uniQure N.V. (QURE) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Hello, and welcome to the Annual General Meeting of Shareholders of uniQure N.V. Please note that today's meeting is being recorded. [Operator Instructions] It is now my pleasure to turn today's meeting over to Philip Astley-Sparke, the Chairman of the Board of Directors of uniQure. Mr. Astley-Sparke, the floor is yours.

Thank you, and good morning. It is my pleasure to welcome you to the 2020 Annual General Meeting of Shareholders of uniQure N.V. We will conduct this meeting in a slightly different manner than past years. The COVID-19 pandemic has made it not possible to conduct this meeting in person. Therefore, we're holding this year's AGM in a virtual manner. In accordance with legal requirements as ruled in emergency legislation, we announced this on Monday, June 15, in a Dutch newspaper and on our uniQure website. On our website, we provide additional information regarding the conduct of the meeting. The key difference for this meeting compared to our prior meetings is that shareholders are not attending in person and will not be able to deliver their votes real time. Instead, all voting was conducted in advance of the meeting. Finally, shareholders have been invited to submit questions regarding the agenda items in advance of the meeting and to ensure that their questions were received no later than 11:59 a.m. Central European summertime on June 16, 2020. Shareholders do, however, have the option of submitting recent questions during the meeting via the Computershare platform, and we will answer any questions following the voting proposals. With those exceptions, we'll be conducting the meeting in essentially the same format that we've used previously. Before proceeding to the business of the meeting, I would like to take a moment to introduce those who participate in the meeting. On behalf of uniQure's Board, we have Matt Kapusta, our Chief Executive Officer and Executive Member of the Board; we have Madhavan Balachandran, the Chair of our Compensation Committee; Robert Gut, our Chief Medical Officer and Executive member of the Board; Jack Kaye, the Chair of our Audit Committee; David Meek, a non-executive member of the Board; David Schaffer, a non-executive member of the Board; Paula Soteropoulos, a non-executive member of the Board; and Jeremy Springhorn, the Chair of our Nominating and Governance Committee. Also attending is Leonard Post who, following this meeting, will be joining the Board as a non-executive member and as Chair of our Research and Development Committee. We also have several representatives of the company attending today, Christian Klemt, our Chief Accounting Officer; Maria Cantor, our Senior Vice President of Investor Relations and Communications; Tom Malone, our Director of Corporate Communications; Chiara Russo, our Associate Director of Investor Relations and Communications; Dave Cerveny, our Chief Legal Officer, who will serve as Secretary for this meeting; Matthias Von [ Oppen ], a Legal Adviser to uniQure; [indiscernible], representing our auditor, KPMG; [ J S Skelton ], also from KPMG. And finally, [ Bob Crack ] representing the Dutch notary firm of [indiscernible], [ Tyson Crack ] in Amsterdam which has been retained by uniQure to assist with the voting and administration of today's meeting. Following my introductory comments and review of the formalities of the meeting, Mr. Kapusta will present an update on the company. We will then review the voting proposals and the votes received for each proposal. We will then answer any questions received from the shareholders, after which, we will close the meeting. This meeting is held person to the notice given to each shareholder record at the close of business on May 20, 2020. Most of the meeting was also filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission and posted on our website, www.uniqure.com on or about April 29 of this year. There are just shy of 35 million ordinary shares represented by proxy at this meeting, representing around 79% of the outstanding voting ordinary shares of uniQure. This represents a quorum, as required by the company's Articles of Association. Consequently, all announced proposals shall be approved by a majority of our ordinary shares voted on in advance of this meeting on or before 6 p.m. Central European summertime on June 16, 2020. On behalf of the Board of Directors of uniQure, I'd like to express my appreciation to all shareholders who returned their proxies and especially to all shareholders who have taken the time to join us today. Finally, before we begin the business of the meeting, I'd like to acknowledge and thank Dr. David Schaffer, who will be stepping off our Board following this meeting. David has served as a member of our Board since January 2014. He's Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and Neuroscience at the University of California Barclay and the Chief Scientific Officer of 4D Molecular Therapeutics. He has great technical knowledge in uniQure's field, in gene therapy and has been an invaluable resource. On behalf of uniQure and each member of the Board I would like to thank David for his many thoughtful contributions over the years. We wish him the best. At this time, I would like to give the floor to Matt Kapusta, chief Executive Officer, to discuss our second and third agenda items. The 2019 Annual Report and 2019 annual accounts as well as to outline uniQure's expectations for 2020 and a review of how uniQure's remuneration policy was applied in the fiscal year 2019. The review of remuneration is presented in accordance with the Dutch civil code. Both of these agenda items are discussion items only and are not voting items. Matt, the floor is yours.

Thank you, Philip. Good morning, and good afternoon, everybody. If we could advance to the first slide of my presentation. Would just like to mention to everybody that I'll be making forward-looking statements, and please refer to our public filings on the sec.gov website. With respect to our strategy at uniQure, I think it's always good to start off any update presentation with what we're focused on. Really, all of our activities are focused on driving a pipeline of gene therapies to patients as rapidly as possible and developing appropriate commercial strategy to attack any particular geographic market. What's critically important in our business is really how we do that. That's what we do, how we do that is mostly focused on developing appropriate manufacturing capabilities, enabling technologies and intellectual property. And these are things that over the 22-year history of uniQure, we feel that we have a leading differentiated competitive advantage. Next slide, please. You will see an overview of our global leadership in AAV manufacturing. That really triangulates around our Lexington manufacturing facility where we're currently sitting today. Last year, we expanded the footprint of that facility for approximately 50,000 square feet to 80,000 square feet. And that is where we conduct all of our proprietary next-generation insect cells baculovirus manufacturing capabilities. We demonstrated last year, the ability to scale up that process from 200-liters to 500-liter stirred tank bioreactor and have the flexibility in this facility to scale up even further to 4,000 liters of capacity. We have a strong intellectual property position, and we feel that these capabilities provide us the necessary control and flexibility to execute across our broad platform. The other aspect of our technology suite revolves around AAV5 which is a proprietary AAV capsid that is used to deliver our transgenes within particular cells. What we love about AAV5 is that we demonstrated clinical proof of concepts both in the brain as well as in liver-directed disorders. We've used AAV5 in 5 clinical studies over the years. We've administered it to more than 75 patients and we think that this has differentiated properties compared to other AAV capsids that are used within gene therapy product constructs, insomuch that we think it has a favorable immunogenicity profile. We've never seen or observed a confirmed cellular immune response to AAV5 gene therapies. We do not use prophylactic immunosuppression therapy and just as important, we think that AAV5 gene therapies can be administered and have clinical benefit to all or nearly all patients irrespective of neutralizing antibody titer. So we think that there are a number of very important differentiating features of AAV5, and it's a real true workhorse AAV vector for us. A lot of the last 12 to 18 months have been focused on -- next slide, focused on our lead program in hemophilia B, [ AMT-061 ] [ EtranaDez ] as we abbreviate it. We demonstrated clinical proof-of-concept in a Phase IIb study in 3 patients and presented 1-year follow-up data on the study at the American Society of Hematology Conference in December. You can see some of the results on this page, which shows that we were demonstrating increases in Factor IX activity up to 30% to 50% of normal that have been sustained and durable for up to 1 year with a mean fixed activity at 1 year of 41% of normal. Next slide, please. We are focused right now on the registrational pivotal study for EtranaDez, that is ongoing. We recently announced a few months ago that we completed dosing of 54 patients. In that study that continue to follow-up. A lot of work has been going on to ensure proper execution of the study despite the COVID-19 pandemic, and I think we're doing a fantastic job of working with our investigators to ensure and minimize the level of disruption. This is a open-label, single-dose, multicenter study that is being conducted in approximately 40 sites. For the first time, this is the first large-scale clinical study that is being done in patients where they are not being excluded for neutralizing antibody due to the properties and differentiation that we believe is conferred to AAV5. All the patients that were treated with [ AMT-061 ], will serve as their own control through a 6-month observational lead-in phase where we'll be comparing certain endpoint information that would include the increases in Factor IX activity, the consumption of replacement therapy and their annualized bleeding rates to those during their observational lead-in period. We continue to be on track to present top line data on our primary endpoint, which is a 26-week follow-up of Factor IX activity before the end of the year. Our next program that we're extremely excited about is AMT-130 for Huntington's disease. This is the first of its kind gene therapy that is now in human clinical studies for this particular indication. We are leveraging a proprietary onetime administered gene silencing technology that we call miQURE that has been demonstrated to provide strong knockdown in the sites of pathology for Huntington's disease which is in the striatum where the deep structures in the brain as well as in somatomotor cortex. We have demonstrated in diseased animal models. The suppression of the mutant protein, which is Huntington, in the 25% to 75% range. We've also demonstrated that we can do this without any direct toxicity and with a safe administration procedure. So the Phase I/II study on the next slide, the primary objective is to assess safety, tolerability with the secondary objectives of looking at biomarkers and clinical data associated with efficacy. This is a multicenter randomized and double-blinded study that is controlled with imitation sham surgery. We have 2-dose cohorts and a total of 26 patients with the first dose cohort of being 10 patients and the second dose cohort being 16 patients. The first 2 patient procedures were previously scheduled for the end of March. And in order to prioritize patient safety, we delayed those procedures. We are working very closely with the investigators and the sites and having discussions about the timing of getting those procedures back on track, and we look forward to providing updates to our shareholders and the public, hopefully soon. In terms of the remainder of our pipeline, we are largely focused on liver-directed disorders and CNS diseases. We have programs in hemophilia A, Fabry disease and other liver-directed targets as well as an exciting program in Spinocerebellar Ataxia Type 3 and other undisclosed CNS targets as well as an ongoing partnership with BMS that is largely focused on cardiovascular disease. On the next slide, we provide a summary of our financial results over the last 3 years. The revenue that you see here of $7.3 billion in 2019 is largely related to our collaboration with Bristol-Myers Squibb and includes the amortization of license revenue as well as the reimbursement of expenses that we characterize here as collaboration revenue. We spent a total of $131 million on operating expenses. That is -- the increase is largely related to the Phase IIb and HOPE-B pivotal study that was being conducted in 2019 as well as an increase in spend on our Huntington's disease program and our other research product candidates. And the total loss before income tax expense was $130.6 million and the net loss was $130.6 million as well. On the next slide, we provide an overview of the consolidated balance sheet. The most important items here are really related to cash. So we ended the year with $377.8 million of cash proceeds, ended the first quarter with approximately $342 million of cash proceeds, and we have guided that, that is sufficient to get us into the first half of 2022. On the following slide is an overview of our remuneration over the last 12 months, relevant information on the remuneration of the members and the Board and management is included in our 2019 Annual Report beginning on Page 52 and as well as in our 2020 proxy statement. In accordance to the policies and regulation, the Board is authorized to determine the remuneration of each individual member of management and the granting of equity to Board members. In view of the financial position of uniQure and management's expertise, the Compensation Committee and Board consider the remuneration appropriate and concluded that there is no reason for a material adjustment to the remuneration policy. And with that, I will hand it back over to Philip.

Thank you, Matt. We will now move to the next items of business on our agenda, the voting proposal. So at this time, we will begin discussions of the various proposals presented in our notice of Annual General Meeting and proxy statement. These correspond to agenda items 4 through 11. There are 11 voting proposals that we will review today. Each of these items is more fully described in our notice of Annual General Meeting and proxy statement, copies of which have been made available to all shareholders and are available at this meeting via the company's website and the Computershare platform that we're using for this meeting. I'd also like to point out that those who return the proxies solicited by uniQure, whether by mail, Internet or phone, authorized the persons named in the proxy, Matthew Kapusta, Dave Cerveny or myself to vote on all propositions coming before the meeting. Please note that unlike the format of our prior in-person meetings, if you have previously submitted a proxy, including over the Internet or by phone, your vote at this virtual meeting cannot be revoked. For each voting proposal, we will announce the voting instruction received for the relevant proposal. Because all voting was conducted prior to the meeting, these instructions represent the final results for each proposal, subject to final verification and certification by [ Mr. Crack ] who is serving as the notary for this meeting. We note that there were no non-cast or uncast votes for any of the proposals. The first proposal to be acted upon by the shareholders is the adoption of the annual accounts for the 2019 financial year and the treatment of the loss of $130.6 million occurred in 2019 to the accumulated deficit of uniQure. The annual accounts prepared by the Board in accordance with the Articles of Association and applicable law and audited. The Board was provided with an auditor's report by KPMG Accountants N.V., UniQure's external auditor. The auditor's report begins on Page 110 of the 2019 Annual Report. UniQure's Audit Committee also reviewed and discussed the audited financial statements with UniQure's management and auditor. The Board unanimously recommends a vote for the proposal. The Board's statement in support of this proposal appears in uniQure's proxy statement, beginning on Page 9 as well as in other materials that uniQure has sent to shareholders. We will now announce the results of the vote on the proposal.

In accordance with all received voting instructions and pending certification of vote with approximately 35.2 million votes for, 92,000 votes against and 44,000 votes abstained, the proposal is adopted, including charging the loss to the accumulated deficit of the company.

The second proposal to be acted upon by the shareholders is approval to grant discharge of liability to the members of the Board of Directors for the management and conductive policy during the 2019 financial year. In so far as the exercise of such duties is reflected in the 2019 Annual Report or otherwise disclosed to the general meeting. There are no additional matters to disclose at this time. The Board unanimously recommends a vote for the proposal. The Board's statement in support of this proposal appears in uniQure's proxy statement, beginning on Page 9 as well as in other materials uniQure has sent to shareholders. We will now announce the results of the vote on this proposal.

In accordance with all received voting instructions and pending certification of the vote with 35.3 million votes for, 21,000 votes against and 61,000 votes abstained, the proposal is adopted.

The third proposal to be acted upon by the shareholders is the reappointment of Mr. Madhavan Balachandran as non-Executive Director of the Board. Based on the unanimous nomination of the Nominating and Corporate Governance Committee, the Board has unanimously resolved to reappoint Mr. Madhavan Balachandran as non-Executive Director of the Board effective as of the close of this meeting for a term ending at the end of the Annual General Meeting of Shareholders of the company in 2023. Mr. Balachandran has served as a member of our Board since September 2017, and he has extensive industry experience, including as Executive Vice President of Operations for Amgen, a global biotechnology company from August 2012 until July 2016. Mr. Balachandran will hold office to purchase ordinary shares in account of the company and has been granted restricted share units. Details of his biography and equity holdings are listed in our proxy statement. The Board believes that Mr. Balachandran is qualified to serve on the Board of Directors as a non-Executive Director due to his broad expertise and experience in the biotechnology industry. The Board unanimously recommends a vote for the appointment of Mr. Balachandran as a non-Executive Director for a term of 3 years. The Board's statement in support of this proposal appears in uniQure's proxy statement, beginning on Page 9 as well as in other materials that uniQure sent to shareholders. We will now announce the results of the vote on this proposal.

In accordance with all voting instructions and pending certification of the vote with 35.3 million votes for, 66,000 votes against and 12,000 votes abstained, the proposal is adopted.

The fourth proposal to be acted upon by the shareholders is the reappointment of Mr. Jack Kaye as non-Executive Director of the Board. Based on the unanimous nomination of the Nominating and Corporate Governance Committee, the Board has unanimously resolved to reappoint Mr. Jack Kaye as a non-Executive Director of the Board effective as of the close of this meeting for a term ending at the end of the Annual General Meeting of Shareholders 2023. Jack Kaye has served as a member of our Board since 2016. Mr. Kaye is currently Chairman of our Audit Committee. Mr. Kaye had extensive experiences as a auditor, including at Deloitte LLP, where he served for approximately 38 years. Mr. Kaye holds options to purchase ordinary shares in the capital of the company and has been regranted restricted share units. Details of his biography and equity holdings are listed in our proxy statement. The Board believes that Mr. Kaye is qualified to serve on the Board of Directors as a non-Executive Director due to his extensive accounting and financial expertise. The Board unanimously recommends a vote for the appointment of Mr. Kaye as a non-Executive Director for a term of 3 years. The Board's statement in support of this proposal appears in uniQure's proxy statement, beginning on Page 9 as well as in other materials that uniQure sent to shareholders. We will now announce the results of the vote.

In accordance with all received voting instructions and pending certification of the vote with 35.3 million shares votes for, 65,000 votes against and 14,000 votes abstained, the proposal is adopted.

The fifth proposal to be acted upon by the shareholders is reelection of Dr. Jeremy Springhorn as a non-Executive Director of the Board. Based on the unanimous nomination of the Nominating and Corporate Governance Committee, the Board has unanimously resolved to appoint Mr. (sic) [Dr.] Jerry Springhorn as a non-Executive Director of the Board effective as of the close of this meeting for a term ending at the end of the Annual General Meeting 2023. Mr. (sic) [Dr.] Springhorn has served as a member of our Board since September 2017. Since November 2017, Dr. Springhorn has been Chief Business Officer of Syros Pharmaceuticals. Dr. Springhorn has extensive experience in research development and business development, including at Alexion Pharmaceuticals, where he served for approximately 24 years. Dr. Springhorn holds options to purchase ordinary shares in the capital of the company and has been granted restricted share units. Details of his biography and equity holdings are listed in our proxy statement. The Board believes that Dr. Springhorn is qualified to serve on the Board of Directors and a non-Executive Director due to the extensive experience in the biotechnology industry. The Board unanimously recommends a vote for the appointment of Dr. Springhorn as a non-Executive Director for a term of 3 years. The Board's statement to support this proposal appears in uniQure's proxy statement, beginning on Page 9 as well as in other materials that uniQure sent to shareholders. We will now announce the results of the vote on the proposal.

In accordance with all received voting instructions and pending certification of the vote with 35 million votes for, 260,000 votes against and 14,000 votes abstained, the proposal is adopted.

The next proposal to be acted upon by the shareholders is the appointment of Dr. Leonard Post as a new non-Executive Director of the Board. Based on the unanimous nomination of the Nominating and Corporate Governance Committee, the Board has unanimously resolved to appoint Dr. Post as a non-Executive Director of the Board effective at the close of this meeting for a term ending at the end of the Annual General Meeting of Shareholders of the company in 2023. Dr. Post has extensive experience in the industry, including as Chief Scientific Officer of Vivace Therapeutics, Virtuoso Therapeutics and BioMarin. The Board believes that Dr. Post is qualified to serve on the Board of Directors as a non-Executive Director due to the extensive experience in the [ 5 technologies ] [indiscernible]. Dr. Post does not currently hold any shares in uniQure. The Board unanimously recommends a vote for the appointment of Dr. Post as a non-Executive Director for a term of 3 years. The Board's statement in support of this proposal appears in uniQure's proxy statement, beginning on Page 9 as well as in other materials that uniQure sent to shareholders. We will now announce the results of the vote on the proposal.

In accordance with all received voting instructions and pending certification of the vote with 35.3 million votes for, 5,000 votes against and 14,000 votes abstained, the proposal is adopted.

With that, and on behalf of all of the directors, I would like to welcome Dr. Post to the Board. We expect he will be a great addition. The seventh proposal to be acted upon by the shareholders is the renewal of the designation of the Board as the competent body to issue ordinary shares and options and to grant rights to subscribe the ordinary shares up to a maximum of, one, the authorized share capital to uniQure in the event of an underwritten public offering; or two, a maximum of 19.9% of the aggregate issued share capital of the company at the time of issuance in connection with any other single issuance or series of related issuances for a term of 18 months with effect from the date of this meeting. The existing authorization expires on the 19th of December 2020 and is common practice for Dutch companies to seek to renew this authorization annually on a rolling basis. The approval of this voting proposal will maintain flexibility to allow the Board to issue ordinary shares without the delay and expense of calling an extraordinary general meeting of shareholders. The designation can be used for any and all purposes, including any issuance under a purchase plan subject to statutory limitations and with the exception of awards granted under the 2014 amended and restated share option plan. The Board unanimously recommends a vote for the proposal. The Board's statement in support of this proposal appears in uniQure's proxy statement, beginning on Page 12 as well as other materials that uniQure sent to shareholders. We will now announce the results of the vote on the proposal.

In accordance with all received voting instructions and pending certification of the vote with 27.3 million votes for, 8 million votes against and 11,000 votes abstained, the proposal is adopted.

The eighth proposal to be acted upon by the shareholders is the renewal of the designation of the Board as a competent body to limit or exclude preemptive rights in connection with the issue of ordinary shares of uniQure and granting of rights to subscribe to [indiscernible] shares. The existing authorization expires on the 19th of December 2020. Under Dutch law, holders of our ordinary shares would generally have a pro-rata, pre-active right of subscription to any of our ordinary shares issued for cash. A preemptive right of subscription is the right of our current shareholders to maintain their percentage ownership for ordinary shares by buying a proportional number of any new shares that we issue. However, Dutch law and our [ auditor ] association permit our shareholders to authorize our Board to exclude or limited preemptive rights. This authorization may not continue for more than 5 years and may be given on a rolling basis. We currently have authorization from our shareholders to exclude or limit these preemptive rights, which authorization expires on December 19, 2020. It is common practice for Dutch companies to seek to renew this authorization annually on a rolling basis. The Board unanimously recommends a vote for the proposal. The Board's statement in support of this proposal appears in uniQure's proxy statement, beginning on Page 13 as well as in other materials that uniQure sent to shareholders. We will now announce the results of the vote on the proposal.

In accordance with all received voting instructions and pending certification of the vote with 23 million votes for, 8 million votes against and 4,000 votes abstained, the proposal is adopted.

\ The ninth proposal to be acted upon by the shareholders is the reauthorization of the Board to acquire uniQure's own, fully paid-up ordinary shares up to a maximum of 10% of the issued share capital of uniQure for a period of 18 months from the date of the 2020 Annual Meeting in open market purchases, often privately negotiated transactions or by means of self-tender or offers our price per share ranging up to 110% of the market price per share at the time of the transaction. The current authorization of our Board to repurchase shares expires on the 9th of December 2020. The Board unanimously recommends a vote for the proposal. The Board's statement in support of this proposal appears in uniQure's proxy statement, beginning on Page 40, as well as in other materials that uniQure sent to shareholders. We will now announce results of the vote on the proposal.

In accordance with all received voting instructions and pending certification of the vote with 35.3 million votes for, 22,000 votes against and 20,000 votes abstained, the proposal is adopted.

The 10th proposal to be acted upon by the shareholders is the appointment of KPMG Accountants N.V. or KPMG, an independent registered public accounting firm as the external auditor, charged with one, or the [indiscernible] Dutch annual accounts to be prepared in accordance with the international financial reporting standards and adopted by the European Union for the financial year ending December 31, 2020; and two, serving as our independent registered public accounting firm for purposes reporting [indiscernible] to U.S. law for the fiscal year ending December 31, 2020. As required by Dutch law, shareholder approval must be obtained for the selection of KPMG to serve as our auditor and independent registered public accounting firm. KPMG has served as our independent registered public accounting firm since June 2019. The service provided to us by KPMG as well as the predecessor auditor, PricewaterhouseCoopers accountants N.V. during the years ended December 31, 2019 and 2018, are described below under principal accounts and fee information. Representatives of KPMG are present at this meeting and will be available to answer appropriate questions as needed. The representatives will also have the opportunity to make statements if they desire to do such. PwC was dismissed as of April 25, 2019. KPMG's report on the financial statements for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2019, which is the only such report issued for these financial statements is not contained as a diverse opinion or disclaimer opinion, is not qualified or minified as to the uncertainty, or the scope or accounting principles. The Audit Committee annually reviews the independent registered public accounting firm's independence, including reviewing all relationships with the independent registered public accounting firm and us and any disclosure relationships or services that may impact the objectivity and independence of the independent registered public accounting firm and the independent registered public accounting firm's performance. We do not believe that any relationship exists, which would interfere with PwC or KPMG's independence. The Board unanimously recommends a vote for the proposal. The Board's statements in support of this proposal appears in uniQure's proxy statement, beginning on Page 16, as well as in other materials that uniQure sent to shareholders. We will now announce the results of the vote of this proposal.

In accordance with all received voting instructions and pending certification of the vote with 35.3 million votes for, 2,000 votes against and 4,000 votes abstained, the proposal is adopted.

The 11th proposal to be acted upon by the shareholders is to approve on an advisory basis, the compensation of the company's named executive officers as disclosed in the proxy statement in accordance with the SEC rules on Pages 37 to 71 of the proxy statement for the 2020 Annual Meeting [indiscernible] to Item 402 of Regulation S-K, including the compensation discussion and analysis, the 2019 summary compensation table and the other related tables and disclosures. The executive compensation program is designed to align compensation metrics with the strategic imperatives, align the interest of management with shareholders and track to retain talented executives. Please see the compensation discussion analysis beginning on Page 38 of the proxy statement for additional details, including information about the fiscal year 2019 compensation of our named executive officers. We believe that the [ first ] compensation is consistent with the principles of our remuneration policy, as presented earlier, and to provide an important incentive to the achievement of uniQure's high performance over the past year. The Board unanimously recommends a vote for the proposal. The Board's statement in support of this proposal appears in the uniQure's proxy statement, beginning on Page 17 and Pages 37 to 71 as well as in other material that uniQure sent to shareholders. We will now announce the results of the vote on the proposal.

In accordance with all received voting instructions and pending certification of the vote with 34.9 million votes for, 446,000 votes against and 7,000 votes abstained, the proposal is adopted.

Voting has now been completed on all matters on the agenda, and no further business has been brought before this meeting. We will now address any questions that we may have received from our shareholders. The moderator for this portion of the meeting will be Tom Malone, our Director of Communications. We will answer any questions posed or reserve the right not to answer any questions that are duplicative or otherwise inappropriate. We will also limit this portion of the meeting to no more than 30 minutes.

Okay. There have been no submitted questions for the meeting.

Any additional questions? Following this meeting, the secretary will complete the count of the proxies, including examination of all proxies for validity, and we will report the final results of the voting. As there is no further business to come before this meeting, I declare the meeting adjourned. I would like to thank you all for attending this Annual General Meeting, which is now concluded.

This concludes the meeting. You may now disconnect.