Modulight Oyj

OMXH:MODU

Earnings Call Transcript 2024-Q1

[Seppo Orsila, executive]

Good afternoon. Welcome to Modulight's First Quarter Webinar. My name is Seppo Orsila. I'm the founder and CEO, and I have here with me our CFO, Anca.

[Ancuta Guina, executive]

Hello.

[Seppo Orsila, executive]

We will discuss, obviously, the hot topics. But just as a reminder, what is the mission of the company. We fight cancer with science and technology. We are a biomedical company that designs and manufactures laser-based devices for cancer therapies as well as ophthalmic diseases and genomics. Same technology is also used at other high value-add applications such as flow cytometry, quantum computing and digital press.

So today's agenda, we're first going to discuss the first quarter and discuss the R&D pipeline, our strategy project about geographical expansion, and then we highlight financials. I'll recap again, our progress in the customer base, the revenue model, pay per treatment and so forth before we'll summarize and take any questions that you might have.

As you know, this time, we're also experiencing a new platform, and we're hoping that transmitting the live video will make this more interactive, will make it more informative and provide you better insights to the company. Feel free to give feedback about that as well this time or in future webinars.

So first quarter in brief. We made progress with multiple indications and multiple customers in expanding our pay per treatment business model. This is the model which we have discussed repeatedly and about 1.5 years ago, I explained to you guys that there are opportunities to accelerate this versus the strategy, and we are still on that track, but we are taking it in use, not just in approved therapies, but also very much in clinical trials and with several customers with several indications. This is a really good thing for us.

We're also happy about two new pharmaceutical customers we acquired during the first one. Number of projects in the R&D pipeline remained at 28 versus 27 a year ago, and we have been very much focusing on taking forward the existing projects.

Revenue was slightly up from the previous quarter and 29% down versus a year ago. Our EBITDA was the second important topic from our point of view, that while we continue to increase the amount of activity, both in R&D, sales and marketing, our total expenditure went down as discussed several times in the previous quarterly webinars. Head count was up at the end of the quarter versus a year ago per our plans.

As said, the R&D pipeline is the most important indicator in our view about the company's performance and progress. The most important thing for us is to take forward the projects in the pipeline because that will then obviously take us to commercial phase. We're extremely happy that the pipeline remains at a record high level. But most important thing from our point of view is the fact that the PPT business model was expanded significantly among the customers and different indications. We are now having several different cancer indications as well as ophthalmic indications covered by different customers using the pay per treatment model.

We have been focusing on advancing the projects in the pipeline, but especially those that are currently in Phase III trials. As a reminder, Phase III is the last step before about the full commercialization of new pharmaceuticals.

Two new pharmaceutical customers were acquired during the first quarter, and this is likely to bring us new projects into the R&D pipeline, potential indications being brain cancer, esophagus as well as lung cancer. This is just to highlight you that the existing pipeline doesn't cover these customers yet, but we see a good potential for that happening in the future.

We're also extremely happy about investment program continuously yielding results. We have been able to accelerate the R&D activity, i.e., shortening the customers' time to market as well as strengthen our unique offering by having more diverse, more unique offering to our customers. Some of the concrete examples include the things we're doing with our bio laboratory or our mechanics capabilities.

Geographical expansion was at the corner or focus point of our strategy update in November 2022. Now we're finally able to demonstrate the results out of that. These are obviously only the first results. But I want to start by saying that the activity headed by our new Sales Director in the United States has significantly provided speed to the local business development. There are a number of open cases and that continues to increase. We feel that, that combined with our increased service presence in North America is definitely up supporting the implementation of the strategy in the right way.

Regarding our geographical expansion outside the United States, we have entered into a cooperation with new strategic distribution partnerships and expect to continue this to widen our network further later this year. As a concrete example, we have, for example, one major Japanese pharmaceutical company now as a customer.

We continue to expand our geographic utilization of existing research with current and new customers. So this is the angle that we've been discussing repeatedly that it's, of course, great when we have a new customer, but it's even better when they are tapping on into the existing research, meaning that we can leverage the same technology, same indication with multiple different customers and this is increasingly now happening. For example, the two new customers we obtained during the first quarter for pharmaceuticals, both are addressing indications that we have been previously researching with other customers, thus bringing efficiency and opportunity to speed up the customer go-to-market even further.

Anca, take it over, please.

[Ancuta Guina, executive]

So first quarter highlights are improved efficiency and profitability to the vertical integration we built with the help of the investment program, which was started in 2019, and we announced that we ended last year.

As we many times said, we made investments across the board to widen the offering, to increase differentiation and production capacity as well as to enable the speed up of the R&D pipeline projects. I can give you some examples of the benefits we see every day. I can mention the increase of the use of biolab for accelerating, for example, cancer treatment development or ultra-high precision mechanics capabilities or optics or semiconductor manufacturing, all of which differentiate us from the competition.

The revenue for the quarter was EUR 1.1 million, 4% higher than the previous quarter. The development was affected by the transition to the PPT business model, which is in line with our strategy announced so many times. And there have been also delays with some customer projects. EBITDA was minus EUR 1.3 million, which is 56% higher quarter-over-quarter and 8% higher year-over-year. Expenses related to the implementation of the investment program decreased significantly. And actually, we expect this trend as [indiscernible] to continue over the year. This does not mean that we have decreased our activities. On contrary, we do more with less money as it can be seen in our marketing and not in the activities. So as mentioned, that the PPT business model is still making the revenue development. Seppo said that we have made installments for many customers and for different applications, some EUR 1.1 million this year versus EUR 1.5 million last year. Improved profitability and efficiency are seen through EBITDA development, which was 8% higher year-over-year with increased head count. EBIT decreased 4% from last year, same period due to the increase in the depreciation base after the investment program was finalized. Cash flow for the period improved as well and head count at the end of the quarter was 70 versus 63 a year ago.

[Seppo Orsila, executive]

Thank you, Anca. The customer maturity continues to improve, and this is obviously something that we're expecting as we are able to take the projects forward, but as well as we've been systematically targeting larger customers over the past couple of years. And we've also been able to see some of our customers to grow and develop. Thus, we feel that the maturity of the customer base is improving. 36% of the customers are over EUR 1 billion revenue, almost 70% are listed companies and research companies or institutions account only for 7% of the customer base of the R&D portfolio.

Just as a recap, the company's revenue model, there is still a lot of revenue coming from the proof of concept phase. But now we are also in the point where more and more revenue is coming from the later stages. And obviously, going into the pay per treatment will enable, in future, more steady revenue streams, but also better scaling as the number of patients will increase. We keep on repeating this. And I hope that, that will remind investors about the kind of earnings logic of the company.

So in a nutshell, there is money from the early developments throughout the different phases, all the way to the active portfolio, where we now are almost solely focusing on pay per treatment, i.e., getting money from every treatment patient. There are minor revenue streams still there, for example, monthly fees, et cetera, on top of the pay per treatment from several of the customers. And yes, lots of revenue currently out of the total revenue is coming from different type of milestone payments, et cetera. But this is the direction where the company is going and very much in line with the strategy.

A few words more about PPT. Popularity of PPT has increased, and customers have adopted it in an expanding manner and are increasing the use of our services. Continued expansion of PPT model in different cancer indications as well as ophthalmic treatments will pave the way for the implementation of the strategy. And most importantly, I think the fact that we're going into one uniform direction and offering this to almost all the customers is something that we're happy that we reached by this time.

No updates to our consolidated health care market economics summary. But just as a reminder, the U.S. market to which we are focusing on has very large size for even the selected indications and there is ample opportunity within that. Just as a reminder, that Modulight is working on other indications besides the ones we stated here, but we don't yet have a proper data, and we will release the data at the time when it is in a good shape and properly [indiscernible]. But we continue to look at the market, look at the situation, especially that where are the kind of high needs for improvement in patient outcomes, i.e., treatment efficacy, but also where the high yields and high gains are available and thus, use that data point also to steer our development activity in the R&D pipeline.

And obviously, many of those are indications as said, are increasingly expanded and used outside the United States, which is then on top of these numbers. But for those, we unfortunately have no reliable analysis. Modulight is not issuing any guidance as told repeatedly. But in the summary, we're [ happily ] sitting at 28 projects in our R&D pipeline. We see progress within the pipeline, especially for the PPT implementation and adoption across the different indications and customers. We're expecting more projects potentially to come of the newly acquired customers, and we are focusing on advancing the projects towards the commercialization phase, especially those projects which are already in Phase III clinical trials.

Two new customers including a big company from Japan is definitely among the highlights of the quarter. And very importantly, increased operational efficiency despite increased head count and increased R&D and geographical expansion investment. As such, there is nothing new about this. We've been talking about this expected improvement in efficiency once we complete certain things in the investment program and that has been done. As I said earlier, we saw a little bit of that impact already Q4, but now in a bigger shape in the Q1, and we expect that to continue going forward. And this is obviously somewhat reflected on the improvement of the profitability with same or lower revenue base. But it's really important to understand the amount of actual activity in the R&D, especially, but also in sales and marketing has increased despite the lower spending.

So with this summary, we adjourn on to take any questions that you might have.

[Seppo Orsila, executive]

There's a question. As you refer to these several ongoing Phase III projects, can you disclose whether you have received any onetime payments, milestone fees or make deliverables to these projects yet now in Q1 or in the previous quarters?

Obviously, we continue to receive payments from customers to -- from projects for their milestone achievements, but there have been no kind of one significant single payment that would have seriously impacted the quarter's numbers during the Q1.

Another question, how much of the Q1 revenue came from PPT?

The amount of revenue is still moderate, but we're particularly pleased about the amount of kind of, if you like, the evolution on the number of sites and number of customers and number of indications that have been activated, and that will then obviously help us go forward with the coming quarters.

I guess, Anca, this one is for you.

[Ancuta Guina, executive]

Yes. Well, you know that we -- so EUR 1.2 million -- first of all, EUR 1.2 million investment included also investment in development and we said that...

[Seppo Orsila, executive]

Yes, just maybe to recap, there's a question about CapEx was still...

[Ancuta Guina, executive]

Sorry, I forgot to get that question. So CapEx was still quite high, EUR 1.2 million. What is the estimate for 2024 balance?

So as I said, EUR 1.2 million included investment in fixed assets as well as development, which we said that will continue actually heading it or accelerating that. And well, about the estimation for this year, at least the investment in the development will continue, investment in fixed assets will basically stop dramatically -- or decrease dramatically as we finish the investment program.

[Seppo Orsila, executive]

We have made very large investments. And as said in several of the previous webinars, we probably have one of the best fabs in the world. And thus, there is ample opportunity for utilizing the existing capabilities and continue to build up upon those. So there is a limited amount of investment that we see in the short term. If there are no further questions, we thank everybody for participation. And then we look forward to seeing as many of you at the company AGM. Thank you. Bye.

[Ancuta Guina, executive]

Bye.