Arcticzymes Technologies ASA

OSE:AZT

Earnings Call Analysis

Earnings Call Transcript 2023-Q4

[Michael Akoh, executive]

Good morning, and welcome to ArcticZymes Quarterly Presentation. My name is Michael Akoh, and I'm the CEO of ArcticZymes.Today, I have Borge Sorvoll, our CFO; as well as Jeremy Gillespie, who is our VP Corporate Development and Product Management.Let's take a look at the agenda for today. I'm going to go through the highlights of Q4 2023, and also share some information on the full year. Then I'm going to do a business update, as well as a strategic update, and then I'm going to talk a bit about our strategic priorities for 2024.Then I'm going to leave the floor to Jeremy, who is going to talk about corporate development in ArcticZymes, and he's going to give a case example of recently entered in partnership with Biomatter. Then Borge is going to take over, he's going to go through the financials, and finally we have the opportunity for questions and answers, both those of you joining us on the webcast, as well as those of you who are present here in Oslo this morning. But let's start things off.I would like to start out by saying that 2023 was a challenging year for ArcticZymes and for a lot of the companies in the life science tools space. It was a year where we had macroeconomic challenges, it was a year with high interest rates, it was a year where funding was difficult for a lot of companies that we sell our products into. We did not reach all the objectives that we set out to make during 2023, but what we did was we ticked off a number of key milestones that are going to be fundamental for our growth going forward. I'm going to spend some time today also talking about what those milestones are and what they are going to mean for ArcticZymes going forward.Looking at the numbers then in Q4 last year, we had sales of NOK 28.4 million compared to NOK 28.2 million, 2022 for Q4. Our EBITDA was at NOK 2 million compared to NOK 1.3 million Q4 2022.In December, we got a research grant from Research Council of Norway just below NOK 12 million. That research grant is going to be applied for us exploring the field of RNA enzymes and I'm going to get back to that later in the presentation.We also launched a new enzyme within the RNA space, our T7, and actually this week we got some initial customer feedback in terms of the performance of that enzyme. I was extremely excited to see that it outperformed one of the dominant enzymes within the RNA space. So we have the ability to develop unique enzymes at ArcticZymes. Enzymes that offer value to the customer, tangible value. In the coming year, it's going to be very much about executing on that also commercially.We signed a partnership agreement with an AI company called Biomatter. We've already started working with them in order to develop new enzyme prototypes, and Jeremy is going to give you more information in regards to the background, why did we enter that partnership, and what we expect to get out of it.And you're going to hear me talk a lot about partnerships because partnerships is a key component of our strategy going forward. Not just within the early stages of our company value chain, but actually also in the commercial stages. It is key for us to grow, to seek partners and establish strong relationships that can add value to our customers.I'm extremely excited about this because this has been something that we have been working for very hard for a long, long time. And it is going to be a key component in our growth journey going forward. We launched our SAN HQ GMP, our first grade in -- our first GMP grade salt active nuclease, Wednesday. It has been a tough journey for the company, going from being a diagnostic supplier, producing enzymes according to diagnostic standards, to reversing that to becoming a pharma biotech supplier and living up to the requirements in GMP. The documentation burden is immense, but we've done it for a reason. We've made that investment because we see that we are removing an important hurdle. This is going to give our sales people the opportunity to knock on doors again and not just be turned away because, hey, you don't have GMP. I have alternatives out there that have GMP, so why should I go for you? It is a quality seal, a quality stamp that matters. So I'm really, really excited about us having our first GMP enzyme within this viral vector bioprocessing field. We have a rich history within this space. We have a strong portfolio. And going forward, you can expect to see that we are going to launch more GMP grade enzymes with some of our other [ segment ] variants.So what about the customers? What are they saying? What are their reactions? They have shown interest during the past months. As you know, we have done a so-called soft launch where we have preannounced that we were developing and launching this enzyme on the market. But also, customers really want to see us deliver and put the product in the market first. We've done that now. So now we are going to go out and execute in terms of getting deals signed.I also want to state that this has been an important learning process for the company. The first time you do something, it's always extremely difficult. The next time, it's going to be easier. So that is something that is extremely comforting for me and something that I look forward for in terms of bringing more of our unique novel enzymes to the market in a GMP grade.The DMF was also a significant achievement last year and something that's also going to function as leverage for our SAN penetration into the bioprocessing market.I also want to lastly say that we have been focusing a lot on SAN. We are going to be focusing on SAN going forward. But biomanufacturing enzymes is also more than just the viral vector space. So you're going to hear about also RNA going forward. It is a segment that has long-term growth opportunities even though that '23 was a year where some of the companies within the space had a challenging time.Just to recap the market, you've seen this before. The SAN HQ GMP is targeting the AAV market, the largest market within the viral vector space. But we also have opportunities to go forward in the oncolytic virus space. And there might be some wins to be had in that space as it is a developing area. And many companies are not locked in with certain reagents at present time.So what can you expect from the future? You have seen this slide before. If we start out by the Bioprocessing or Biomanufacturing space, then we have an RNA enzyme, ET-Nx, that we have a prototype on, have had [ dialogues ] with customers and received positive feedback. So that is something we are expecting a lot from going forward. We are also going to be working on what we have labeled SAN X GMP enzyme. And that is a SAN enzyme that caters to specific customer needs. M-SAN HQ GMP to target the medium salt viral vector production environment is also a focus. And then finally, we also need a quality control kit to go along with our SAN products. So we are going to launch an improved version with better sensitivity.In the Molecular space, then I think, Jeremy, you might touch upon this, but we are also looking externally to see if we can insource not only technology, but also enzymes and sell them under the ArcticZymes brands, where it fits into our portfolio of enzymes. And we also have a range of different prototypes that we are working on.As you can see, the heading on the slide says Tentative 2024-2025 product planning, it's extremely important for us that we are dynamic to the best of our ability. That we are also able to switch gears and shuffle things around depending on where the opportunity is. So this is the current picture, and I'm certain that this picture is going to look different in half a year's time. Some of the components are going to stay, other of the components are going to be changed. So that's important to note.A few words about the grant we received from the Research Council of Norway. It is a grant that's going to support our strategy of entering into the advanced therapies area in terms of delivering RNA enzymes. I've had some of my excellent colleagues in R&D to depict what they call a very simplified workflow of how you produce RNA. And I think me, as being not a scientist, would like to point to that there is a lot of challenges within RNA production, and a lot of the challenges are the same you find within production of viral vectors. You need to purify the vector, you need to remove impurities in order to avoid an unwanted immune response from the patient in the end. Enzymes are going to play and are playing an important component in removal of impurities, so we have an opportunity to go in and add significant value in this process.The grant and the project is going to be conducted together with the University of Tromso and SINTEF and it is going to last for approximately 4 years, and it is interesting in terms of novel new enzyme solutions and speeding up our access to this market.Then I would like to inform you about a corporate restructuring we have done in Q1. What we have seen during the past years is that company costs have increased significantly. We have had an organic growth strategy and that has meant that we have increased the headcount significantly in the company in the form of hiring more people to R&D to get more products out, and also establishing an external site in Oslo. And the costs after careful consideration have to be reduced in certain parts of the value chain. And this is also in line with that the top line hasn't developed as positively as we had expected during 2023. But it is also because we have done a revision of the strategy and that strategy puts increased focus on biomanufacturing, puts increased focus on partnerships and it puts increased focus on commercial execution.2023 has been a year where we have focused a lot on internal projects. The DMF has been comprehensive for the whole organization, the GMP project has also been significant for the whole organization. And we need to ensure that we also have the ability to invest in the strategic priorities that we have in the company. And one of those strategic priorities that is also being able to invest in the commercial side of the business.And as a consequence of the cost base, as a consequence of the revised strategy, we have decided to close down the Oslo site. The Oslo site was originally put in place to develop application support for Molecular Tools. Going forward, those application projects are going to be done in collaboration with external partners, as well as in our application lab in Tromso.Unfortunately, the closing of the Oslo site is going to remove 4 positions from the company, but it was a necessary decision to take and it is a decision that's going to lead to a more balanced cost picture across the value chain. We do not expect any increase in FTEs for 2024.Looking at the strategy going forward, then I showed you this slide briefly 3 months ago. The road forward, I have a bit more content to the boxes today than I did when I just started working in the company, but it's very much about focusing for us and working according to customer needs and the trends on the market. We want to create a leading specialist enzyme company. We want to be a catalyst for innovation and progress for our partners. We have pursued an organic growth strategy during the last years. We're going to put more emphasis on creating partnerships going forward. Partnerships are going to be an essential component of creating a stronger foundation and being able to grow the top line of the business.The 2 segments remain. We're going to have a near-time focus or short-term focus on the Biomanufacturing opportunities. The launch of SAN HQ GMP has given us extra muscle ability to target customers within that space. We've removed a significant hurdle, but the Molecular Tools business still stands, and we're going to keep on working within that space with our long-term important partners.The growth levels that we have is very much about innovation. We have an excellent R&D team, and we have a very, very interesting pipeline in our R&D portfolio. We're going to invest in more tools, and an example of that is the Biomatter collaboration that Jeremy is going to speak to. But you can expect to see more agreements going forward in order to enhance our innovation ability, and also our ability to, of course, launch new products that support the growth of the company.Commercial excellence, that's really something that's close to my heart. It's something that I've worked with for the past 24 years, and it's something that is a focus, of course, for this year as well. We have to be market-driven and responsive in every aspect in the company. One of the first things I did when I joined the company that was to form a dedicated product management department, because that is key to get a market-driven competitive portfolio and roadmap put together.The infrastructure is also key. The GMP compliance part is something that we have to continue to work with. We've now proven that we are able to launch a GMP grade enzyme. Now we're on to the next one. Scalability is going to be important as well. If we have to become an important strategic partner for some of the larger players in the biotech industry, then we also have to ensure that they understand that we can deliver. And delivering in this space is also about forming partnerships with the right CDMOs, so we are able to scale up, ramp up our production as the drug development progresses through the different phases towards commercialization.What attracted me to ArcticZymes last year was the base of the company. It is a solid base. As I talked to earlier, we have some novel enzymes that outperform the competition. We have a good reputation amongst the customers that know us. We have to work with creating more awareness, building our brand, so more customers get to know us going forward.Our quality is great, not only within our ISO quality management system for diagnostic customers, but also what we've seen is that we've had audits from some of the largest CDMO organizations in the world. Even though they don't say it, they have a focus, of course, on your ability to produce according to pharma standards, according to GMP. And we have passed those audits with only minor deviations. That tells me a lot about the quality standard in the company, tells me a lot about our capabilities going forward. So that's extremely important. If we didn't have the quality system, if we didn't have the right processes, then it would be uphill. But we have that in place already, which I think is a significant strength of a smaller company.We have an existing customer base, and we are able to sell more into that existing customer base. We have a good team. And last but not least, it is a growing market. Long-term, even though that 2023, especially within the Gene & Cell Therapy market, has been challenging, long-term, it is a market that is going to experience significant growth. And we are going to tap into that growth.Look at some of the strategic priorities that we have for 2024. Of course, the overall goal is to deliver long-term growth, deliver shareholder value. In terms of penetrating the Biomanufacturing segment, then we have, as mentioned, removed the major hurdle. But we have to continue also to develop that portfolio in several ways, both to internal development in regards to complementing the portfolio with more GMP products. That's going to make the sale to the customer even easier. It's going to be more of a one stop shop approach within enzymes for viral vector production.The Biomatter project, I'm not going to say more about that, Jeremy. I don't want to take all the excitement out of your presentation. And we are also going to enter into an external partnership with an industrial organization in order to get data on the performance of our SAN HQ GMP and M SAN enzymes. It's something we can't do internally. So we have decided to work with an external company going forward on developing not only the data, but also getting help on promoting our products in terms of publications, talks at congresses, and so on. That's an important element of the commercial strategy.We are also currently working with a sales channel revision. What products are we selling through what channels. It's important that we are razor sharp, we are focused, and that we understand the dynamics of sales channels in order to exploit the opportunities at the right time.We're going to continue to develop our RNA portfolio through new prototypes. T7 RNA was the first -- T7 for the RNA space was the first tool that we launched. And we also, as mentioned, have another enzyme, ET-NX, that we have had positive dialogue with customers about. And the Research Council of Norway grant is going to further fuel our exploration of the RNA field.We're going to have cost control, but that does not mean we're not going to invest in the right growth initiatives. Commercial execution is going to be important in regards to also forming partnerships with the right partners for part of our portfolio. We are also involving key opinion leaders in our work to get the right insights, market-based insights in regards to how we should go to market and what our future portfolio should look like, and scientific marketing, as I mentioned, in the form of posters, talks at congresses, and getting into the scientific community with our customers is going to be extremely important.I've talked a lot about SAN, I've talked a lot about GMP today, but what I want to emphasize as well with the next slide is that ArcticZymes has a full portfolio. It's not just about the Biomanufacturing segment. This is just a brief overview of some of the customer activities that are going on with our products across the whole portfolio. So there is activity on many different fronts currently, and also some very promising opportunities that we are working with.And with that, I'd like to end my presentation for today, and let Jeremy talk about corporate development and partnerships.

[Jeremy Gillespie, executive]

Thank you, Michael. So just by the way of introduction, I'm Jeremy Gillespie, I am the VP of Corporate Development and Product Management, and came to ArcticZymes in June last year. My background is in various commercial activities, so I've been in marketing, I've run product management teams, as well as in sales organizations for companies like Thermo Fisher, Invitrogen and QIAGEN, who's a major life science player in Germany.So what I'm going to talk about today is the role that corporate development plays in adding value to the innovation toolbox and to the innovation pipeline at ArcticZymes. But we have to step back from that and refer back to my -- in the corporate development can't really execute on a strategy if there's no strategy to play from, from in terms of product portfolio.So key to this is we need to define a market-driven portfolio strategy. And when I say market-driven, I mean using voice of customer, engaging key opinion leaders, market reports, getting as much information as we can, live information, valid information, and feeding that into a pot, and then coming out with a strategy. That strategy is driven by product management, but it's owned by product management as well, but it's owned by R&D, owned by operations. It's pretty much owned by everybody in the company because we're all stakeholders in making sure this strategy is driven forward.So Once we have the strategy, what do we do with it? So first of all, we go into what I call an ideation phase. This is where we've got gaps to market that we've identified, gaps in portfolios, and we want to fill those. And so classically, we work with R&D to identify how we're going to work on filling those holes.I think as technology has driven forward and the space has got bigger and bigger, internal R&D is not enough, okay. And while we have an excellent R&D team, we need to start thinking outside the 4 walls of the company to look at options to be able to enhance our portfolio and our abilities.There are several ways you can do this. If you can look at, Michael referred to bringing in products and putting an ArcticZymes label on them, so OEM is a classic short-term way of adding to the portfolio. But let's look at licensing opportunities, bringing in prototypes maybe and developing ourselves, or bringing finished products in and then working on different applications. And we could also look at external services, such as a CDMO or a company that would reduce the time to market with some of our activities. Alternatively, we can also do strategic alliances. We can do joint ventures with other companies as well. So we're looking at that whole mix of bringing that into the ideation phase and having a result, which is basically a market-driven product portfolio. So this is a valid innovation portfolio that we can act on and follow, and it becomes the roadmap for the company.And the net benefits really are that we increase speed to market. We have cost-effective product development, so we know where we're focusing on and we don't go down any rabbit holes. And we're able to make effective decisions that will result in products coming to market quickly. And they'll be relevant, they'll be relevant to the market and the innovation pipeline that we see going on.And the one thing that I'm going to talk about on the next slide more is crucial, is we increase our IP portfolio. Crucial to that is the fact that the market is very crowded and we need to differentiate ourselves in many ways. One way we do with the salt active nuclease is that we have a product that was the first to market in terms of its salt activity, but we have copycats coming out there now and we're starting to see other companies putting theirs on the market. So let's try and increase the distance between us and them. And by putting IP in the place for products like that, we can do that.So I go back to the point where my slide was of corporate development and how we -- how the role that we play, so now I've gone through the strategy, so I'm going to give an example of what we've done. So the example I want to choose is looking at working with third-party services. And we realized very quickly that one of the areas we needed to look at was the IP coverage in the portfolio and how do we do that quickly. Because developing IP and then filing for it takes a long time. So we looked at artificial intelligence, or machine learning as it's often called, and we needed -- we recommended that or we identified that as being the great route to follow, so we started looking around at several companies, but first of all we really had to understand and sell internally what AI can bring to us.And there are 3 pillars that you can follow with AI. The first one is optimization. Out of the 3, it's probably the most simple. You take your existing enzyme DNA sequence and you ask the AI tool to fine-tune it. So if we've got an enzyme that has an optimal temperature of A and a pH optimal of B and we want to try and expand that, we can then feed that into the algorithm and out pops multiple sequences that we then have to test. So it's not easy, it's just speeding up the bioinformatics and the identification of the DNA.The second option is to design an enzyme from scratch. AI is very good at this for the food industry for developing enzymes that develop new flavors and so on and so forth. So you could -- if you've got an enzyme that has a single function, you may want to try and design an enzyme that has dual or triple function, so that you're doing one test tube reaction rather than multiples because the more stages you put into a process, the more room for error there is.Alternatively, you can look at discovery. And discovery is a combination of using AI and all the DNA sequences that the world has found and put into this big database. And so there's companies out there that will go out there and mine microbial content from the desert, from the Arctic like we've done, from all sorts of places. Then they stick them into a database and then they'll use an AI engine to probe it. So you would tell them what you want in terms of an enzyme and the AI engine would then scan through that and pull out any sequence of DNA that it thinks would give you a hit. And then, of course, you've got to go back and test them. So there are different levers we can pull on AI.So then we started looking at some companies, had a chat with many of them. And the business models that they have are all different. So we found a company called Biomatter in Lithuania. We met with them and they're very, very willing to help, very energetic. And I really like these guys. And then My question was, well, how good are they because AI, they're all very new companies out there. I noticed that they were working with Thermo Fisher, so I called a couple of my ex-colleagues at Thermo Fisher and they said, yes, no, they're good.And then they're working with Christian Hansen, so that's a big food company. And as I referenced earlier in the design area, Christian Hansen are probably designing some enzymes for flavors. And then, well, these are 2 big companies. Let's look at a smaller company. So there's a company called EnginZyme in Sweden. And they're a similar size to us, similar headaches in terms of what they want to achieve in enzyme design. And so I had a call with them and they told me that they had a really, really good experience with these guys, Biomatter. They were really super helpful, very malleable. They were willing to work with us and change paradigms, et cetera, et cetera. So in December, we got over the bridge where we agreed terms with them for an alliance. And we'll move forward with that and that's actively going on right now. And we hope to get some results to get R&D internally started off soon.So what do we go for? That's the key thing. So we didn't just choose a random enzyme. As Michael said, our focus is really on SAN this year. I've internally coined that as year of the SAN. This is ironic. This is my AI logo that I generated, so I'm pretty good at AI now, I've decided. And the benefits really to us are as follows. So we're able to leverage Biomatter's platform to enhance our internal discovery. Currently, we're going to do a proof-of-principle study. So my plan is that we'll get to a certain stage in this and if it's working, we'll then look at doing parallel studies with different enzymes so that we can, not just do it end-to-end but synchronously. This massively speeds up the discovery process, and we're hoping to get product out in a matter of 1.5 year to 2 years rather than 3 to 4 years.And ultimately, and I can't underline this enough, we're able to generate IP with this method that we can protect ourselves, grow the portfolio, and continue making world-class salt active nucleases and other enzymes as we go forward.So with that, I'm going to hand over to Borge now, who's going to talk about financials.

[Børge Sørvoll, executive]

Thank you, Jeremy, for that interesting orientation around AI and what we're doing in the company now. So I'm going to move into now the financial of the company and our performance for the fourth quarter here and the last 12 months of 2023 here.First of all, look at the commercial side of the business, look at the Molecular Tools side of the business, and as you can see, we achieved NOK 16.1 million in quarterly sales. This is slightly higher than we've seen over the last few quarters. And actually, compared to the same quarter last year, we actually have a growth of 79% or actually up from NOK 7.1 million last year. And it's also worth mentioning that Q4 last year was kind of a challenging year in this part of the business here. We weren't able to push any orders through at the end of the year. And if you remember our fourth quarter presentation last year, we said that it was hard. Q4 at the end of last year was really hard for us.But also, looking at the whole year for 2023, sales are at NOK 61.3 million compared to last year where we had NOK 68.3 million. But also, as you might remember, both in the first quarter and third quarter, we had COVID-related revenues in 2022 of an estimated NOK 15 million. So if you adjust for this, you can see that the comparable sales for 2022 are NOK 53.3 million. And this implies that underlying sales within the Molecular Tools side of the business for 2023 is actually 15% higher than 2022 or NOK 8 million for the whole year as such.Molecular Tools had a 56% contribution towards the Q4 sales. It's a little bit higher than the 48% we had in previous quarter, but it is kind of within the normal range that we had. You can see the average for the year ended up on 52%. I think that kind of the sales distribution now in the fourth quarter was an estimated of those 56%, 30% were in that into the research segment, and 26% were into the diagnostic segment. And this is also, I think, the R&D segment is a lot higher this quarter compared to the third quarter where the numbers were really low. And it's, of course, kind of the sales of the SAP product that has increased in the fourth quarter compared to previous quarters here.Moving into the Biomanufacturing side of the year, we achieved NOK 12.3 million in quarterly sales. It's down from NOK 15.9 million that we had in the third quarter. And this is also lower than the NOK 19.2 million that we had in the fourth quarter last year. And as you might have seen in the report, we see that especially on the East Coast of North America, it's been challenging. There are a lot of programs that are delayed. They were even cancelled because of the lack of funding in that area of the market. And of course, this has an impact on our sales revenues for sure.For the whole year, sales are at almost NOK 56 million compared to NOK 68.7 million in 2022, and this accounts for a 19% decline for the whole year, or NOK 13 million. Biomanufacturing contribution for the fourth quarter sales was 44%. It's a lower, of course, lower than we have achieved in previous quarters, so. And you can say, even though we haven't experienced growth in our figures on a quarterly or annual basis, there are signs of improvements now. We have initiated several talks with several players out there now, and we hope that we can leverage this and get future sales moving forward.Looking at the trend in our business, this is a slide that we showed several times before. This is also because we had quite a lot of quarterly fluctuations, and now we're trying to trend it a little bit, how we're actually doing, and this is a 12-month rolling average quarterly sales year. And as you can see from the table, the growth has been basically flat over the last year, or the last 2 years now. Flat to slightly negative, we've moved from an average quarterly rolling sales of NOK 30.5 million to NOK 29.4 million in this quarter now, which is basically the same as you can see that we've had over the last year.The trend is flat for the last 12 months, but of course, as Michael also said, we are positive. We are in growing markets. We have interesting products. The customers want our products, and that we can also see in the number of orders that we have. We see that the number of orders are more or less unchanged. We had 366 orders in Q3, whereas now we had 347 orders, so we are balancing around those 350 orders per quarter now. And that is even though we have challenging markets around us here.But also, what we talked about in the past, that we see that we are gaining new customers on a quarterly basis now, and fourth quarter was no exception to this. We gained 23 new customers, basically split by 12 in Molecular Tools, and then we had 11 in Biomanufacturing. And if you sum up all the customers we have gained throughout the year, we are talking about maybe around 100 new customers that are either testing or buying our products here.And of course, that the customers are buying our products is a strong signal that we have an attractive value proposition to them. And hopefully, of course, most of these customers, the new customers are buying in small volumes or in small numbers, but hopefully they can grow into key accounts down the road. That's kind of what we want to achieve down the road. So we are optimistic, and we are growing the number of customers we have in the business. But it is, as we said, and I think fourth quarter was, as with previous quarters, it's been challenging to be able to grow the business. We have seen those kind of capital markets, we've seen the project delays, and we also have that China that's been in the same situation as we've seen over the last 5, 6, 7, 8 months, basically.All right. Moving into a little bit on the expense side of the business here, and this is kind of a slide that I've shown several times before. As we said, so we've grown the business dramatically over the last few years, and more or less, we have a 30% increase in employees from 2021 to the end of 2022, and we've grown the business organically also in 2023. We had around 4 new people starting this year that we also announced earlier. And of course, now we see some of the challenges with this growth, and we have kind of decided, as Michael also talked about, that we're going to decrease now, and there's going to be 0 new employees moving into 2024. And also, yes, we are reducing number of employees now, and it's also concerning a little bit about on the cost side.So what about the bottom line in our profitability, and as I stated in most of the presentations, that we still deliver on our positive contributions on the EBITDA level, similar to what we have seen over the last few years. In our fourth quarter, ended up on NOK 2 million, compared to NOK 1.3 million in the same quarter last year, and we ended up on NOK 22.2 million for the full year versus NOK 41.5 million last year. But of course, as I've talked about, we had a lot of COVID-related revenues in 2022, and if you adjust our numbers for those COVID-related revenues in 2022, our numbers would have been basically NOK 15 million lower. And comparing apples to apples, you can see 2022 figures would then have been NOK 26.5 million compared to the NOK 22.5 million we achieved this year. And this kind of implies a reduction of NOK 4.3 million from 2022 to 2023.And also, you can see on the graph here on the left-hand side, we had an EBITDA contribution -- EBITDA margin of 7% in this quarter, which is a little bit lower than we've seen over the last 3 quarters.Our operating expenses, slightly lower this quarter compared to the same quarter last year, not significant. We have moved from NOK 27.2 million to NOK 27.1 million. And you can also see from the table on the right-hand side that our sum expenses for the whole year is more or less unchanged, where we have basically moved from NOK 96.2 million to NOK 97.4 million this year.Personnel expenses, it's kind of one of the main drivers on the expense side of the business. We're at NOK 15.4 million for the quarter, or actually NOK 0.7 million higher than the NOK 14.7 million we had last year. And for the whole year, you can actually see that our personnel expenses is lower than previous year. And this even though we have grown the number of employees in the organization. And of course, there are some reasons for this. And some of the reasons are that we had some reversal of some national insurance contributions in the first quarter, we have reversed some option expenses. We have lower than expected bonuses because we didn't meet all our sales targets. And we have also capitalized close to NOK 10 million in personnel expenses related to projects that have reached certain milestones.And then other operating expenses, they ended up on NOK 9.6 million in the quarter, which is NOK 1.7 million lower than the same quarter last year. It's a little bit higher than expected, and this again resulted in annual expenses just above those kind of NOK 32 million when we aimed at coming into the year. So we said that we were going to have lower expenses than NOK 32 million, and we ended up on NOK 32.6 million.So looking at the cash side of the business here, and the cash balance and the change in cash were in alignment with what we normally see on a quarterly basis. And changes in cash and cash equivalents were NOK 3.1 million for the quarter, and of course, they are influenced primarily by the operations in the business. In the year to date, we have a change of NOK 2 million after we had a kind of negative cash flow in the first quarter this year.You can see that we're at the end of the year now, we had a cash balance of NOK 180 million, and this is kind of a lot lower than I presented earlier. But in the fourth quarter, we had to do a reclassification of some of our short-term investment in low-risk interest-raised mutual funds. So I've reclassified NOK 69 million in liquid assets now, and been reclassified as other assets compared to cash. And of course, this had an impact on the cash position as such, but it doesn't impact the liquid cash we have available.So I think with that, I can say that with the cash and short-term investments, the position of NOK 250 million is what we have now for the end of the year. I think I will hand it over to Michael now, and have some last few remarks.

[Michael Akoh, executive]

Thank you, Borge. I just want to end the year, not the year, but I want to end the presentation as I started, saying that the ship is still solid and the crew is still capable. We've been going through some rough waters during 2023. We did not deliver on all our objectives for the year, but what is really, really important to me is that we delivered on key milestones that is going to play an important part from the foundation for our future growth. And here I'm of course talking about our GMP grade enzyme that was just launched this week, as well as the DMF that we did. Now the focus is going to turn more towards externally focused activities and capitalizing on those investments that we have made.And that was my last remark presentation. So now we're going to open up for questions, both online as well as in the room.

[Børge Sørvoll, executive]

Let me just kick off now with one question that I received online. Will we receive some new guidance for 2024 or updated guidance for the coming years?

[Michael Akoh, executive]

Looking at the market currently, then we see that Q1, Q2 is still going to be challenging quarters. We're also starting, as Borge also alluded to, to see some light at the end of the tunnel. And I think that going into the second half of the year, we are in a better market environment. So that's something we have to capitalize on.In terms of the guidance on the cost side, then we are going to keep tight cost control and we are not going to increase our number of FTEs. So the expense side is fixed with a trend downwards. But again, we are investing in the growth activities that are needed. We are investing in partnerships. We are investing in commercial execution. So we have some strong opportunities, some great products that we have to push. And in order to push them, we also need to invest in the strategic priorities that I mentioned. So that's my talk in regards to guidance currently.

[Børge Sørvoll, executive]

Okay. I think, any questions here in the room?

[Unknown Analyst]

If you go to the Slide 7, you said that the AAV market, that you have sort of a 1% market share. And I know you can't really answer it, but I mean, what could you see going 5 years down the road? I mean, what's the potential there?

[Michael Akoh, executive]

The potential is huge, because at the end of the day, we have to get into a successful project, a project that goes all the way, so to speak. And just with a couple of those projects, then that 1% is of course going to be several percentages. So I see this as being a strategic priority for us to execute on those opportunities that we have. And we have removed really, as I said earlier, a key hurdle. Pharma want to deal with suppliers that have a GMP grade product. Then you don't always have to have a DMF, but in some cases you do. In some cases, they're going to validate the enzymes themselves. But I expect that this is going to be a future growth driver for us, and we are scratching the surface of that market again. So I'm very optimistic about expanding our market share in that space. One thing is the product. We've ticked that box off now by saying that we have a product that's produced, [ not saying ], but having a product that is GMP grade. We also have to work a lot with the data around the product. We have to work more in the scientific communities, get through to the scientists that are working within the bioprocessing development in the various companies. And you often do that through publications, you do it through talks, and that's going to be also a key focus for us in 2024. So we are definitely on the right track for penetrating that market further.Then I'm sure your next question is, when is it going to happen? We've been waiting some years, and I would say you have to be patient, but not too patient.

[Unknown Analyst]

Good. Just a follow-up question on the SAN here. So a little bit coming back to what Jeremy alluded to here. Regarding China, can these competitors match the performance of our SAN product that are coming out, the copycats?

[Michael Akoh, executive]

I don't know every product on the market, but I would say that we still have a superior product. And I think one thing that's extremely important to mention is also reputation. We have a strong reputation, we have a track record. We are a region-based company, and that says a lot. But we have to be on our toes, of course. We have to continue to develop our product portfolio as we're going to do in order to stay ahead. So that's also why we've entered that partnership with Biomatter, that's to generate additional IP, additional product benefits that we can supply to our customers.

[Børge Sørvoll, executive]

Okay. We have a few questions about the Oslo site here. Replace the Oslo site with partners, [ beg ] the question, who these partners are? Academia, others, industry?

[Michael Akoh, executive]

It's going to be a wide range of different partners, depending on the enzyme. We actually have an R&D department that is engaging with a lot of different partners, both within industry as well as academia. And as mentioned, we also have our Tromso site. So we have different avenues, not only partner-based, but also internally based.

[Børge Sørvoll, executive]

And as a follow-up even more, you're closing down the Oslo site and reducing headcounts by 4 people. Can we expect OpEx to be below NOK 91.5 million for the year?

[Michael Akoh, executive]

I'm going to hand that question to you, Borge, as the CFO. Thank you.

[Børge Sørvoll, executive]

Yes, and I think as -- I think the answer to that one is I don't think so. We haven't come out with a guidance on that numbers yet. And we -- as Michael said, we are still driving the business. We are going to do the things that are correctly now from a commercial point of view, but we will have tight cost control moving forward now. And even though we have shut down the Oslo site, we still have some expenses that are remain throughout the year. We have contracts, we have agreements we need to close out as well. So there will be some expenses throughout the year, even though we have shut it down.What else do we have here? Do you have any visibility on sales orders going into the first quarter and the full year of 2024?

[Michael Akoh, executive]

It's still the early days of the quarter to say too much with certainty about how the quarter is going to end out. But we're seeing the same traction as we did in Q4 currently.

[Børge Sørvoll, executive]

All right. And then we are seeing that inventory is basically up 2 times year-over-year and the same applies to the cost of goods. Is this temporary or the new normal?And I could probably answer that one as well. And I think kind of inventory is more or less the new normal now because we have had scale of productions that we talked about in the past. And of course, when we do scale of productions, that brings a lot of inventory into our -- into the company as such. Instead of running kind of parallel productions internally now, we've had kind of -- we do those kind of large scale fermentation at the CMOs that we used over the last few years. And that basically means that we will have high inventory and then we will decline steadily, steadily, steadily. And then it basically will go up again when we do a new fermentation in maybe in 1 year's time, basically depending on sales.And also, I think when you talk about the cost of goods, and as you can see from the report, we had to take an extraordinary expense of NOK 0.5 million. We had a purification that didn't go as planned. So that impacted our cost of goods, especially in the fourth quarter. But we will still have high margins on our products moving forward now. So we still believe that it will be in the high [ 90s ] moving forward.Let's see if we have some other questions here online. Let me see. In your initial discussion with customers on the SAN HQ GMP product, what has been their feedback on the competing high salt products that they are evaluating?

[Michael Akoh, executive]

So far, we have heard a lot about competing high salt products, but so far, it's not been an objection from the customers that we have engaged with. So that's going to be my answer on that front. It's not been an objection currently. It's not been brought up as we speak.

[Børge Sørvoll, executive]

Then I have one question about the research grant and the revenues, if we have kind of booked those revenues in the fourth quarter?And maybe I can answer that as well. And of course, we just got the grant. So basically, the project hasn't even started yet. So nothing has been booked or we haven't had it under the revenues.

[Michael Akoh, executive]

Yes, the actual contract is going to be executed during the next 3 weeks.

[Børge Sørvoll, executive]

So I think that is the question. Any more questions in the room here, or? And I think then I have basically one more question here. What factors led to the decline in EBITDA in the fourth quarter, despite the relative constant revenue development quarters-over-quarters here?And I think also, as I said, we have had -- we have grown the number of employees over the last few years. And of course, we had -- we saw the full impact of this in during all of 2023. So we grew the number of employees both in the first quarter and also in the third quarter. Of course, we will reduce it moving forward now. But that is part of the explanation. And we also had kind of increased travels. We have run a kind of ERP project that also had been kind of some expenses related to and some higher property planning equipment expenses for the year. And running that Oslo site has had some increased expenses for the year. So I think that is some of the reasons why we had a kind of decline in the EBITDA. But at the end, it kind of, it is the sales that will dictate the EBITDA. We have fairly constant expense levels in the company.Okay, 2 more questions have popped in. Is the market headwinds affecting the Molecular Tool segments as much as the Biomanufacturing?

[Michael Akoh, executive]

I think if you look throughout 2023, then the effect was greatest within the Cell & Gene Therapy space. A lot of projects were cancelled or at least delayed. The CDMOs out there had a really, really tough year. But there is some light in the horizon and now also in regards to the CDMO market going forward. So that is positive.

[Børge Sørvoll, executive]

Okay, good. Last question here and then I think we round off, and that, are you going to raise prices in 2024?

[Michael Akoh, executive]

We are always raising prices each year or doing an adjustment. And we have done that also in '24.

[Børge Sørvoll, executive]

All right. And I think with that, I think we round off this presentation.

[Michael Akoh, executive]

Yes. And I would like to thank all of you for spending your Thursday morning with us. Both those that turned up and those online. I would also like to thank you for your support as shareholders. And I look forward for continuing the journey together with the management team, all the employees in ArcticZymes and you as investors. Thank you.