SCYNEXIS, Inc. (SCYX) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Welcome to the 2020 Annual Meeting for SCYNEXIS, Inc. Our host for today's call is Guy MacDonald, Chairman of the Board. [Operator Instructions] I will now turn the call over to your host, Mr. MacDonald, you may begin, sir.

Thank you. Good morning. I am Guy MacDonald, and I'm Chairman of the Board of SCYNEXIS. I'm very happy to welcome you to the SCYNEXIS' 2020 Annual Stockholders Meeting. Joining me today are Marco Taglietti, our CEO, who also serves on our Board and the other members of the Board; Dr. Ann Hanham, Dr. Steven Gilman, Mr. David Hastings, Mr. Armando Anido and Mr. Phil Tinmouth. The other officers of the company joining us today are Eric Francois, our CFO; Dr. David Angulo, our CMO; and Scott Sukenick, our General Counsel and Corporate Secretary. Also joining us today is Michael Lombardo of the auditing firm, Deloitte & Touche. Scott Sukenick will serve as the Secretary for the meeting. He will also serve as Inspector of Elections for this meeting. The meeting will now officially come to order. We will proceed with the formal business of the meeting as set forth in your notice of meeting and proxy statement. 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. Mr. Sukenick, has the notice of this meeting been sent to all shareholders entitled to vote at this meeting?

Yes, it has.

I'm appointing Scott Sukenick to act as Inspector of Election at this meeting. Mr. Sukenick, will you please report at this time with respect to the existence of a quorum?

Proxies have been received for 76,800,888 of the 98,811,797 shares of common stock outstanding on record date, which represents approximately 77.72% of the total number of outstanding shares. And 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.

As proper notice was given and a quorum is present, the stockholder meeting is now convened. Mr. Sukenick, were there any additional proposals for business properly filed with the company secretary?

No.

Since no proposals were properly filed in advance of this meeting, the business of this meeting is limited to the 6 proposals set forth in the proxy.

The time is now 9:33 a.m. Eastern Time on Thursday, July 2, 2020, and the polls are now open for voting on all matters to be presented. The polls will be closed to voting after we go through the matters to be voted on.

I will now present the matters to be voted upon. Please note that we will give stockholders an opportunity to comment on the proposals and sales after all proposals have been presented. The first item of business today is to elect SCYNEXIS' Board of Directors, 7 nominees as directors to serve until the 2021 Annual Meeting of Stockholders and until their successors are duly elected and qualified, as further described in the proxy statement relating to this meeting. The second item of business today is the ratification of the selection by the Audit Committee of the Board of Directors of Deloitte & Touche LLP as the independent registered public accounting firm of the company for the fiscal year ending December 31, 2020. The third item of business today is the advisory approval of the compensation of our named executive officers as disclosed in this proxy statement. The fourth item of business today is the advisory approval of the frequency of advisory votes on the compensation of our named executive officers as disclosed in this proxy statement. The fifth item of business today is the approval of amendment to SCYNEXIS' amended and restated certificate of incorporation, as amended, to add a federal forum selection provision. The sixth item of business today is the approval of an amendment to SCYNEXIS' amended and restated certificate of incorporation, as amended, to implement a 1-for-10 reverse stock split of our common stock and decrease the number of authorized shares of common stock from 250 million to 100 million. If any stockholder would like to make a comment regarding any of the proposals, please submit your comments through the web portal.

I see no comments pending. And so the polls remain 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 voted via proxy or otherwise and do not want to change their vote do not need to take any further action. We will briefly pause for voting. [Voting]

Now that everyone has had the opportunity to vote, I declare the polls closed, the time is 9:36 a.m. Eastern Time on July 2, 2020.

May we have the preliminary results of the voting?

The preliminary report covering the proposals presented at this meeting is as follows: the proposal to elect the SCYNEXIS Board of Directors, 7 nominees of Directors to serve until the 2021 Annual Meeting of Stockholders and until their successors are duly elected and qualified is carried. The selection of Deloitte & Touche LLP as the company's independent registered public accounting firm for the fiscal year ending 2020 is ratified. The compensation of our named executive officers, as described in this proxy statement is approved by advisory vote. The frequency of advisory votes on the compensation of our named executive officers, as disclosed in this proxy statement is approved by advisory vote to be every year. The amendment to SCYNEXIS' amended and restated certificate of incorporation, as amended, to add a federal forum provision is not approved, but is too close to call at this time. The amendment to SCYNEXIS' amended and restated certificate of incorporation, as amended, to implement a 1-for-10 reverse stock split of our common stock and to decrease the number of authorized shares of common stock from 250 million to 100 million is approved. We will be reporting the final vote results in a Form 8-K to be filed within 4 business days.

Thank you. There being no further business, this Annual Meeting of the Stockholders of SCYNEXIS, Inc. is hereby adjourned. We will now respond if questions have been submitted today through the web portal that are germane to this meeting.

And I will turn it over to Dr. Marco Taglietti, CEO, to respond to any questions.

So we have a first question asking what -- the opinion of the management with regards to the reverse split proposal. As we mentioned in our proxy, we believe that this is desirable for several reasons, including improved marketability, improving perceptions and remove concerns about compliance with listing requirements. And all of this could ultimately put our companies and our stockholders in a better position to benefit from the milestones we anticipate reaching later in the future. We received another question. The question is, stressing first of all that we had a stellar performer of the company on our ability to move efficiently the program from Phase I to Phase III and now getting ready for a filing. The question, the specific question is why is our stock price still lagging? We believe that all the future events that will happen in the near future, including the filing NDA, the approval, the preparation of the company for commercialization, potentially business development activities will actually help us to get a proper value of our company. And there is another question with regards to the status of our new drug applications. As we have disclosed before, we have 2 positive pivotal trials that will constitute the basis, the clinical basis for the NDA, and we are working in preparing the NDA that we expect to file this year with an expected PDUFA date in mid-2021. At this point, we don't see any additional questions. So thank you. Operator -- operator, no other questions at this time so we can proceed with the meeting.

And so with no further questions, we will end this -- the meeting has already been adjourned, and we will now end the call. Thank you all for attending the SCYNEXIS 2020 Annual Stockholders Meeting. And operator, if you will please take it from here. Thank you very much.

This now concludes the meeting. Thank you for joining and have a pleasant day.