Protagonist Therapeutics, Inc. (PTGX) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. And welcome to the Protagonist Therapeutics Annual Meeting of Stockholders. I would now like to hand the conference to your speaker today, Dinesh Patel. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you. Good morning, everybody. I'm Dinesh Patel, President, CEO and a member of the Board of Directors of Protagonist Therapeutics, Inc. I'm very happy to welcome you to the Protagonist Therapeutics 2020 Stockholders' Meeting. I'll serve as the Chairman of this meeting today. Before I call the meeting to order, I would like to introduce to you the members of the Board and the management team who are with us today. The members of the Board are Harry Selick, Bryan Giraudo, Chaitan Khosla, Sarah Noonberg and Rusty Williams. The other officers of the company who are here today are David Liu, Samuel Saks, Suneel Gupta and Don Kalkofen. I would also like to introduce Ray Minehan of Ernst & Young LLP, the company's independent registered public accounting firm; and Anthony Petrucelli of Broadridge Financial Solutions, who are also in attendance virtually and available to respond to appropriate questions as needed. Finally, I would like to introduce Mike Tenta of Cooley LLP, the company's corporate counsel, who will serve as secretary of this meeting today. The meeting will now officially come to order. I would now like to ask Mike Tenta, as meeting secretary, to review the meeting procedures and formalities, the proposals to be considered by stockholders and to conduct voting on the proposals properly before this meeting. Mike?

Thank you, Dinesh. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. As you know, we are hosting today's meeting through a virtual online platform hosted by Broadridge. [Operator Instructions] We will try to answer any such questions submitted that are germane to the proposals and/or this meeting as and if we have time. Please submit your questions now to make sure they are received in a timely fashion for our review and response. 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. 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 you do not wish to change your vote, you do not need to vote now, and your shares will be voted as previously instructed. This meeting is being recorded. We will proceed with the formal business of the meeting as set forth in notice of annual meeting and proxy statement. We will first present the 2 proposals submitted by our Board for approval. We will respond to questions related to the proposals after all the proposals have been presented, after which polls will be closed, and we will announce the preliminary results of the voting. Again, if you have not voted, I encourage you to vote online during this meeting. I have at this meeting a complete list of the stockholders of record of the company's common stock on March 31, 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. If you would like to inspect the list, please click where it says Registered Stockholder List in the footer of this meeting portal on the right to view the stockholder list. I also have an affidavit certifying that on April 16, 2020, a notice of annual meeting of stockholders of the company was deposited in the United States mail to all stockholders of record at the close of business on March 31, 2020. At this time, I'd like to introduce Don Kalkofen, Chief Financial Officer of the company, who is present virtually. Mr. Kalkofen has been appointed as inspector of election at this meeting. Mr. Kalkofen has taken and subscribed the customary oath of office to execute his duties with strict impartiality. We will file his 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 results. I've been informed by the inspector of elections that proxies have been received for 21,974,568 of the 27,434,705 shares of common stock outstanding on the record date, which represents approximately 80.1% 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'll now proceed with the formal business of the meeting. After all of the proposals have been described, we will answer any questions related to the proposals submitted online. As a reminder, we ask that any comments or questions during this portion of the meeting pertain only to those proposals. Please submit any questions as soon as possible for our review. There are 2 proposals to be considered by the stockholders at the meeting. The time is now 10:07 a.m. Pacific Daylight Time on Thursday, May 28, 2020, and the polls are now open for voting on all matters to be presented. The polls will be closed to voting after I go through each of the proposals to be voted on, and we have paused for any questions. The first item of business is the election of 2 Class I directors to serve until the 2023 Annual Meeting and until their successors are elected. The nominees for Class I director are Dinesh Patel and Sarah Noonberg. The second item of business today is the ratification of the selection by the Audit Committee of the Board of Directors of Ernst & Young LLP 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 about the aforementioned proposals before we close the polls. As a reminder, we'll only review and answer questions at this time that pertain to the aforementioned proposals. [Voting]

Okay. There are no questions. The time is now 10:08 a.m. Pacific Daylight Time, and the polls are now closed for voting. The report of the inspector of election covering the proposals presented at this meeting is as follows: the proposal to elect Dinesh Patel and Sarah Noonberg as Class I directors of the company is carried. The selection of Ernst & Young LLP as the company's independent registered public accounting firm for the fiscal year ending December 31, '21 -- sorry, December 31, 2020, is ratified. We expect to report the preliminary voting results or, if available to us on a timely basis, the final voting results on a current report on Form 8-K to be filed with the SEC within 4 business days after the end of this meeting. If not earlier reported, we expect to report our final voting results and an amendment to our Form 8-K within 4 business days after the final results are known to us. This concludes the formal portion of today's meeting, and this meeting is concluded. Thank you, everyone. And have a very nice day.