Vivesto AB (VIVE.ST) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Welcome to the Oasmia Pharmaceutical Teleconference 2020. With us today, we have Francois Martelet, Sven Rohmann and Jörgen Olsson. [Operator Instructions] I will now hand you over to our speaker. Please go ahead.

Thank you, and good morning, everybody, and welcome to this telephone conference. My name is Jörgen Olsson, and I am the Chairman of the Board of Oasmia. Together with me today, I have Sven Rohmann, our Acting CEO of Oasmia; and of course, I have Francois Martelet, our newly appointed CEO of the company. So by now, many of you know and are aware of all the challenges we have faced during 2019, especially during the first 9 months. After straightening out many question marks, we were finally delisted from the NASDAQ Stockholm observation list. Now at that time also, we announced the -- Sven Rohmann as Acting CEO. And since then, we have been searching for a new CEO. Our criteria was that we wanted a person with vast international experience on commercializing pharmaceutical companies, a proven track record within oncology, a person that has a solid network within the medical community and also a demonstrated -- a good international leader. We find that Francois Martelet fits excellent to all our needs, and we look forward to have him onboard. Francois is an experienced pharma executive with a proven track record of shaping companies and driving exchange processes. He has held 3 CEO positions in the last 12 years and has spent most of his career working within the oncology space. He's been the CEO, for example, of Avax and Topotarget, but has also previously held senior level executive roles at Roche, Eli Lilly, Novartis and MSD. He has been based in 6 countries in Europe, including Sweden 20 years ago and also in the U.S. He's a French Medical Doctor with a Masters Degree in Business. He speaks 4 languages, among them a little bit Swedish. And Francois will take up his position on March 15. He will at that time then replace Rohmann, who has been Acting CEO in a very crucial transition period for Oasmia. I'm so grateful and thankful for Sven when I asked him to step in as CEO in June and he accepted that, and he has made an excellent job in bringing the organization in motion towards the ongoing commercialization of our first product, Apealea. Together with the Board and advisers, we have now the company through a successful share issue last year, as you all know. And it's very important for all you to underline that Sven will, of course, remain in his position as a Board member, and he will continue to play an active role in this company's commercialization strategy going forward. So before leaving the word over to our new CEO, Francois, Sven, maybe you could comment a bit on the stages of the company? Over to you, Sven.

Happy to do so, Jörgen. First of all, let me say that I'm very happy that we have Francois here. I have been involved significantly together with our other Board members in the selection process, and he really stands out from the crowd. So we are happy to have him here fighting for Oasmia. And I feel a big relief now that we have him onboard because he can really help us to move the baby forward. We know it's only a little bit but have a lot of covered network from our days at Novartis. And a lot of things we learned there at Novartis, we have in common. So it's such a good feeling that I say something on the strategy, and Francois immediately picks it up. So this perfect synergy we have here that absolutely convinced Francois will do a jumpstart here. And Oasmia will cross a great play from being us play -- and this was, of course, with the rest of the Board as well plays as a team. When it comes to the status of Oasmia, we have put up a lot of things that we will deliver on that was -- just sometimes people really ask me, I guess, 3, 4, even 10 times, if I'm really serious that we could do what we say. And with some of the crowd, I have to say, especially being thankful for our team here, we are on launch in the European -- [ EMEA ] countries with Apealea since January 30. And this is now where you find us in all the registries, where you could find us everywhere in Europe be listed. We put out products to the Nordic countries because we feel Nordic countries are our home, and a lot of investors here have invested that they should get this new way of cancer therapy. And here, it happened first, that this does not mean that we do not very swiftly cover all the other European countries. The usual question is that regarding our partners for the European countries. I can only say this is in the making. I cannot and I'm not allowed to give you a precise date or any kind of interim outlook of the negotiations. But we will report immediately once we have a partner onboard because that -- as we all agree, this is a very important piece of information for the value generation of the company. So I'm quite convinced that we will have step-by-step deliver, deliver, deliver. And I hope that you'll share our impression that we really turned Oasmia as a commercial company and that the kind of communication Jörgen has put forward with transparency really acts to the point that hopefully you'll feel as well that we overdeliver, not underpromise. In that sense, I would like to hand over to Jörgen again or Francois, depending how you want to play that, Jörgen.

So thank you very much, Sven. So let's give the word to our main character of today. Please, Francois, introduce yourself.

Thank you. Thanks so much, Jörgen. [Foreign Language] Okay. So of course, I'm very happy and thrilled for this opportunity. I do believe that Oasmia is a very interesting integrated pharmaceutical company in an exciting launch phase. And furthermore, the Board has definitely really sorted out some of the question marks of the past and has laid out a solid strategy to commercialize and also successfully completed the right issue in December. That was really a great job. I think that based on my very early stage observation that it's time to execute on the business plan, transforming the company from an R&D organization into a successful commercial powerhouse with the upcoming local and global product launches, which is exactly the kind of work that really thrills me. I'm excited also to move back to Sweden where I lived many years ago, where my daughters were born. And from a business standpoint, I will start off by getting to know the employees by listening to them. And my ambition is to have a, as we call it, jumpstart as the company is in an important launch phase of Apealea. And I will, of course, bring as much as I can into this process with my contacts and my experience in oncology over the last 20 years. And my focus will be and is definitely to continue to implement the already set strategy. And by doing so, I would like to thank Sven for a great job at initiating this -- the turnaround of the company and preparing a solid ground for a successful launch of Apealea in Nordics and in Europe down the roads. So Jörgen, I think I'm [ already lost ] for words.

So thank you. Thank you, Francois. And again, I want to welcome you onboard. And with this intro then, I leave the floor open for questions from the audience here. So please, go ahead.

[Operator Instructions] The first question comes from [ Robert Barkborough ] from [ Private ].

Welcome. What is your first priority?

Francois, will you...

I guess, it is for me, yes. Well, I mean if you allow me to answer to this question a bit later on, I think that will be appropriate. I haven't formally started yet. But clearly, the launch of Apealea in Nordics and in Europe and down the road globally is the first priority of the company.

[Operator Instructions] The next question comes from [ Simon Eava ].

I have a question about the strategy for Apealea. I was looking at the [ Niel Iman's ] LinkedIn profile, where he described -- or just put out a small ad that's -- need some people to do their DACH countries, Germany, Austria and Switzerland. So I was thinking about what is your strategy? Do you want to do it alone? Or are you going to do with a partner? Or is this something you can reveal for us?

Sven? Thank you, [ Simon ], for that. So I'll hand over the word for -- to Sven for that question.

Yes. I have repetitively said that we will launch the European countries. The preferred scenario is that we do our home market, and all the other markets are done by a partner. This remains true as of today. So we are looking for a partner that does that. I interpret that activity by [ Niel ] in such a way that he prepares for doing that, checking out to help people there. But we have not taken the decision yet that we want to do Germany or the German-speaking countries by ourselves. This should not be interpreted out of that LinkedIn, whatsoever.

Okay. And I was also thinking about the deals that -- if you're going to go through a partner, is it still that you need to do a deal for every country? Or is the partner taking care of that in Europe? Or can you tell us more about that?

I repeat myself that I don't know that we told you yet. But this -- we go for a global partner. And if we cannot have a global partner, we do a European or American and Asian partner. But again, the preferred scenario is to have one global partner that does the Apealea launch together with us on a global level.

The next question comes from [ Inkmar Riasara ] from [ Private ].

Question is maybe towards Sven at the moment. I'm wondering, there's been a lot of discussions in the past about the XR17 platform. And when we look at old news, it's been ongoing that it's coming to a deal with big pharmas, et cetera. I know you cannot comment on this. But can you comment on what is the interest from other pharmaceutical companies to use XR17? Are they beginning to understand this platform? Are they beginning to have more interest in the platform XR17?

XR17, as you remember, allows, for example, to get rid of Cremophor. There are some big selling products that use Cremophor. We actively approach those companies that may be interested of replacing Cremophor with our micelle technology. And if you recall what we have written in our prospectus and what we did for our share issues when we presented that case, XR17 has not been out there in the market for the last 10 years. So it came to a surprise by a lot of pharmaceutical companies that there is a technology platform that can address some of the major product development needs. We have several prospectus that we will invest this year, significantly in promoting the XR17 technology platform, try to get pharmaceutical partners and create maybe even this year or perhaps for sure next year some cash flow for the company out of that. This is our true belief, and our initial feedback undermine that this is the right strategy forward. As you rightly call out, I can give you no names or details or don't allow to tell you which month we will do the first deal. So this will be in press releases for us. Well, I could do that happily, but it is in the making.

So you confirm that other companies are interested in that platform?

I can confirm nothing, but I can tell you that this is interesting.

[Operator Instructions] The next question comes from [ Manny Bahiderbirk ] from [ Private ].

My question is for Sven, and I would like to hear what are your plans for the rest of the Q1 as Francois will start in March and also the rest of the year regarding launching Apealea with a partner in Europe?

In Q1, we will continue our activities on launching. So this is not a onetime event. This is an event that takes over months, years to get penetration into the market. In parallel, we are working on getting one or more partners that support our launch activities in Europe. And we look for partners and prepare the ground ourselves for the U.S. entry. So if I look at what we have written in our prospectus and how published in the past, we are perfectly on track. I see at the moment no deviation from the communicated strategy.

The next question comes from [ Philippe Forstrum ] from [ Nortis Research ].

I have a question for Sven. Have you -- so far, in the Nordic countries, have you had any price discussions with the government entities? Or have you sent in application for like in PLB in Sweden?

Right now, if you go into the electronic database where you'll see that we have put up a price there, which is our ex-factory price, price negotiations. We have not done in the Nordic countries yet, and the reason for that is we are in a -- we have other label as a start of our launch, ovarian cancer, which is quite a small indication. So there was not the need, as I was informed, to do price negotiations upfront.

[Operator Instructions] The next question comes from [ Tom Nelson ].

You have been talking a lot about Apealea and XR17. How about if you could comment something on the other aspects of Oasmia, such as the veterinarian part or the Docecal studies? Is -- are they kind of a pause at the moment with all the efforts and 100% going into the launch of Apealea? Or are you also looking into them at the same time?

The veterinarian business suffered a little bit from the cleaning we had to do in the U.S. So the activities for the vet business is on relaunching the vet -- the new entity so that every possible day recovery from the past cannot hit our future business. This is ongoing. And once we are done with that, we will press release that. Docecal, as we have said, is one of our very exciting products stemming from the XR17 technology platform. Docecal is something that can develop towards prostate cancer. Prostate cancer is one of the most common cancers we have in the world. So we are very excited to move that forward. Expect some press releases on the details of the new development strategy we have there, and this will coming out soon once we have the first collaborations in place for Docecal.

Okay. So two final questions. Could you guys comment something on the fact that you attended the Biotech Showcase in San Francisco? And I would like to ask Francois what his thoughts are on the scheme and the game philosophy and standing with the shareholders?

We have been at the JPMorgan Conference as well as the Biotech Showcase. The reason why somebody goes there is to do dealmaking, talk with other companies, look for partners and so on. It is the most important conference we have in the biotech pharmaceutical industry when it comes to dealmaking, raising awareness from potential investors. I don't have to tell you that after a financing is before the next financing. So a lot of networking, partnering and so on has to be done, and this was the place to do, and we have been there. I don't know if Oasmia ever in the past have been there. But I think Francois as well as I have been there for the last decade. So we know how important that are and what the rules of the games are at those conference to get to the right people, to the right partner, to the right investors. Francois, for the second part, over to you.

Yes. Thank you, Sven. Well, with regard to the communication with the shareholders, you know that there is some regulation according to the Stock Exchange rules. And I tend obviously to follow that. However, I will be very honest, transparent and -- as I used to be in my various assignments, both in the U.K. and U.S. as well. So expect me to be straightforward and transparent as much as I can.

[Operator Instructions] There are no further questions. Dear speakers, back to you for the conclusion.

Thank you. This is Jörgen Olsson. So thank you, everybody, for listening in. I heard that it was a quite big audience today. So I am, of course, happy with that and all the attention that we can bring. And I think you all know that you have a continued, very commitment -- committed team here at Oasmia, both from the Board of Directors and also from the management team. And we will continue to strive and increase the shareholder value in all aspects in this company. So again, thank you all for listening in, and the Board assumes to see you again when we do our quarterly presentations. Thank you very much.

This now concludes our conference call. Thank you all for attending. You may now disconnect your lines.