Arcticzymes Technologies ASA

OSE:AZT

Earnings Call Transcript 2019-Q2

[Christian Jørgensen, Chief Executive Officer]

Good morning, everybody. Good morning to the shareholders here in Oslo. And good morning to everybody who is listening on the webcast here today. Also, I'd like to introduce CFO, Børge Sørvoll, who will be here together with me today to present our second quarter results for Biotec Pharmacon. The agenda is like it is always. We'll go through some highlights for Q2. We'll spend some time with our ArcticZymes business. We'll spend some time talking about the BetaGlucan business. Then Børge will come on the podium and will run you through the financials, and I will come back and discuss the outlook for 2019. Questions, of course, are always welcome, and we will see if we can answer them. We also have possibilities to answer your questions on the Web. So if anybody is listening in and having a question to ask, we have facilities so we can take those questions on the Web and answer them here.This is a slide that we show every time we are presenting ourselves. It's just the basis of what we are and why do we have these 2 very different technologies in one company. We come from the University of Tromsø. It's a heritage we are proud of, and it is a heritage that we -- it's a relationship we still cherish today. So we still get a lot of benefit out of being very close to University of Tromsø. Especially in the enzymes area, we have a very close working relationship with the university. So that's why we have those 2 very different technologies in one company. That comes out of University of Tromsø, and that is where we are based. So on to the highlights for Q2. We had a strong growth in sales and gross profit versus Q2 last year, and something we, of course, are happy to realize. Our EBITDA was minus NOK 0.5 million versus minus NOK 3.5 million at the Q2 last year. So we definitely have seen an improvement in performance this quarter over the second quarter of 2018. ArcticZymes had historically higher sales of NOK 9 million for the quarter, and Woulgan continued to grow the business. We had about NOK 1.2 million sales in Q1. We had NOK 1.4 million sales in Q2. If one compares to the quarters last year, it is, of course, a completely different picture. There, we are looking in the area of -- we had about NOK 0.5 million sales in Q2 last year. Now we have NOK 1.4 million. If you take the half year sales also, it goes for about NOK 1.1 million in the first half of 2018 to NOK 2.6 million in the first half of '19. Percentages, of course, are very high because it's low numbers, but we're seeing growth here in Woulgan, which, of course, is also satisfactory. So overall, growth in our high-margin business areas in Q2 versus Q2 last year, growth in our high-margin business areas in the first half of this year versus the first half of 2018. And that, combined with a fairly moderate cash cost base, actually gives us also then a strong improvement in EBITDA performance for the half year and for the quarter. So for the half year -- first half last year, we had a loss of NOK 8.6 million, and the first half of this year, we have a loss of NOK 4.4 million. So we almost reduced the loss by 50% versus last year. So an active quarter and a quarter where we saw the performance improve. A bit about ArcticZymes. We expanded our customer base. Most of you who've been with us for a long time know that we have a significant customer in the ArcticZymes area. We are happy to see that we, on one hand, still keep that customer and have good sales with that customer and good relationship; but on the other hand, also see very nice growth in business outside that 1 customer. So that makes us as less vulnerable to these bigger customers. Having large customers is, of course, nice, but once you have these large customers, if they move an order from June to July, then our quarterly figures suddenly looks very strange. And therefore, the more we can get -- more broader customer base we can get, the more smooth we can have of our sales and easier for us to forecast. As I said, we grew the business in ArcticZymes from NOK 5.7 million in the second quarter last year to NOK 9 million in the second quarter this year. The business in the first half of 2019 was almost NOK 17 million. The business of the first -- ArcticZymes business in the first half of '18 was NOK 12 million. So we're looking at a 40% growth in ArcticZymes over the first half of 2018. A different -- another point was important to us is -- and something we have been discussing to you is the Salt Active Nuclease, which is a product that we use in gene therapy. And we have high hopes for this product. It has taken a bit longer, as we have discussed with you, to see the roll in and to see the acceptance in the market. But now we actually see that this is about to become one of the top products in ArcticZymes. Already in the first half of this year, we can see that we're really now getting the momentum. A little later -- a bit later than we thought initially, but we can now see that really, there's an interest in the market for this product, and it is one of the -- becoming one of our top performers in ArcticZymes and gives us hope for the future. The second thing that is interesting about the ArcticZymes business is in July, and I know this is about the third quarter, but we had a customer order -- audit visiting us in Tromsø in July, an American company within the gene therapy area. And this is -- the Salt Active Nuclease is a very important product for them, and therefore, they would like to see, if they use that in a therapy, how are we doing things. Yes, we are ISO-certified, but they'd like to see for themselves. And they actually came back after a couple of days in Tromsø and gave us green light all over, saying the operation, the quality systems, everything we do out there is top-notch. And the company will use the Salt Active Nuclease, use that in their production, which was a nice stamp of approval to get. And it's a very -- it's a significant customer, something we can use in the sales to other customers going forward. July in ArcticZymes, just as I mentioned, we'll talk about that when we come back in October, what was a very good month for us, too. So we didn't have a summer blues in ArcticZymes. We actually had a good month in ArcticZymes. It's also a good month in Woulgan actually in July, even though it was the summer. So summer vacation in Tromsø was a bit busy, I have to say, but of course, good for all of us.Innovation. We launched -- as you know, the one thing that we are hearing from our customers in ArcticZymes is that we have too few products. They like our quality. They like our innovation. They like the uniqueness of what we do, but they would like to see more products. And that's why we have a strategy to launch more products, and this is what we've done this quarter. REACH is an EU program that was started many, many years ago to kind of rid -- either get chemicals out of the environment or make sure that whatever is used is also documented to be safe and everything else. And we are making more and more our products REACH-compatible, and this is what we do here. And then we also did the -- we've made a glycerol-free product. And that makes it easier for our customers, for instance, to freeze-dry it and use it again. And that makes handling and a lot of -- handling logistics with the customers a lot easier. So if you can have an enzyme which is glycerol-free, then you have a possibility to freeze-dry it and then it is easier for them to handle it. So this is what we also did this quarter -- in the second quarter. Lastly, we are, as we have said -- and we are spending some money on it, as you can see in our cost, we are actively pursuing finding mergers and acquisition partners within the ArcticZymes area. And we have -- we are -- exploratory discussions. And you can always -- you say, "When do you go from these discussions to negotiations?" We are in discussions, but we had fairly detailed discussions with companies in Europe about this. So this is, we think, a very important initiative for us. We want to do this to speed up the growth in ArcticZymes. We have something unique here, but as I said before, our customers think that we have too few products. And we can, of course, develop products ourselves constantly. It just takes a long time. Can we jump-start the process by combining a couple of companies? That will be a good thing, and this is what we're looking for. Whatever deals come out of it, whatever suggestion, proposal comes out, we'll, of course, be -- then relay it to the shareholders in order to see, would you like to support it or not support it. And you will see all the details there when we get that far. Just say that it is moving ahead nicely, and we are in discussions with companies out there, European-based companies.The BetaGlucans. We had a growth in sales in Q2. The growth from -- in Q1, we had sales of about NOK 1.2 million. In Q2, we had a sales of NOK 1.4 million. It's about 20%, 22% growth in sales and driven mainly by Germany. If you compare it to the last year's sales, and of course, it's very high. As I said, last Q2, we had NOK 0.5 million. This Q2, we have NOK 1.4 million. Last first half, we had NOK 1.1 million. This one, in the first half, we had NOK 2.6 million. So more than 100% growth in the Woulgan business if we compare to last year. And the first half of '19 was almost the same as the full year of '18. So nice growth in the business. Germany is moving ahead nicely. We have repeat buyers from a number of our customers there. We have nurses out there really believing in the product and using it on their patients every day. We are -- as I said here, we are still challenged by the U.K. and the Nordic market. Some of our shareholders were so kind to send us an article from The Guardian about having chronic wounds in England, in the U.K. and how they are treated. And this is actually very similar to a number of other countries, where there is a strong restrictions on funding of products. And that is the case in the U.K., and that is the case actually in a lot of the Nordic countries, too. And it's difficult for a small company to really push the agenda. We know these KOLs, and we have been in contact with some of them. But for a small company our size, to move a U.K. health agenda or move a Danish, Swedish, Norwegian health agenda is, of course, outside what we can do. We need to work with companies that can help us out here. So still a challenge for us. We have decided or agreed with Navamedic in the Nordics, that is the Nordic partner, that they will focus on Sweden and Finland where we have some traction, where we have some repeat business. And in Denmark and in Norway, we are looking for different solutions for this going forward to find a way around this. The strategy is the same. Germany is a core market. We will continue to look for partners and distribution companies in markets where we see there is a potential for higher-priced products. And that leaves out, for instance, a country like France. France is a very tough market in terms of pricing and in terms of acceptance of new innovative products. You can do it if you are big and powerful and you can drive an agenda. For us, it's impossible to do it. So -- but some countries in Europe, and for instance, Austria, as we announced in April, we signed a deal with a company called Publilog, where we -- they will then get a reimbursement and we will see some sales in 2020, not in 2019. But this is a market where it's conducive to these kind of products and still accepts that new products come into the market. And this is fairly optimistic on our side, but we need to generate some momentum and make sure that we put the resources in place where we can actually see traction.We did participate in the German Wound Care Congress in May in Bremen, and we had a symposium. You can see the picture there. We had 71 participants at the symposium. We also participated in the European Wound Care Congress in Gothenburg in June, and that is more also an, let's say, an exhibition window to the world to say, "Here we are, look at what we can." And we have had a number of people looking at our stand, talking to us. It also -- when we talk to partners, it is important that we had that, "Oh, yes, we saw you at EWMA. We saw you over there." And therefore, we come up with some self-confidence to say, "Look at us. See what we can do." So we were there, and we get a lot of positive reactions from people who are treating patients. It -- when it then comes to make the move from their positive reaction and interacting with getting the authorities to also fund it is a big step.In Germany, we have discussed that with you a few times, reimbursement in Germany has been discussed in the wound care area for a long time about whether wound dressings were an active ingredient, should have a special class, and therefore, have a special price, but also then have document to the insurance companies that they actually are worth that actual price because they do more. And in beginning, they made a suggestion of a law to create this class. It was then withdrawn from parliament because of a lot of push from the wound care companies because they didn't understand what was going on and why the actual thing. Now that actors agreed on the law here in end of June, the association of medical device companies in Germany in mid-July came out with a fairly strong opposition against it. But it is a law. The thing is, they will now create a category of wound care products with active ingredients. We don't know what is in that category, so what does it take to get in and what is out, and we don't know what does it then take of clinical documentation to be able to get the refund from the higher category. And that was one of the reasons why the association of medical device companies in Germany was very adamantly against this and said, "You publish this law, but you don't tell us anything else." And they will have a grace period of 12 months, which is okay if there's no extra documentation needed. If they require that you do a lot of new documentation, then 12 months is nothing. You cannot do a clinical file in 12 months. And therefore, a lot of uncertainty. We think -- the bottom line is, we think we have all the necessary documentation. So if they do not require new documentation, we have good documentation for our product, and we will get reimbursed according to the new rules. The bottom line is also that it does create some uncertainty, and that is the last thing we need right now. We had it a year ago in Germany, where we supplied a letter from a lawyer we had to our customers that they could give to insurance companies if they refused to refund our products saying, "While there's uncertainty, therefore, we do not refund it." So you can't -- are not allowed to that. You have to refund it until there's a new legislation coming in place. So there might be -- we have to do something like that. We do not need the uncertainty because we have such a good momentum in Germany, and so far, we have not seen any impact of this. And we are listening on to all the -- we are contacting some of the bigger companies there, so we're listening to what's going on. But this is happening, and we will keep you updated, of course, if something else happens. So we haven't seen a business impact yet of this. So I think so far, so good. And we think we are in good shape with our clinical file, but something might happen. Yes. Other BetaGlucans segments. We are participating in a study at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, where they started in 2009 the study. It is aimed at being finished in May 2020. And today, we have recruited more than 230 of the 260 patients that is planned for this study. The vaccine is -- the rights to the vaccine is owned by a company called Y-Mabs, which is listed on Nasdaq. And they published their second quarter results last night. And they are -- we know them well, and we are in -- as I said, we are in dialogue with them in terms of how do we do this together going forward. It is -- of course, we cannot drive these clinical trials. This is a completely different expense level that you're living with if you're doing clinical trials in the cancer area. But we are partnering with Y-Mabs, and we'll see what the results are of the study when it comes out there in May 2020. The last 60 patients enrolled are randomly selected to have the SBG in week 1 or SBG in week 7 -- or yes, week 6, I mean, in order to see, is there a difference in the creation antibody titers? Can we really see an effect of the SBG coming in there?So not a lot of news there other than the Y-Mabs have had some issues figuring out whether they can actually produce the vaccine, and they announced in May that they have found a GMP production facility for the vaccine, which was, for us, a positive signal because if they cannot produce it, then there's no point in having a vaccine. They actually found a way to produce it and identified a GMP manufacturing plant who can do it for them. So now you can actually see the vaccine on Y-Mabs' clinical plan, and we are mentioned in some of their presentations as a supplier of beta-glucan there.Consumer health. We see good progress. We have nice growth over last year in the business. Asia and Europe are the main drivers of the growth of the business. We are present in some of the big fairs. And Geneva is a big fair for food additives. And there's another one in Shanghai there, where we're present in the second quarter where we go out and we talk to customers there. And we actually get a lot of leads out of these discussions. Animal Health. We had a sales on par with last half year, and I think that is actually a fairly good result. We -- you may remember that we announced last April, I think, was that we lost a fairly big customer in a price auction. And they're -- everything we can do for the customers in terms of bringing knowledge to the table, help them with selling the products and explaining beta-glucan, they were not really interested in. They just wanted a price and an e-mail. And they sent us an e-mail back and said, "Your price was too high", and then that was it. So not really -- not a -- a customer, of course, you hate to lose. On the other hand, a customer, if your relationship is only the price, then you are somewhat nervous. You'd like to have it, but you can also lose it as we did. So the fact that we actually have the sales on the same level this first half versus last first half, I think, is pretty good. And we also have more and more interest from pet food manufacturers. Beta-glucans are used quite widely in pet food in U.S., and now we see some of the pet food manufacturers also would like to use beta-glucans in Europe. And we have some interest from a few pet food manufacturers that we are talking to, and we have sales actually also to some.That was basically the business, the update on what we're doing. And then I will give the word to Børge, who will run you through the financials.

[Børge Sørvoll, Chief Financial Officer]

Thank you, Christian. The second quarter of 2019 has been a good quarter for Biotec. We have managed to increase our sales significantly in most areas of the business, as Christian touched upon, and both ArcticZymes and the BetaGlucans is working at full pace now to generate shareholder value while we are trying to -- while we are conserving our cash. And this brings us into the first slide. The second quarter cash flow was minus NOK 6.8 million, giving us a cash balance of NOK 21.4 million at the end of the quarter. And the cash flow is not kind of -- is not a reflection of weak performance in that quarter. It is merely a reflection of changes in working capital. Compared to last year and the end of the first quarter, our receivables have increased significantly. We see our receivables are now at NOK 17.3 million, and we have also seen that we have reduced our payables. And of course, this -- both of these items has an impact on our working capital. And changes in the working capital for the second quarter was minus NOK 5.6 million, and we expect this, of course, to be improved now going forward when we receive payments from our customers going forward now. And we also see that the cash flow from operations was pretty much the same in first quarter last year as this year. On the sales side. As I said, we have improved our sales significantly compared to last year. ArcticZymes generated NOK 9 million in sales, up from NOK 5.7 million in the same quarter last year. Animal and consumer health is up by almost NOK 2 million in the comparable quarters. And as Christian said, Woulgan continues to grow the revenues now. Now we see a steady increase, a steady growth in revenues there, and now we have NOK 1.4 million in the quarter, up from NOK 0.5 million in the same quarter last year. And also, this gives us a total NOK 16.9 million, almost NOK 17 million in sales for this quarter. It's up almost 60% compared to the same quarter last year, where we only managed to secure NOK 10.8 million in revenues. So we are seeing some good traction. We saw some good traction in the second quarter now. And of course, when we are getting good sales, this will also influence our profitability. And we have seen now a positive trend with steady improvement in our EBITDA level when you look at quarter-over-quarter. And for the second quarter of 2019, Biotec had a loss of minus 1 -- or minus NOK 0.5 million compared to NOK 3.5 million in the last year. We see also that our operating expenses have gone up somewhat, and this is also because now we are running at full steam. We are at full pace now. In the second quarter last year, we were hiring new business developers for the ArcticZymes part of the business. These people are now all in. They are now at 100% now. So also, we had the full effect of those expenses in this quarter. And also we have now, as Christian talked about, is that we are working in the M&A side, and we have some consultants that are helping us out. And of course, it is expense associated with this as well. In previous years, EBITDA has been kind of a good proxy for how our cash flow is looking. But now, it's not going to be the same anymore after the IFRS 16 leases was implemented. This basically means that all of our expenses related to property, plant and equipment, our production facility now, they are being now -- we have done an NPV on this, and now they are actually booked on the balance sheet. And now you will see all of the expenses related to this is being put as a depreciation. So it won't be part of the EBITDA. It will be part of the EBIT now. This has an annual effect on the EBITDA level of around NOK 3 million. So around NOK 750,000 per quarter is what you will see. That is a steady number. It's going to be like that for the next few years. As long as we have a commitment that we're going to have some production facility and offices, then it's going to be like that. Looking at the companies now -- or at the segments. And as I said, ArcticZymes, they've generated revenues, they're more than NOK 3 million up now from the same quarter last year, and they have all -- they have improved by almost NOK 5 million for the first half year now on the sales side. Operating expenses, you see that they have gone up also. And as I said, it's also because of the business developer hires. We have some external consultants on this side. And we have also done some reallocation of resources now. Now we are utilizing the personnel that we have on the BetaGlucan side also into the ArcticZymes side, much more than we have done in the past. We still managed to increase our EBITDA. We see that on both on the -- for the second quarter and for the first half year. We have improved by almost NOK 1 million on both sides, giving us NOK 1.7 million in the quarter and NOK 1.5 million for the first half year. So we are on track of being -- getting good numbers now.BBG has also managed to increase their sales, their quarterly sales and their half year sales, going -- they have managed to have now NOK 7.9 million in the quarter, up from NOK 5.2 million in the same quarter last year, and then NOK 14.8 million compared to NOK 13 million in the first half last year. And even though we were trailing sales in the fourth -- in the first quarter this year, now we have seen a good ramp-up in the second quarter now. So now we have actually managed to have almost NOK 2 million better first half year sales than we had last year. So that is good. Q2 was a good quarter for the BetaGlucans segment. And of course, one of the explanation here is that we are generating sales now on the Woulgan side. It is going up all the time now. And that NOK 1.4 million we saw in the second quarter, it has an effect in our numbers now. And also with that NOK 1.2 million we had in the first quarter, it does influence our numbers. And also, we see here that we have reduced our operating expenses on this side. We are now -- as I said, we are utilizing some of the production staff from the BBG side over now to the ArcticZymes side. This has, of course, a positive effect on the BetaGlucans side and a negative effect on the ArcticZymes side, but it is what is needed. There's much more activities going on now in ArcticZymes. So it's good. And by combining increased sales and reduced expenses, our profitability in the BetaGlucans side has improved. So we have gone down from NOK 3.2 million in Q2 last year to minus NOK 0.7 million this year. And also, we see a good increase on the first half year, going down from NOK 6.9 million to NOK 2.8 million. So we are -- we have done a lot of good things now in the first quarter and the first half of 2019. And with that in mind and in conclusion, I think we see that Biotec, we continue to improve our business. We continue to be very diligent with the way we take on commitments that has a cash effect. So we are really concerned about how our cash is. And I think with that, I'll leave it to you, Christian, to take us through the outlook.

[Christian Jørgensen, Chief Executive Officer]

Yes. Thank you. So the outlook, and this is a slide you have seen before -- twice before, actually, in January and in April. This is the same outlook as we have not changed the outlook for 2019. We expect revenue growth in the 2 focus areas, ArcticZymes and Woulgan, to be strongest in the second half. And there, I have to probably make a little reposition that when we say strongest, it's in millions and not in percentages because if you then come back to me in January and say what, "Your percentage was actually lower in the second half than it was in the first half," yes, but the million should be higher. So this is our expectation. We'll see higher growth in the business for this year, and we will see the higher growth in the second half. That's what we expect. We expect the ArcticZymes to grow the business organically and launch new products, but also we are seeking inorganic growth opportunities, as we have debated here. And lastly, we'll focus on Woulgan and do what we can to grow the business. We have a number of good partners out there, especially in Germany, who is doing a very good job for us, and we will see what we can do to support further sales in Germany and also find other markets where -- that are conducive to a product like Woulgan. In the medical device area, unfortunately, it is not enough to have a good product, especially when you're dealing with products that are used at home. And therefore, you need a powerful sales force. You need some commercial power to get out there with the message and change people's behavior. There's a lot of treatment behavior out there that needs to be changed. That is a tough job. If that is then combined with a tough reimbursement environment, then it is difficult for a small company to succeed, not because the product is not good but because of the commercial power you need in order to be successful there. But we believe in it and we push on, and we are fairly optimistic in our way to do this. And whenever we see a good opportunity coming up, we do it. We are supplying a Tour de France team with Woulgan, and they brought the Woulgan also with them to the Vuelta. So we'll see if it is being used there. So we are open for all ideas. And also, we are in discussion with partners not only about Woulgan but also using SPG in some of their products. So if they have a wound care product and they would like to use our active ingredient, SPG, we are discussing with some companies about that. So very open-minded here. We think we have a great technology. We think we have a great product. We need to get it out there, and we need to find somebody to help of us, and this is what we are doing. So as Børge said, we are happy with the progress in Q2. We, of course, would like to see it go faster and be quicker and have most -- be most successful and higher numbers. The world, unfortunately, is not really going that fast as we would like it to do, but we are happy with the progress we are seeing in the second quarter here. And we expect it to continue for the rest of '19, as we say here, especially in the Woulgan and the ArcticZymes area, that we continue to see growth, and thereby also reducing, as Børge said, the cash consumption of the company. With that, I think that finishes our presentation, and I'll open up for questions.

[Unknown Executive]

Any questions? Anybody on the Web? No? None today.

[Christian Jørgensen, Chief Executive Officer]

Well then, thank you for your time here for the people who came to see us in Oslo, and thank you for people listening on the Web. I'd like to thank the colleagues in Biotec Pharmacon for all their hard work and for a very good summer, where we did a lot of good things despite the fact that we had some summer vacation to mix in. But a lot of good work been done. So thank you for that.