ArcticZymes Technologies ASA (AZT) Earnings Call Transcript

[Audio Gap] GMP was launched mid-June. We've already seen the first orders come in, and we expect a lot from this product going forward. It opens up new doors to new accounts and also enables customers to use it from early research to commercialization. M-SAN was the most sold product in Q2. We saw a growth of 62% versus last year. See if I have sound. Can somebody...

I can hear you, Michael.

All right. I'm not sure if everybody can hear me at the moment, so I need a notice. All right. I think we had a sound issue. I'm really sorry about that. So I'm going to recap the highlights if everything was not audible. We had a strong quarter. The total revenues were up 5% to almost NOK 29 million. We saw the effects of our customer-centric strategy. We also saw a positive EBITDA. It was up 50% to almost NOK 4 million. One of our flagship products was launched, M-SAN HQ GMP mid-June, and we expect a lot from this product going forward. M-SAN HQ was the most sold product in Q2 with a growth of 62% versus last year. The big star of the show in the quarter was the biomanufacturing business. We saw growth accelerate up to NOK 18.1 million for the quarter, which was a 50% increase year-over-year. I hope that you are able to see the slides. I believe that we have had some technical issues, unfortunately, during the first part of this presentation. I apologize, but now it is supposed to work. But biomanufacturing surpassed our expectations for the quarter, and we had a lot of customers. It was a diversified customer base that ordered within the segment. That leads me to the fact that we saw an increased diversified customer portfolio. We are not in this quarter, dependent on any single customer. The revenue was spread broadly. Molecular tools was more soft due to the absence of orders from a key partner within this segment. But this key partner has confirmed their commitment to us going forward, and we have received orders totaling almost NOK 16 million that are going to be revenue recognized from Q3 and the subsequent 2 quarters. So we're going to be back on a growth path or a recovery path with our molecular tools business as well. So I'm really, really happy to see what the team has done in terms of both being able to bring a new product to the market in direct response to customer needs. And also, I'm really pleased to see the commercial momentum that we're having, especially within the biomanufacturing area at the moment. Next slide, please. Taking a look at our strategic priorities. Short term, we're going to continue to fuel the commercial train. We have more to do. We have to work more with establishing more solid commercial processes. We have to work more with lead generation. We have to work even more with also getting better systems into place. We also have to dig deeper into developing the channel side of our business. It means through CDMO partners, but also looking into potential distribution agreements. We have a great product portfolio, and that product portfolio can be used within many different applications. So one of the short-term focuses is to explore how our current portfolio can be used within new applications. And one of those application areas is metagenomics, as we talked about the last time. And we expect that we can develop an interesting business with our nucleases within metagenomics. We are already integrated into a number of protocols within this space. So that is a focus both for 2025 and 2026 to develop this area further. We also, as we have communicated before, started the development of our Advanced Therapies portfolio to broaden that portfolio. And we're looking into RNA at the moment, and we have an enzyme in development and more to follow. We're also exploring partnerships within go-to-market of this new enzyme and making progress. Long term, it's about developing and commercializing more enzymes within the molecular tool space. And here, we are probably going to focus in on the NGS space in the future. As we have seen a significant increase in business within biomanufacturing, we are also looking at our operational scalability. We have decided to invest in new equipment in our manufacturing facilities in order to be able to meet future demand. Last M&A opportunities is also an inorganic optionality that we have on the table. Next slide, please. A few words about M-SAN HQ GMP. As mentioned, we launched on time due to a great effort by the whole company mid-June, and we have already seen the first orders. It's an important product for us. It's one of our flagship products. It is really competitive, and now it's available with a full regulatory documentation package. It's already opened new doors. It's already established new dialogue for the sales team. And I'm really, really excited about the future potential that this product can unlock. We launched the product just before the summer, so the full commercial launch is expected to take place during Q3. And with that, I'm going to turn it over to our VP of Sales and Marketing, Paul Blackburn.

Good morning, and thank you. As Michael said, I'm the VP of Sales and Marketing, and I've got the great privilege of leading our commercial team as we deliver for our customers, and we open up new opportunities for growth. I'm really looking forward to sharing our latest sales highlights with you and how we're laying the foundations for the months ahead. So could we move to the next slide, please? So during Q2, we delivered total sales of NOK 26.8 million, which represents a 1% year-on-year increase. Now while that might seem a little subdued, it's really important to look beneath the surface of that growth. As Michael suggested, the quarter was really shaped by strong execution in biomanufacturing, and this remains the key growth engine for our company. Our GMP product lines continue to gain market traction and in particular, M-SAN HQ performed particularly well, and I'll share a little bit more on that shortly. On the molecular tools side, we are seeing underlying momentum. Cod UNG and our double-stranded DNases are both showing really encouraging signs of growth. So while the volumes and revenues here are still stabilizing, the fundamentals are healthy. What's critical, if we exclude one key customers who did not place orders in Q2, our revenue would have been at the highest level since Q4 2022. And as Michael suggests or mentioned, that customer has since returned, and that's really very reassuring as we move into H2. Geographically, our strategy is working. And we actually saw, if we exclude that key customer, 75% growth in EMEA and 44% growth in the U.S.A. So this reflects our improved customer engagement and our broader uptake of our portfolio. So while the headline of growth is relatively flat, the quality of our revenue, the geographical breadth and the customer mix are all improving. And that positions us well for the second half of the year and beyond. Could we move to the next slide, please? So biomanufacturing absolutely continues to be a key pillar of our growth strategy. And this quarter was a clear example of its potential. Our customer-centric strategy is working. So we delivered NOK 18.1 million in biomanufacturing revenue, which is one of our strongest quarters on record. And this performance was underpinned by sustained demand and broader adoption of our GMP product versions, which continue to gain traction with customers scaling up their manufacturing processes. The standout in our portfolio this quarter was M-SAN HQ, which delivered a record performance, up 62% versus its previous high, which was Q3 last year. And what is very nice is that this was not due to one large order or one single customer, but it reflects a broad-based demand across a diverse set of accounts and geographies. Notably, M-SAN is now our #1 best-selling product in biomanufacturing, and this marks a significant milestone. It shows that the market is really evolving towards higher-quality nucleases and our technology, ArcticZymes technology is meeting the performance and the regulatory expectations that GMP environments expect. So finally, and importantly, this growth is coming from a well-diversified base. We're not reliant on a single account here, and this gives us greater confidence in the durability and the scalability of this momentum as we go into the second half of the year and beyond. Could we go to the next slide, please? So moving on to Molecular Tools. This was a more mixed quarter, but the underlying business remains intact and fundamentally sound. So revenues came in at NOK 8.7 million, which is a 40% decline year-on-year, but this softness was driven by the absence of a single key customer during the quarter. I really want to emphasize that this customer has returned to active ordering, and this appears to have been a timing issue that impacted us in H1 and not a loss of business. So regionally, the picture for Molecular Tools is split. The U.S. was a particularly bright spot with sales up 70%, 7-0 percent. As I mentioned, this was continued by a strong performance in dsDNAs, Cod UNG and rSAP. And these products are showing good momentum across both research and OEM accounts. In EMEA, we did see a 75% decline due to this key customer. Excluding that outlier, the region actually posted moderate growth, which we do find reassuring. So what's important here is that the core Molecular Tools portfolio continues to demonstrate resilience. Multiple product lines are growing and demand remains stable outside those timing-driven fluctuations caused by the key customer. As we look ahead, our focus is on expanding this customer base, improving our order regularity, both of which will strengthen predictability in this part of the business. Next slide, please. Now let's look at our customer dynamics in a little more detail. So in Q2, we did see a slight decline in our total unique customers. This was down 10% compared to Q2 2024, and this is driven primarily by a 20% drop in Molecular Tools customers. This reflects timing effects and some churn from smaller and less engaged customers that we see within Molecular Tools. In biomanufacturing, the customer count was broadly stable at just under 3% down, and that segment continues to show healthy levels of engagement. The story gets more interesting when we look at orders and average order value. In biomanufacturing, order numbers were up 4%, and the average order value increased by nearly 50%. This signals deeper customer engagement, larger project-based purchases and better sales discipline. For Molecular Tools, the decline in orders and AOV reflects the impact of a few purchasing customers, but the portfolio does remain resilient. And we're focused on rebuilding that momentum in H2 through targeted outreach, account activation, et cetera. It's notable when we exclude one, our large key customer that didn't repeat this year, our adjusted AOV is up nearly 80% for Molecular Tools, which again is incredibly encouraging. So the overall takeaway from this is while the number of customers dipped, those that are buying are spending more and they're engaging more deeply with our technology. This is true especially in biomanufacturing, where we've certainly built a solid and scalable commercial foundation with a very good reputation. So to summarize, Q2 was a quarter of strategic progress, even if the top line growth was plus 1%. The real story lies beneath that headline. Biomanufacturing had a record quarter, led by strong adoption of GMP and outstanding performance from M-SAN HQ. This is now our top-selling product. Importantly, and this is really important, this growth came from a diversified customer base, and this reinforces the robustness of our business model. So Molecular Tools, while it was impacted by timing and customer concentration, it continues to demonstrate underlying resilience. There are several key products in our portfolio that are absolutely gaining momentum and the return of our key customer provides confidence in our recovery trajectory. So thanks for your attention. I'm going to turn over to Borge, who's going to run through the financials. Borge, you're on mute.

Sorry. Thank you for that introduction, Paul and Michael. And as with previous quarters, I will also take you through some of the headlines in our other accounts relating to our financial statements. Moving into the financials for the second quarter and the first 6 months of the year. And as Michael and Paul alluded to, our sales revenues ended up on NOK 26.8 million or a 1% increase from the same period last year. And also, as you heard from Paul, the majority of this increase came from the biomanufacturing side of the business. For the first 6 months of the year, sales ended up on NOK 50 million sharp or a reduction of NOK 6.5 million or 12% from the same period last year. But we also had a positive contribution under other revenues here, where we recognized almost NOK 2.1 million in other revenues and NOK 1.5 million of this is related to the ADEPT project that we were awarded in the second quarter last year and NOK 0.6 million of this is related to tax grants. And also with the sales and other revenues, our total revenues ended up just shy of NOK 29 million in the quarter, up from NOK 27.5 million in the same quarter last year. And also for the first 6 months of the year, revenues are at almost NOK 54 million compared to NOK 57.6 million at the same period last year or a 7% decrease. Cost of materials and change in inventory is similar to what we have expected or what we have experienced in the first quarter this year and what we saw in the second quarter last year. We ended up on NOK 1.5 million in cost. Other -- our personnel expenses are slightly higher this year than the same period last year. We ended up on NOK 13.7 million versus NOK 12.9 million in the same period last year. And as I talked about in the first quarter this year, our expenses are reduced in Norway, whereas we have increased our expenses related to the commercial organization outside of Norway. As we talked about over the last few years, we have started to capitalize more on the R&D projects that we have ongoing. And in the second quarter this year, we capitalized NOK 0.7 million versus NOK 1.2 million in the same quarter last year. And for the first 6 months, we have capitalized NOK 1.2 million versus NOK 2.9 million in the same period. And if we are to add the capitalization to our personnel expenses, our personnel expenses in the second quarter this year -- or our personnel expenses so far this year would have been unchanged basically. So we would have had the same personnel expenses this year as last year. And also what we have talked about in the first quarter, part of our personnel expenses are also associated with variable remuneration and NOK 1.5 million was accrued in the second quarter with a combined consolidated number of NOK 3.5 million so far in the year. And if this money is to be paid out, will also depend on the performance of the company and that we meet the KPIs that has been set by the Board towards -- for the rest of the year. Other operating expenses are slightly reduced from NOK 10 million last year to NOK 9.8 million in the second quarter this year. And we have the sort of the following headlines here. We have reduced our IT expenses in the second quarter. Due to we have changed our supplier, we have a lower cost with a new supplier. And there's also been a credit note in the second quarter that -- in excess of NOK 100,000 that also reduced that expense. One of the biggest drivers under operating expenses is external services. And this one is slightly increased in the quarter compared to last year. And this is even though we have taken out the ERP project that cost us NOK 1.4 million in the second quarter last year. Almost NOK 2.3 million of the NOK 3.3 million we have in external services is actually services provided by our grant partners. But -- and this expense is partly offset by the increased revenues we see in -- under other revenues, the NOK 2.1 million I talked about a little bit earlier here. Our marketing efforts is significantly increased in the second quarter this year compared to both the first quarter this year and the second quarter last year. We have increased our activities under the commercial side of the business, and we will continue to invest further in these kind of activities to drive growth in the business moving forward now. In the second quarter also, we realized a loss of NOK 0.7 million related to trade receivables. And this is basically the first time ever we, as a company, have taken a material loss on our receivables. Historically, our annual losses have been somewhere in the range between NOK 5,000 and NOK 50,000, and that is what we expect to see in the future as well. So we believe that this loss we have recognized now in the second quarter is a onetime event. But also, you can see that currency impacts our business now. And as I also talked about, we work in an international market and our revenues are impacted by fluctuations as our sales currencies are primarily USD and the euro. The currency fluctuations is partly offset by expenses we have in the same currencies, but it doesn't account for everything. And it is especially the U.S. dollar now that has impacted our figures so far this year since the NOK has been strengthened towards the USD. And also for the second quarter, 63% of our revenues were in USD, whereas 36% were in euros. And compared to 2024, 73% of our revenues were in the USD versus 27% in the euro side of the business. Currency fluctuations impacted the finance side of the business, as you can see on the profit and loss statement. And this -- we saw a decrease of NOK 0.5 million in the second quarter versus NOK 0.2 million in the second quarter last year. And for the first 6 months of the year, we have a decrease of NOK 1.1 million in the currency versus a positive gain of NOK 0.2 million for the first 6 months of last year. And this is also the main explanation why you can see that our finance revenues are lower in the first 6 months of the year compared to the first 6 months of 2024. But we are not only exposed to currency under finance, but we are also exposed to currency under sales and trade receivables. Our expenses were increased by NOK 0.2 million in the second quarter and it's similar to what we saw in the second quarter last year. But for the first 6 months of the year, there is a larger difference where we've had a loss of -- increase of NOK 0.7 million compared to a reduction of NOK 0.5 million in the same period last year. And if we are to eliminate the currency effects on our other operating expenses, our operating expenses would have been NOK 1 million lower in the first 6 months of 2025 compared to the first 6 months of 2024. And with the sales we have talked about now and a little bit of some of the expenses I also talked about in the previous slide, our second quarter EBITDA ended up on NOK 3.9 million versus NOK 2.6 million in the same time last year. And for the first 6 months, we have we have an EBITDA of NOK 0.1 million compared to NOK 4.9 million in the same period last year. And the weaker YTD numbers is primarily explained that we had a slow start to the year in 2025. Looking at the graph on the left-hand side, you can also see that our EBITDA margin ended up on 15%, which is the best performance that we've seen in the last 1.5 years. The cash balance and changes in cash has been fairly stable over the last few quarters. And we have a balance well in excess of NOK 240 million. This includes short-term investments in low-risk interest rate funds. The second quarter gave us an increase of NOK 4.2 million compared to the end of the first quarter this year, and we have an increase of NOK 2.9 million for the first 6 months of 2025. The cash and short-term investments balance ended up on close to NOK 247 million at the end of the first half this year. And with that financial position, I will also hand it over to Michael now, who will round off the presentation and also open up for questions.

Thanks a lot, Borge and Paul for good overviews of both the sales side of our business as well as the finances. If we look to the future, the outlook, we believe that we're going to see continued biomanufacturing growth long term. We're going to see strong growth in the U.S. as well as in Europe. We also believe that we're going to see a recovery in Molecular Tools driven by incoming orders of a key partner within that segment. CDMO partnerships are also going to be explored further. We are seeing a gradual revenue ramp-up within this space, and we are seeing that M-SAN GMP is going to add to that. We are still in the initial phases, but long term, it is a really promising opportunity for the company. We're going to look into how we can sell more of our great products to new markets. So market development is a key focus in the second half, especially within the metagenomic space. So nucleases for metagenomic applications is going to be a focus area for us to penetrate that market further through partnerships as well. In regards to innovation, product portfolio expansion, then we already mentioned that we're looking into RNA. We have a restriction enzyme in development, and we're also going to look further into NGS portfolio development. And we expect that we, either during the Q3 or Q4 presentation, are going to take a more deep dive into our innovation and portfolio expansion plans. I'm really, really pleased with the execution by the team during this quarter. That goes both for the commercial side of our business as well as the operational side of our business. Everybody has put together and managed to deliver a solid quarter. We're well positioned for an exciting second half of the year, and I see multiple growth drivers for the company ahead. And with that, I would like to thank you for listening in this morning. And once again, I apologize for the technical issues we had early on. And let's see if we have any questions that have come in so far.

Thank you. Michael, I can also try and we have quite a few questions from online here, but you also said something about innovation now, and I have one question. Do you expect to launch any new enzymes in the second half of 2025?

No. The focus is going to be on market development during the second half and working with our current portfolio. We see a huge opportunity with the current products that we have. We've had great products for many years, but we have not been great at our commercial execution. What I see now is that our commercial execution is improving. With Paul at the helm, we're seeing clear progress. And I expect that we have come past the way, but we still have a lot of work to do.

Okay. We have received quite a few questions about CDMO engagement here. Can you -- are there any more large customers or CDMO customers trying out the M-SAN? And how is the stickiness of this business once they have taken up our product for these CDMOs?

Yes. Thank you for that question. I think I'm going to pass it on to you, Paul. But I think just a general comment for me before you go into it, Paul, is that as you talked about as well, we are seeing a diverse customer base for the quarter. We've seen initial revenues being recognized from our CDMO partners, but we're talking about revenues that are still below NOK 2 million. So this quarter is really made up of a large customer base buying product and not one single customer placing huge orders as it was last year. So that's a development that I'm really pleased to see because our business is more resilient, more robust with a larger and more dispersed customer base. Paul?

Yes, certainly. So we are -- we do continue to see our SAN portfolio being sampled. I think it's important to point out a couple of things. One is the way that we engage with customers when they sample has changed. And I think that's really important because what we are now doing and seeing success with is better adoption because if a customer tests a sample of SAN without guidance, without support and we simply ship the enzyme to them, it's more difficult to differentiate ourselves. and show the clear benefits that our enzymes have. Maybe they won't run the right analytics on the experiments, et cetera. So we do continue to work with customers to sample our enzymes. That's absolutely something that we're doing. The other thing that we've seen is more customers that have been using SAN HQ are excited by M-SAN. That's partly driven by some workflow changes. Customers are working their AAV slightly differently and requiring physiological salt. And that is very, very favorable for us because, of course, M-SAN is a jewel in our crown. It's a flagship product for us. So in some cases, it is new CDMOs and primary producers that are testing our enzymes. In some, it's existing SAN customers that have come back to us. And although they're impressed with SAN HQ, they want to make this workflow change so that they test our M-SAN. So that's what I would say to that. Thank you.

Do you know anything about the pipeline, how far they've gotten now? Are they in kind of clinical trials or the test phase? Or are they in the commercial phase, our CDMOs with our products?

The general picture -- sorry, Paul, the general picture is that our enzymes at CDMOs are being applied in the early phases. And we don't have any enzymes yet in a commercial product. That's, of course, the end goal, but that's going to also take some time. And we can still deliver significant growth within this space without being in a commercial process. That is the picture, especially also after the quarter we've just delivered on biomanufacturing. But one of the inflection points, of course, is once we get into a commercial product. Paul?

Yes, I can only echo that. And we all know that design-in is a critical part of biomanufacturing and continued customer adoption. So although we're in the early phases and in some cases, Phase II, Phase III clinical trials, the revenues are still reasonable from those projects. So just to echo what Michael said.

All right. And as the CDMO adaptation and commercial orders increase now, are there any manufacturing or supply chain bottlenecks that could limit our growth as a company? Or how quickly can you scale up our production if several CDMOs are to move into full commercial adaptation?

That's a good question. I just touched a bit upon it during the presentation. We have a lot of capacity still. But we are also looking 3 years, 4 years out into the future, and that has meant that we have now invested in more bioreactors internally. And at the same time, we are also exploring if we are going to partner up or increase our partnership with an external CDMO on the fermentation side. So we have a lot of optionality within this area as well, and we are well positioned to be able to meet future need.

Okay. Another question on the sales. Have you seen any significant progress in China, India or other new developing markets?