Earnings Labs

Compugen Ltd. (CGEN)

Q2 2014 Earnings Call· Wed, Aug 6, 2014

$2.73

-6.51%

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentleman, thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Compugen Limited Second Quarter 2014 Financial Results Conference Call. All participants are at present in a listen-only mode. Following managements’ formal presentation, instructions will be given for the question-and-answer session (Operator instructions) as a reminder, this conference is being recorded August 06, 2014. With us online today are Mr. Martin Gerstl, Chairman of the Board; Dr. Anat Cohen-Dayag, President and CEO and Mr. Avihai Shen, Interim CFO and John Hunter, Vice President of Antibody R&D and Site Head. I would like to remind everyone that the Safe Harbor language contained in today’s press release also pertains to all contents of this conference call. If you have not received the copy of today’s release, and would like to do so, please contact Avihai Shen, at +972-3-765-8500 or 415-373-0565 extension 320. Mr. Gerstl, would you like to begin?

Martin S. Gerstl

Management

Yes, thank you. Welcome to Compugen’s second quarter 2014 conference call. Please note that John and I are participating from our U.S. R&D subsidiary, the new facility in South San Francisco while are not in the higher at the company's headquarters in Israel, hopefully this will not create any communication problems. Our wholly-owned subsidiary relocated through this site in Mid-June and with a great deal of superb effort by the entire team was up in running within a few days. We've more than doubled the floor space of the prior location this facility is the site for all of Compugen’s monoclonal antibody therapeutics research and development. This includes generation of antibodies that specifically bind to our Compugen discovered targets, screening of those antibodies for desired therapeutic properties and together with the research team in Tel Aviv testing lead candidates for our anti tumor activity in animal models, preclinical work and future clinical trial execution. In today's prepared remarks, following me Anat will focus solely on how our broadly applicable predictive discovery capability had been utilized to create a growing and increasingly diverse world-class, but still early stage pipeline for potential first-in-class targeted therapeutics for cancer. Anat will then provide a brief status update with respect to our disclosed corporate objective for 2014 before opening the call for questions. I will begin my prepared remarks with some brief comments on four line items in our Q2 financial statements issued today for which I think some additional information might be helpful. These items are revenues and R&D expenses on the statement of operations and cash balances and the liability shown for R&D funding arrangement on the balance sheet. With respect revenues, looking at only the numbers which it appears a few of the media have already done with respect to this report…

Anat Cohen-Dayag

Management

Thank you, Martin. As we have often stated our competitive advantage and uniqueness largely results from our predictive ability to discover novel targets candidates for therapeutic development. In comparison the pharmaceutical industry generally focuses on the development of drugs targeting non-protein previously discovered primarily in academia and research for years. Usually large amounts of scientific literature can be found in such targets supporting their underlying biology. If a protein is a promising drug target particularly with clinical validation, you will generally find multiple companies developing therapeutic agents it. This is the case with the promising immune checkpoints PD-1 and PDL-1 thus our targets for multiple biologics in various stages of development representing a very busy competitive landscape. In contracts, a novel drug target offers an opportunity for broader proprietary position generating the potential for lower direct competition and therefore a greater commercial opportunity for first-in-class therapeutic. However to successfully develop potential therapy for such a novel target, you need to heavily study biology, which by definition is not to be found in the scientific literature. Our investment of time and resources in biological validation of our novel discovered target is intended to enable us to make informed decision on the development pathways for each such candidate. Throughout the first half of the year we were busy establishing sophisticated experimental efficient system to allow us to test an advance many product candidate in parallel. We have also continued with our target characterization activities supporting the potential of these candidates to service B-7328 slide checkpoints including expression process in cancer and immune tests derived from patients and emerging immunomodulatory profile. Since the establishment of our pipeline the number of tested candidate showing such positive results what we like to call our hit rates is very encouraging. This is not only we will…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. (Operator Instructions) The first question is from our Goldstein of Cantor Fitzgerald. Please go ahead. Mara Goldstein – Cantor Fitzgerald & Co.: Anat can you hear me?

Anat Cohen-Dayag

Management

Yes. Mara Goldstein – Cantor Fitzgerald & Co: Oh great. Actually I was very – Martin’s comments about some information about the diagnostic collaboration and you discussed may be disclosing from information, can you talk about whether that will be clinical data presented at a conference or is it something just between the partners will be disclosed.

Anat Cohen-Dayag

Management

Yes, sure thank Mara. And so with respect to the diagnostics, I guess all of you aware of the fact that we are having a joint venture with Merck Serono and joint ventures mainly in the economics and the business of this joint venture is to identify biomarkers that can predict drug-induced toxicity and we are very pleased with the progress of this joint venture and we expect just in later this year to share more information with respect to this. And as for your second question about for clinical data we are expecting to present in two different conferences one in Boston that is going to be held next week and John is going to present in the field of oncology and another one in September, we are going to give a presentation one of our scientist on CGEN-15001in the field of autoimmune diseases and it is also going to be presented at the same conference by a poster from laboratory of Professor Stephen Miller from Northwestern University and we anticipate we have additional presentations close to the end of the year. Mara Goldstein – Cantor Fitzgerald & Co: Okay and just one quick question on the financial of the revenue recorded this quarter how much of that was non or differed tax sorry or differed revenue?

Avihai Shen

Analyst

Non of it was differed revenue Mara Goldstein – Cantor Fitzgerald & Co: Okay

Avihai Shen

Analyst

From the standpoint of the traditional sense but we are accounting for the upfront payment under the buyer agreement of the approximately of the $10 million that is being accounted for over the research period even though it is a non-refundable fee. Mara Goldstein – Cantor Fitzgerald & Co: Right. Okay thank you for the clarification.

Operator

Operator

The next question is from Mike King of JMP Securities. Please go ahead. Michael G. King – JMP Securities: Hey, guys sorry I got on the call little late so you may addressed this in the formal remarks, but I'm just curious about when you guys think about opportunity set that you have that’s been generated by the proprietary discovery. Where do you think or how do you think about what Compugen might develop for itself versus what am I partner – I'm thinking about immune check point versus antibody drug conjugates down the road five or ten year would it be reasonable to think that Compugen may have proprietary molecules from both in its pipeline or would it come down to really immune oncology for your own proprietary count and ADCs for partnering opportunities?

Anat Cohen-Dayag

Management

Thank you Mike, it’s a very good question and as of now we have made the decision and you can see it is stated in our 2014 objectives that we are going to select one or more of the checkpoints to be taken by us through future clinical trials and we will share more information about this later in the year. So clearly for now with respect to internal programs, we will focused on the checkpoint, it doesn’t mean that this will not – we have 11 check point in hand only two were license to bear for antibody therapeutics. So we have additional nine and it doesn’t mean that some of them would not be the subject of collaboration, but we have made the decision to focus that internally for checkpoints for our future clinical trials. With respect to ADC think in these area it is also required except of having a good target which is a key need in this field, one would also need the technology to support the linker and toxin then at this stage this is aimed by the company to server for future collaborations, but that we are not ruling out the situation where we will gain an access in a certain way to this technology and for later, for the future to be able to advance also such candidate forward by ourselves. Michael G. King – JMP Securities: Then how should we think about validation of the ADC targets in the context of not having your own internal linker and warhead so to speak?

Anat Cohen-Dayag

Management

So the first things to do with the target that is first in-class – that is used for first-in class for ADC is to prove that the target is an ideal target for ADC and that it does the job and these proof can be done with the commercially available research reagents that’s are the toxins and the linker that can serve for the proof-of-concept in this animal model and this is a key need in the industry. The next stage would be to test it with a proprietary specific fit ADC technology in order to be able to advance it to clinical trial. John would you like to share some more information about it?

John J. Hunter

Analyst

I think you covered that pretty thoroughly on that. Essentially we are going to try our antibodies with couple of the gold standard linker and toxins, again just for proof-of-concept around the antibody and the target and then with regards to what kind of deal we would do around an additional proprietary platform that the antibodies would then have to retested with whatever the technology is that would go into the clinic. Michael G. King – JMP Securities : Just maybe further to that if you could help us understand the nature of the ADC targets, are these typically internalizing targets, non-internalizing targets some combination thereof?

Anat Cohen-Dayag

Management

Actually we didn’t share this type of information yet and think we do anticipate to share more information probably in the next call or I prefer not to relate it now, but of course these parameters were well told by us the discovery stage. Michael G. King – JMP Securities: Right. Okay. Thanks very much.

Anat Cohen-Dayag

Management

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

The next question is from Thomas Yip of MLV & Company. Please go ahead. Thomas Yip – MLV & Company: Hello everyone and thanks very much for taking my questions and thanks for your very good pipeline overview. First I have a financial question for 2014 cash burn as projection of $24 million, does that include cost of revenue?

Anat Cohen-Dayag

Management

Yes.

Avihai Shen

Analyst

That includes all cash expenditure, all expenses and assets on a gross basis. As I said in my remarks it is not our cash burn, it’s the total amount of cash leaving the company which to calculate burn that would be reduced by the amounts of buyback that we've already received for revenues and additional amount that we could receive before the end of the year. Thomas Yip – MLV & Company: Right so that’s cash expenditure I got it. So I am estimating in the second half 2014, so I guess cash spending will be slightly increased compared to first half of 2014?

Avihai Shen

Analyst

Yes. As we mentioned in the past we are in a growth stage, we are adding people particularly here in the California site and increasing our efforts as we mentioned last year that the primary activity for our company during the first half of the year was the sort of the expansion of our R&D capabilities, so that we could do multiple programs in parallel and we are now getting the benefit of that which will be reflected in increased expenses. Thomas Yip – MLV & Company: I see okay. Now regarding Compugen discovery engine, which as you pointed out successfully regenerated allowing candidates in very exciting area like checkpoint ADC. So ultimately what is your long-term corporate strategy, is it you grow that pipeline and to maintain a leader in computational drug discovery?

Anat Cohen-Dayag

Management

So the competitive advantage of the company is clearly in the field of novel target discovery and the business model is to selectively partner these discoveries in various stages of development to pharma or biotech companies under revenue sharing arrangement. So some of the candidates will be advanced by us sometime only preclinical trial and sometimes the clinical trial to human of proof-of-concept and we will be licensed only at that stage and the company will have a balance between partnered and un-partnered molecules in the clinic. Thomas Yip – MLV & Company: Okay. Thank you again for taking my question and we look forward to the next quarter call for more corporate updates.

Anat Cohen-Dayag

Management

Thank you

Operator

Operator

(Operator Instructions) There are no further questions at this time. Before I ask Dr. Anat Cohen to go ahead with your closing statement, I would like to remind participants that a replay of this call is scheduled to begin in two hours for a period of 72-hours. In the U.S., please call 1877-456-0009. In Israel, please call 039-255-925. Internationally, please call 972-3-9255-925. Dr. Anat Cohen, would you like to make your concluding statements?

Anat Cohen-Dayag

Management

Yes, thank you. Compugen currently has a comprehensive range of prompting early stage candidates all based on Compugen discovered target aimed at fighting cancer via three different antibodies based therapeutic approaches. However, in each of these approaches as with all targeted therapy as fundamental requirement for success is the identification of appropriate target protein. It is precisely here that Compugen long term investments in establishing its unique expertise in biology infrastructure provide us with a powerful competitive advantage. In closing all of us at Compugen look forward to expand its research and development activities and additional collaboration for further development and commercialization of our product candidates. We very much appreciate your past and continuing support and expect to provide you and the investment community with further evidence of our continuing progress and achievement. Thank you for participating in our call today.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. This concludes the Compugen Limited’s Second Quarter 2014 Financial Results Conference Call. Thank you for your participation. You may go ahead and disconnect.