Emmett, joining us as Executive Chairman of that platform. So ophthalmology will be one. And we definitely will bring on more molecules in the near future onto that platform. And at the same time, since this is a platform company, and we do believe the -- in China for global or even Korea presents 500 biotech discovery platforms as well that we are systematically screening all the biotech companies in that region with a global competitiveness molecule. And we also compare with market demand in the U.S. We are always taking a top-down approach. I think we are in the progress of deciding what's the next therapeutic areas or modality that we are going to bring on to NovaBridge. And it won't take more than, I think, by the end of the year that to give you a more clear picture about what's the next TA. And our pace, I think given our execution capability, we are very confident that we are able to bring at least two potentially up to four molecules each of the year to this platform.

Got it. And maybe one more question, if I may. How are you guys thinking about sort of capital efficiency with this structure, are there any specific synergies that can be taken advantage of?

In my beginning slides, I think we are having a very -- as a public listed company, okay? And as we announced, we are going to get Hong Kong listing at the same time, dual listed in both NASDAQ and Hong Kong as we are gaining a much stronger balance sheet. And at the same time, we are running a private equity asset management firm as well, raising third-party capital on the project level or on the subco level are all optional -- options to us. So therefore, we are able to provide the best solution -- capital solution to the discovery company who are licensing the drugs to us. And also, this will work in the best interest for the NovaBridge shareholders to maximize our capital gain, and both for the BD-in process and the BD-out process as well.

So in our operations, we envision a hub-and-spoke structure. So the NewCos, the new asset bring in, they will have their own organization and structure to make the right scientific development decisions. But for the corporate support, broader foundation, including some of the [ BDN ] and MNC strategic partner engagement capability going to come from the hub. So in this case, we're going to have best of the both worlds when you have the best science mind, scientific mind and execution on the ground pushing the assets, at the same time, be supported by the efficient hub functions that provide efficient support and access that's unrivaled by any of the biotech out there doing asset-by-asset model. Kyler, do you want to add something?

Yes. In terms of the capital efficiency, I would like to highlight that during our model of doing this, we focus on licensing or bidding those early-stage assets, while the most typical will be Phase I or Phase IIa asset. And then we do the translational clinical development, bring them to the POC stage. And after POC, probably we will offset, do a spin-off or license on or any way of BD out. So basically, this turnaround is much faster than a traditional R&D-focused biotechnology platform that they will see around 7 to 8 years for a molecule to starting from discovery stage on to Phase I, on to Phase III registration and get on to market. So with that, I would say our hub-and-spoke business model is more derisked and the turnaround of the capital payback is much quicker. So I would expect the capital efficiency to be much higher than the traditional R&D platform as well.

[Operator Instructions] Our next question is from Clara Dong with Jefferies.

This is [ Jane ] on the line for Clara from Jefferies. Could you elaborate on your BD strategy a little bit? You mentioned that you will be planning to exit from some of these more successful assets after you establish proof of concept, right? Can you walk us through what are the scenarios and financial implications? What are the options after you've established proof of concept for something? And then how do you envision the long-term value creation if all the promising assets post proof of concepts are all being licensed out? Like do you somehow -- would you try to somehow retain the longer-term upside for NovaBridge shareholders? Like how does that work? If you can help us understand.

Fu, do you want to start?

Maybe I could add. Yes. Maybe I can give you some illustrations. So our typical underwriting could be -- I'll put this number into a bracket as well. So like for Phase I asset, normally, we hope that within 2 years that we can complete the proof-of-concept trial, okay? That's the investment horizon. And our upfront payment, hopefully, is around $50 million. It's either in the value -- this value is either in cash or in equity like Visara. And we hope that our capability of leveraging the global most efficient clinical trial resources can limit our investment in the POC trial to maybe $50 million. That's a ballpark number. And so our upfront investment is $100 million. So after the POC trial, we hope that we have more than 50% chance to make a $1 billion value molecule. Of course, it's going to be in the form of at least a 3-digit upfront fee out licensing with milestone fee and royalty or of course, we are always creative, depends on our conviction in the commercial value, probability of success, et cetera. We can also negotiate to be equity ownership, profit share or we can choose to continue with the Phase III trial given our fundraising capability and strong balance sheet. So I hope this answers your question.

I think given the time, we will have opportunities to continue our conversation down the road. We're already past the slotted time. So I think I would like to invite Fu Wei back to the mic to close out this call and with a key message for analysts and investors on the call. Fu Wei, please?

Thank you, Sean. So I have been involved in -- heavily involved in this biotech industry developments in Asia and in the U.S. for the past 11 years. And as I shared, I started by setting up a company to bring innovation from U.S. to Asia, and we in-licensed more than 30 molecules, which are very successful in that strategy. And as we all noticed, the most recent trend, the efficiencies, the productivities, the qualities of developing new drugs, the discovery capability and also the efficient clinical trial resources in China and in Asia are presenting, in my view, the largest opportunity ever in my whole career. So therefore, we decided together to build and pilot I-Mab NovaBridge into that direction, making ourselves the best platform candidate to capture this opportunity, to bring innovations from Asia to the world. And we welcome all of you to be part of this journey, and it's an exciting opportunity. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Back to you, PJ.

Thank you all. Operator, can you now close the call?

This concludes our call for today. Thank you, everyone. You may now disconnect.

Thank you.