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Burning Rock Biotech Limited (BNR)

Q4 2022 Earnings Call· Tue, Mar 28, 2023

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Before we begin, I’d like to remind you that this conference call contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 21(e) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, and as defined in the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements can be identified by terminology such as will, expects, anticipates, future, intends, plans, believes, estimates, targets, confidence, and similar statements. Statements that are not historical facts, including statements about Burning Rock’s beliefs and expectations are forward-looking statements. Such statements are based upon management’s current expectations and current market and operating conditions and relate to events that involve known or unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors, all of which are difficult to predict and many of which are beyond Burning Rock’s control. Forward-looking statements involve risks, uncertainties, and other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in any such statements. Burning Rock does not undertake any obligation to update any forward-looking statements as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required under applicable law. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Mr, Han, the CEO. Please go ahead.

Yusheng Han

Management

Thank you, and welcome to Burning Rock's 2022 Annual Conference Call. I'm Yusheng Han, CEO and Founder of Burning Rock. Today, we also have our CTO, Joe Zhang; and CFO, Leo Li. Now let's turn to Page 3. In case there are some investors who are not familiar with Burning Rock. I hereby illustrate what we do. So our business started from tissue-based therapy selection in 2014 and then expand to multi-directions of liquid biopsy, including liquid-based therapy selection, MRD, multi-cancer early detection, and we have three business units, providing products and services to doctors, pharmas and consumers. Now let's turn to Page 4. So in this page, we will have a review of 2022. For the general view of our company, we completed profitability-driven organization optimization. The overall headcount have been optimized by 25%. And with this - in that case, we still delivered strong growth in non-COVID quarters and achieved 11% year-on-year growth in 2022. And we completed listing on London Stock exchange offering an alternative listing venue in addition to NASDAQ. We believe that this is a significant corporate development as it provides a fallback solution to facilitate continued trading and listing of our shares in case of a delisting scenario of ADR on NASDAQ. We also noted that the latest statement from the SEC in December that as of now, there is no risk of Chinese issuers getting delisted, which is good for us. And for therapy selection, we achieved 13% volume growth despite COVID challenges, driven by in-hospital channel. And the 9 genes panel was approved by NMPA providing a better weapon or in-hospital model. This is our second approved NGS-based tap by the NMPA and demonstrating our capability of working with NMPA to bring innovative diagnostic products to the market. For MRD, 2022 was…

Joe Zhang

Management

Thanks, Yusheng. So I'm going to introduce some update regards the MCD and MRD. Let's turn to Page 8. So this is basically an update regards to Burning Rock's early detection technology development. So the - after publication of the basic technology in proof of concept in nature biomedical engineering last year, we actually recently made a good publication - of an oncology regards to the THURDER study, which is a 6 cancer early detection trial we ran past several years. And so the other very highlight part is basically we got a regulatory breakthrough, which is we grant - FDA granted us the breakthrough device designation early this year. And this is actually a very significant achievement for Burning Rock. Currently, we're actually working closely with the FDA for the next step to seeking for regulatory approval in the future. So let's turn to Page 9. Basically, this is a slide which we presented previously, talking about the Burning Rock's early detection program, product development roadmap. As you can see here, for the 6 cancer early detention product, which we oversee. And after the THUNDER study being published in oncology last month, so currently, we are actually running a program called PREVENT study, which is a prospective and interventional intent of use population. And this is ongoing at this moment. The recruitment is a pretty significant number there. And we probably will update the readout later this year for the first phase. And meanwhile, actually, we are actually developing up to 22 cancer MCD product. There's several trials, several clinical studies related to it yet. And we already published in poster format in ESMO last year, we call PROMISE study. And at this moment, we're actually in a very intensive preparation regards - preparation stage in the PREDICT and…

Leo Li

Management

Thanks, Joe. I'd like to cover three topics. First, let me talk about the fourth quarter 2022 recap. Then I'll talk about the latest trend in the first quarter of 2023, and I'll talk about 2023 initial outlook. So first, let's go to the fourth quarter recap, and we can go to Page 20, then we can see that we finished the fourth quarter stronger than we previously anticipated. Recall that back in November, we guided for 2022 full year revenue growth to be about 5%, which implies a 20-something year-over-year drop for the first quarter. We ended the quarter in a stronger performance, down only 3% year-over-year. I'm breaking this down a little bit further, clinical testing revenues dropped in the teens range year-over-year in the fourth quarter, slightly better than we anticipated back in November. And testing for pharma customers held up very well, maintaining the triple-digit growth rates that we achieved throughout 2022. And we'd like to take this opportunity to commend all our staff who worked tirelessly during the difficult COVID lockdown period. Our testing carried out pretty much unaffected despite the lockdown suffered by many areas in China and in particular, the city of Guangzhou where our lab is located. We believe the resilience demonstrated by our business, the strong mentality of our staff to overcome challenges will help us in our future growth years. We also like to recap our 2022 full year performance. Our 2022 full year revenues grew 11% year-over-year. We think this is likely on the high end of growth rates achieved in the precision oncology testing industry by our own estimate. There were three pillars that drove that strength. Number one, our dominant market position in the in-hospital segment, which we have built over the years into China's number one…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] We will take our first question and the question comes from the line of Alexis Yan from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Alexis Yan

Analyst

Hi. Thank you for taking my questions. I have two questions. Number one is that regarding the 2023 revenue growth target of 20%, can you help us maybe better understand how much of that would be from the existing therapy selection portfolio? And how much would be from the MRD as well as the early detection product portfolio? It may also be helpful to get a sense of MRD contribution in 2022 as context? And second question is that so for the new businesses like MRD and early detection, what are some of the key commercial milestones for example, hospital contracting that we could be – we can track for the next few years? And also, in terms of sales and marketing or market education investment, how do we assess the ROI in terms of these commercial investment?

Yusheng Han

Management

Thanks for your question, Alexis. I am Yusheng. So for your first question, we don't - we don't - like I have a very clear cut of which part will contribute how much to the percentage of our growth. I can give you a general view that since as – let's take the three parts, OncoVue [ph] pharma and also early detection. So OncoVue, I think that will be the - still be the main driver. As you know that we have a big baseline of OncoVue, including therapy selection and MRD. And for - within OncoVue, as I said that the in-hospital model of MRD will impact on Q4 as we completed some in-hospital installment of personalized MRD technology into that. So before that, I think the therapy selection will be the main driver, including tissue-based and also liquid-based. And for pharma, I think they will continue the growth, especially with the revenue. And I think that trend is good, but compared to the big baseline for OncoVue, I think that OncoVue will be the main driver. And for multi-cancer early detection and commercialization, I think that it's still - the number is still - cannot be compared with the rest of to be used. But that can also answer your second question is that multi-cancer early detection, we have installed probably around 50 - sorry, 40 hospitals. Half of them are big hospitals. But as you expected, we need to do more marketing activities to educate the doctors in Class IIIA hospital for them to understand the product and know how to prescribe to the consumers. So yes, I think that the growth rate of multi-cancer early deduction this year will be good. But I cannot give you the exact number of how much we can achieve. But one thing is sure that since we are controlling the burn rate, we are focusing our energies and headcount cost and marketing activities on Class III hospitals. Does that answer your question?

Alexis Yan

Analyst

Yes. That's all my questions. Thank you.

Yusheng Han

Management

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. There are no further questions. This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.