AI summary not yet generated for this transcript. Generation in progress for older transcripts; check back soon, or browse the full transcript below.
Same-Day
-3.25%
1 Week
+0.81%
1 Month
-2.44%
vs S&P
+3.21%
Transcript
OP
Operator
Operator
Good day. My name is Joanna and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to InMed’s Fiscal Fourth Quarter Earnings Conference Call and Business Update for the Period Ending June 30, 2018. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers’ remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] Thank you. Mr. Blacher, you may begin your conference.
JB
Josh Blacher
Analyst · Edison Group. Max, please go ahead
Thank you, Joanna, and good day, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Josh Blacher, InMed’s Chief Business Officer. Welcome to InMed’s, fourth quarter and full-year fiscal 2018 financial results and business update conference call. Before we begin, we would like to go over our disclosure statements, followed by a review of the progress on our biosynthesis and R&D programs, which will be led by our President and CEO, Eric Adams. Jeff Charpentier, our CFO, will then review the financial results of operations. Following that, we will be able to take further questions and answers. Please be advised that certain statements in the following conference call regarding expectations for InMed business operations, clinical development, contractual partnerships, regulatory approvals and cash runway constitute forward-looking statements. Such statements are not historical fact, but rather predictions about the future, which inherently involve assumptions, risks and uncertainties. Actual results could differ materially from those contained in the forward-looking statements. A description of these risks can be found in our latest disclosure document and recent press releases. InMed does not undertake any obligation to update any forward-looking statements made during the call. I would now like to turn the call over to President and CEO, Eric Adams. Eric?
EA
Eric Adams
Analyst · Edison Group. Max, please go ahead
Thank you, Josh, and good day to everyone. We thank you for joining our inaugural quarterly conference call. We believe this teleconference will serve as a positive step in our ongoing initiative of improving our transparency and facilitating more frequent discussions of our advancements and ongoing strategic initiatives. I’d like to open the call today by discussing developments in our biosynthesis program, as well as our upcoming goals and initiatives. As you know, we are developing our biosynthesis program in order to allow InMed and potentially other companies through licensing partnerships to access cannabinoids that are typically found in only very limited quantities in the plant. However, these cannabinoids, which we often refer to as minor cannabinoids may nevertheless hold significant potential to treat human diseases This process involves manipulating the genetic makeup of a bacteria called E. coli, in order to enable the laboratory-based production of cannabinoids in a pure form that is identical to what the plant makes, but in much larger quantities. There are three main components of our biosynthesis development program that will take us from where we are now, which is laboratory scale process development to where we hope to be with – within a year from now, which is having the defined production process leading to commercial scale-up. The first component of our program is being conducted in collaboration with our partners at the University of British Columbia, or UBC. We have been working with the laboratories of Dr. Vikram Yadav for – at UBC for over three years now, and the work there is to understand the genetic sequence needed to optimally produce cannabinoids in bacteria. This work has led to several novel scientific findings for which we are in the process of seeking patent protection. These patent applications will cover steps needed…
JC
Jeff Charpentier
Analyst
Thank you, Eric, and thank you all for joining the call. As a Canadian-based and regulatory company, the figures that I will present in today’s call are expressed in Canadian dollars. Also, please recall that our fiscal year-end is June 30, so together with our quarterly financials, I will also be reporting our full-year fiscal 2018 financials. For the three and 12 months ended June 30, 2018, we recorded a net loss of $3.03 million and $8.52 million, or $0.02 and $0.06 per share, respectively. This compares with a net loss of $1.88 million and [$4.47][ph] million, or $0.02 and $0.05 per share, for the three and 12 months ended June 30, 2017. R&D expenses were $0.58 million for the three months ended June 30, compared with $0.38 million for the three months ended June 30, in 2017. For the 12 months ended June 30, 2018, R&D expenses totaled $1.93 million, which compares with a $0.75 million for the corresponding period in 2017. The substantial increase in R&D expenses in 2018 was primarily due to increased spending with external contractors for expenditures related to the advancement of INM-750 for the treatment for EB and our biosynthesis program, as well as higher R&D personnel compensation as a result of increased R&D staffing. G&A expenses were $0.98 million for the three months ended June 30, 2018, compared with $0.75 million for the three months ended June 30, 2017. For the 12 months ended June 30, 2018, G&A expenses totaled $3.37 million, which compares with $2.32 million for the corresponding period of 2017. Again, the substantial increase was driven by increased personnel compensation, which reflects increased staffing, reflective of the growth in our expanded R&D efforts and general operations. Shifting now to our balance sheet. At June 30, 2018, our cash position was…
OP
Operator
Operator
Thank you. [Operator Instructions] And your first question is from Max Jacobs from Edison Group. Max, please go ahead.
MJ
Maxim Jacobs
Analyst · Edison Group. Max, please go ahead
Hi, guys, thanks for taking my questions. That run down was actually really good, so you took care of a lot of them. So I’ve noticed that there has been some selling from insiders. I was just wondering if you guys could comment on that?
JB
Josh Blacher
Analyst · Edison Group. Max, please go ahead
Sure. Max, thanks. This is Josh, and that’s a good question. First, before I answer the question directly, I would like to reiterate that both the management team and the Board of Directors has never been more bullish on the company. As you may be aware, a large portion of executive compensation is stock-based compensation. And it’s really up to the management’s own decision, the Board member’s own decision as to how they choose to diversify their personal portfolio. It’s not a signal of their enthusiasm for the company whatsoever. So people make decisions based on their personal needs and intentions to diversify their portfolios, and we are fully supportive of that.
MJ
Maxim Jacobs
Analyst · Edison Group. Max, please go ahead
Okay, great. That was helpful. And just question, do you have any comments on the Cronos deal with Ginkgo Bioworks?
EA
Eric Adams
Analyst · Edison Group. Max, please go ahead
Yes, sure. I’ll be glad to take that one. This is Eric. Well, I think that the deal between Cronos and Ginkgo, which is a biosynthesis deal really just validates what we’ve been saying for several years now. This has always been our story all along is that, these minor cannabinoids are going to be important to treating human health and we need a way to access them. So we’ve been developing our biosynthesis platform for over three years now. I haven’t seen any of Ginkgo’s patents. So I can’t really speak specifically to what they’re trying to do. But I believe it’s a yeast-based system. We think that E. coli system is superior. We’re much further down the road than anybody else in this area. And again, I think it’s a strong validation of our approach and what we’re attempting to do.
MJ
Maxim Jacobs
Analyst · Edison Group. Max, please go ahead
Hey, wonderful. Yes, that’s all my questions. Thank you.
EA
Eric Adams
Analyst · Edison Group. Max, please go ahead
Thank you, Max.
OP
Operator
Operator
Thank you. Your next question is from [George Ingram], [ph] an Investor. Please go ahead, George.
UA
Unidentified Analyst
Analyst
Yes. This is George Ingram. Thank you for taking my question. Quick question. You touched upon it briefly. But I would like some additional information is the yeast-based system versus your process system?
EA
Eric Adams
Analyst · Edison Group. Max, please go ahead
Sure. Well, when we started this research with University of British Columbia a number of years ago, we were agnostic as to which system we wanted to pursue. So we looked at all of them. We looked at two different yeast-based systems and we looked at the E. coli. Very early on, it became apparent to us that the E. coli system was going to be much more robust. It was going to enable us to look at a wider range of cannabinoids. And we felt that, as we optimize that, the yields would be much greater. So that’s why we pursued this E. coli-based system. There’s a number of other people out there pursuing yeast-based systems. You should talk to them about why they feel there that’s better. But in our discussions with these contract manufacturing organizations, many of whom have worked with both E. coli and yeast in the past they kind of validated our our thinking that yeast is not the way to go when you scale-up to full commercial scale.
UA
Unidentified Analyst
Analyst
Okay. Thank you.
EA
Eric Adams
Analyst · Edison Group. Max, please go ahead
Thank you.
OP
Operator
Operator
Thank you. Your next question is from [Bill Wright], [ph] an Investor. Bill, please go ahead.
UA
Unidentified Analyst
Analyst
Eric, you mentioned that we were been approached by a lot of the cannabis growers interested in the biosynthesis program. What are we doing on that front? There’s a lot of mergers and acquisitions being made out there, a lot of joint ventures with large players like Canopy, Aurora and so forth. What are we doing on that front to increase shareholder value?
EA
Eric Adams
Analyst · Edison Group. Max, please go ahead
Well, I think the most important thing we can do to increase shareholder value at this point is continue to develop, optimize the system that we’re working on. And so we’re very aggressively pursuing that. In the past, I have had discussions with some of the growing organizations. They weren’t specifically asking me about biosynthesis. They were simply asking, can I supply bulk THC or CBD for their needs. And we weren’t at that stage and are not in a position to do this at commercial scale yet. So we put those discussions on hold. But over the course of the next year, we’re aggressively pursuing the scale-up of our technology and we’ll be in a much better position to have those conversations a year from now.
UA
Unidentified Analyst
Analyst
And what as far as the supplements and those kinds of things like – is there any plans ongoing into the recreational market as a separate standalone business?
EA
Eric Adams
Analyst · Edison Group. Max, please go ahead
Well, I think when we talk about a standalone business at some point, the question will become, do we continue to have the biosynthesis as an integrated part of InMed, or do we spin that out into its own entity? And so that it can grow and – at its own rate, and that may be the best way to maximize shareholder value. We haven’t done any analysis on that yet. But at some point, I guess, it comes down to which cannabinoids people need to access and what the production costs of those are? For supplements or the edible market, I think, costs will be an overriding factor. So as we learn more about our system, we’ll understand the cost structure much better and we’ll be able to answer those kinds of questions later on.
UA
Unidentified Analyst
Analyst
Okay, great. And then one last final question. Is the cannabinoids that we’re synthesizing, are they water soluble?
EA
Eric Adams
Analyst · Edison Group. Max, please go ahead
That’s above my pay grade.
UA
Unidentified Analyst
Analyst
[Multiple Speakers] I mean, some of these liked to be used in the food and beverage markets?
EA
Eric Adams
Analyst · Edison Group. Max, please go ahead
Yes, I can’t really comment on that, sorry.
UA
Unidentified Analyst
Analyst
Okay, great. Thanks.
OP
Operator
Operator
Your next question comes from Terry Jones, an Investor. Please go ahead.
UA
Unidentified Analyst
Analyst
Yes. Is Dr. Ado Mohammed still with the company? And will he continue to play a pivotal role in bringing some of the cannabinoid-based drugs to the market, as he has done with GW Pharmaceuticals?
EA
Eric Adams
Analyst · Edison Group. Max, please go ahead
Yes, I already addressed that in my discussion. He has transitioned to the role of a Senior Consultant, and his role with the company remains essentially unchanged.
UA
Unidentified Analyst
Analyst
Okay. Thank you.
OP
Operator
Operator
Thank you. Your next question is from Michael Freeman from Paradigm Capital. Michael, please go ahead.
MF
Michael Freeman
Analyst · Paradigm Capital. Michael, please go ahead
Hi, guys, Michael Freeman here. I’m wondering if you could comment on your recent patent applications and the scope of IP that you are – that you’ve intended to protect through those applications?
EA
Eric Adams
Analyst · Paradigm Capital. Michael, please go ahead
Absolutely. Well, the company currently has three PCT filings, patent application filings. One for diseases related to EB, the second one for our Hydrogel Formulation for Glaucoma. And the most recent one was the conversion of a provisional patent for the biosynthesis program. Going forward, and over the course of the next year, we’re going to have additional patents, PCT filings, as well as provisional patents. They’re all in the work and in the hopper now. And as this data becomes available, we’ll be seeking patent protection for that. In particular, there’s a number of different patents that we will be seeking for the biosynthesis program, in particular. We are formulating those now. Those are very novel, deep science-type patents that we think will provide adequate protection for the use of E. coli in the production of cannabinoids. So that’s going to be a very valuable patent family. In addition to that, we have a patent for pain that’s coming up for conversion, and some other ones that I can’t go into detail on, but we will be – we’re seeking protection over the course of the next year.
MF
Michael Freeman
Analyst · Paradigm Capital. Michael, please go ahead
Yes, very good. I expect these to be crucial. Thank you for giving some color on that.
EA
Eric Adams
Analyst · Paradigm Capital. Michael, please go ahead
All right. Thank you, Michael.
OP
Operator
Operator
Thank you. [Operator Instructions] At this time, there are no further questions. I will now turn it back over for closing comments.
JB
Josh Blacher
Analyst · Edison Group. Max, please go ahead
Well, thanks so much everybody for calling in. If you have further questions or comments, please feel free to e-mail me directly at jblacher@inmedpharma.com. Have a nice day.
OP
Operator
Operator
Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today’s conference call. We thank you for participating, and we ask that you please disconnect your lines.