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Earnings Call: Q4 2021

Feb 22, 2022

Henri von Haartman
Director of Investor Relations, Nanoform Finland

Good afternoon all, and a warm welcome to Nanoform's Q4 and full year 2021 report presentation. My name is Henri von Haartman. I'm your Director of Investor Relations. Today, our CEO, Professor Edward Hæggström, CFO Albert Hæggström, and Chief Commercial Officer Christian Jones will present to you. We also have our CBO, Gonçalo Andrade, for the Q&A session with us. This presentation is webcasted through Financial Hearings. There is also the possibility to call in and listen by phone. The slides are shown here on the webcast, and they can also be found on our webpage under the Investors section. After the presentation, we will hold a Q&A, and it's possible to ask questions by calling in. We would like to remind those who ask questions, do ask one question at a time, so we can answer them each one by one.

Those who ask questions, you are, of course, welcome to ask many questions. Today, we will start with a short introduction to Nanoform and then move on to the CEO review and Q4 financials. Operator, if I may ask you to move to slide four, please. With these words, our founder, Professor CEO Edward Hæggström, please.

Edward Hæggström
CEO, Nanoform Finland

Henri, thank you and welcome also on my behalf. To briefly recap, Nanoform is a platform technology company. We are situated in Helsinki, Finland. We command approximately 3,000 sq m of manufacturing. The manufacturing is on GMP level, and we are listed on Nasdaq First North Premier in Helsinki and Stockholm. We are approximately 125 employees, and we are growing. Slide number five, please. We address a big structural problem in the pharma industry. The problem is that too few drugs come out on the market. Slide number six, please. The reason why so few drugs come out on the market is something which is called poor bioavailability. It means that the body cannot take up the drug, therefore, the drug cannot be effective. This problem is big, and it is growing. Next slide, number seven, please.

There are basically three profit pools that we can dip into. We can give unsuccessful drug candidates a second chance, we can improve existing drugs, and we can enable new drugs. Slide number eight, please. We do this by taking in powder that our partners and clients own. This powder is constituted of API, active pharmaceutical ingredient. The powder comes in coarse form, and we make it very, very fine. To the left, you can see that when you make it fine, you can increase the bioavailability by increasing the specific surface area. Slide number nine. When that is done, a lot of good stuff happens. People can take less drugs. That means that fewer kilos of drug needs to be produced and shipped and stored.

It also means that when one uses a proprietary technology like ours, one can play a patenting game where one can either prolong or extend in parallel the patent protection. By doing all these things, of course, the environmental burden also can go down. Slide number 10, please. We work both on small molecules and on biologicals. On biologicals, we have worked in the size range 6 kilodalton - 650 kilodalton, which is commercially very relevant. Here you can see that we can do a lot of stuff. We can improve the delivery route, improve the uptake, enhance the drug loading, tailor release profiles, enabling new drug combinations, and provide for a lighter infrastructure. Slide number 11, please. Nanoforming, the thing we do, has a very broad applicability. Already now we are active in oral tablets, oral buccals, respiratory, nasal, ophthalmic, and copolymer drug delivery.

Slide number 12, please. We use artificial intelligence to pick winners and to set the knobs on the line in order to faster be able to start and to finish the campaigns. Here you can see how our AI called STARMAP has evolved. I now move over to the CEO review and would like to invite you to slide number 14. On slide number 14, I start down in the right lower corner. 15x is the increasing number of cumulative projects that we have started. Basically, it means that we have already now done a lot of stuff, and we are moving ever faster. After this, I would like you to look at the first line, which says Employees. It says a growth of 3x. If I divide 15x by 3x, you can see that our productivity has increased.

We can make more stuff with fewer people. I invite you to look to the second but last line, manufacturing lines, where it says approximately 4x. If I divide 15 by four, we can see an approximate 4x increase in the productivity to use the lines. The word productivity here is key. I have started a program to increase our productivity. This is necessary in order to make us go faster. When one wants to roll out a technology platform globally, speed is of the essence. Productivity is the key take home from this slide. Slide number 15, please. There are basically two engines described on this slide. The POC engine, which basically means that we take in, APIs that we haven't seen before, and we answer two questions. Can they be nanoformed, and how should they be nanoformed?

Here we can see that we have moved pretty fast forward, starting from a few POCs in 2019, and now done over two dozen POCs. My target is to get to 200 POCs as soon as I can. The other engine, the GMP engine, is the one that we have just recently started. Right now, we are at the same level in 4Q 2021 as we were on the POC engine in 4Q 2019. We have started the first two GMP projects. Here again, of course, I'll try to go as fast as I can to having started two dozen GMP projects. Why are these engines so important? Because these engines are the engines with which we can get products onto the market.

While we're now optimizing these two engines, I always keep an eye on the end goal, having more, better and new products on the market. Slide number 16, please. In 2021 we got a lot of stuff done. We completed the readout of a successful clinical phase I study. We won our first GMP projects, and for the first time, we had a gross margin that exceeded the target that we had envisioned for 2025. Here we have been faster than we have had envisioned. In 2021 we had achieved all the targets that we set for that year. For 2022, the acceleration of the order intake is my first priority. Another priority is the GMP engine to make it bigger, stronger and more effective. In 2022, productivity, economies of scale and automation will allow me to address the fact that we are at capacity.

While we do all this, again, I stress we never lose focus on the long-term goals. Slide 17, please. Here is my 2022 map. Basically four things that needs to get done. All of them are on track. They relate to building GMP line capacity, to getting GMP to biologics, to having enough new non-GMP projects, and also to bring in three new GMP customer projects in addition to the two ones that we had in 2021. I move to slide 18. Slide 18, two values I wanna pick out. The one which I consider most important is the journey to become cash flow positive. As Albert will detail, you will see that we are on our way to that.

The other one is the more than 70 new APIs per year, for a total of 100 projects per year, for a cumulative total of 300 projects. When you look at the probabilities of getting products on the market, you can see that from 300 cumulative products, there are already several products that mathematically would enter the market. With this, I thank you, and I hand over to Christian. Christian, please.

Christian Jones
Chief Commercial Officer, Nanoform Finland

Thank you, Edward. It's my pleasure to take you through the commercial section of the presentation, and we'll go to slide 20. As you can see here, we've had a fast but controlled growth over the last three years, adding in three senior business development members each year into the team. In 2020, we brought in our U.S. commercial team, and in 2021, we brought in additional people within our European team. We have a fantastic team and, if we move to slide 21, you can see the geographic spread of all the individuals. I'm gonna focus just on our most recent additions, that's Jamie, Natalie and Frederick. Jamie has come to us with extensive major pharma experience of competitive intelligence, portfolio assessments and product launches.

Jamie brings a very useful and valuable insight into our discussions with our pharma partners about the competitive differentiation that our technology can add to their portfolio and to their products, and to the benefits ultimately of patient-centric drug development that we can position with our partners for the market. Natalie brings extensive CDMO experience having worked for a variety of companies in the API drug substance and drug product space in Europe, and also a good knowledge of crystallization science. Frederick, that's just joined us recently, this month, comes from Lonza Capsugel with a rich experience in oral and inhalation drug product development and manufacturing.

We have a very talented team, and this year we look to expand this team even further with at least another three team members joining us, but probably taking less senior roles to support our lead generation activities and market penetration. If we go to slide 22, you can see here that not only has the commercial team been growing in a fast but controlled way, but so has our partner portfolio. Moving now into 2021 and looking and reflecting back on 2019, you can see a significant growth in this customer makeup. If we go to slide 23, we'll have a little bit of a pause here looking at the customers that we have.

I want to draw your attention to our most recent addition to this slide, which was a global major biopharma company in Q4 of last year. This is the first biopharma company that we put on this slide, and a significant giant within the pharma industry. We're delighted to have them as one of our partners. Moreover, if we look at this slide, we also see a diverse nature of partners. We have very small biotechs, and we have very large pharma companies that we work with. For Nanoform, it's really important that we have a mixture of both. The small biotechs are equally important to us because we look at the molecules and not just at the pharma companies themselves.

All of these molecules have a future and have a pathway, and it may be that they get acquired by a major pharma and are taken on for further development. We want to be able to play the development game with all partners within the industry.

I think the other thing to take away from this slide is that we have a real spread of organizations that we work with both in Europe and in U.S., and also that the types of projects we work on range from the early stage projects in late discovery, early preclinical, moving into phase I, and the projects that are in clinical developments, and finally, the projects that are on the market, where there could be opportunities for lifecycle management and 505(b)(2) improvements. Our technology spans that whole breadth of development timelines. We work with all these customers in different areas. With that, I will now hand over to Albert to take us through the financials.

Albert Hæggström
CFO, Nanoform Finland

Thank you, Christian. If we can go to slide number 25, please. Here on the left-hand side, you can see the number of employees. As you know, you first need the employees. Here our target is to have 200-250 by 2025. We have already reached 125, and we last year added some 50 employees, meaning at a quite fast pace. Now we are in a very good position that we don't need to add so many people in the coming years anymore. Most people we will be hiring are technicians and engineers. We are also in a fortunate position that we are not having big problems or problems finding good recruits.

Many companies talk about issues in the recruiting, but we have been very lucky and we have been very strong in recruiting good people. We feel that we have proven that we can hire great people, and we will continue to do that in the future towards our 25 target. If you then go on to the number of lines. First you have the people, and then you build the lines. Here we are in a little bit similar situation that one and a half years ago before the IPO, we had six lines and no GMP line up and running. Now we are already in a situation where we have 15 lines, and we have number two and number three GMP lines coming online this year.

That means, of course, that we are very strong, much stronger now on the knowledge level, how to implement efficiently, buy the equipment, plan the lines, and then build the lines. Here again you can see that we only need to do five lines per year to reach the 35 target. We feel that we are in a very good trajectory towards the 25 targets also on the line side. On the line side and on the CapEx, I would like to say also that as we are getting more efficient and as we learn, we have also been able to make it more productive and efficient.

Meaning that even if there have been some increases in raw materials and stuff like that, actually the cost per line for us has not gone up very much because of the productivity. Going forward, we don't expect any significant growth in the CapEx needs because of the new lines. We are fully funded for the projects and the lines that we are doing and we are on target. If we then go to the following page where it says about annual projects signed. Here you can see on the left-hand side that the target for 2021 was to have 13 projects, one GMP, 12 non-GMP. We ended up the year with 16 non-GMP and two GMP, total of 18. Now for this target, this year's target, it's 20 + 3, 23.

On the right-hand side in the picture, we have now added the indicative 25 target. The official target is for 70 new APIs annually by 25. This here shows if you use the industry probabilities for moving forward in the development pipeline, what would be the number of new projects signed in 2025? Here you can see that it's more than 100, including a significant part of GMP projects. If we then go to the next slide, this is potentially the most important slide when it comes to number of projects, because this shows the cumulative number.

Every year we do more projects, but it's actually the cumulative number of projects which teaches us how to do it efficiently, cost efficiently, time efficiently, and most importantly, to increasing the probability of us getting new products on the market, and at that time help patients. Here you can see that by the end of 2022, that is this year, we should have started already 53 projects, and by 2025 we should have started more than 300 projects, again using the industry probabilities for moving forward in the development pipeline. If we then go to the following slide, and here I'm very happy to start to talk about the P&L. If you look at the left-hand slide, again, one and a half years ago when we did the IPO and we had a negative gross margin.

What we have been doing now is to making the cost of goods or materials and services costs much more efficient. We have stopped using some external services, and we have also made the process much more efficient. Here you can actually see on the right-hand side that the rolling 12 months materials and services costs have fallen to roughly from EUR 600,000 to less than EUR 200,000 on an annual basis. At the same time as the number of projects, of course, have increased a lot. That means that the cost of goods or the materials and services costs per project has been diminishing much faster than this graph shows. All in all, this is the reason why we now already in 2021 reached our 2025 target of having a gross margin above 90%.

Here it's important to remember that this was done on non-GMP projects alone. Now when we are entering the GMP world with several GMP projects, we expect that the margin will be actually should be slightly higher rather than slightly lower on the GMP side. We are very confident in our 2025 target of having a gross margin above 90%. This is of course important because when you have a high gross margin means that when you get additional revenue, it will fall down in the P&L. If we then go to the following page and talk a little bit about economies of scale and efficiency. One other thing we have seen is that I will be coming to the total other operating costs.

Here you can see already that as we have grown the number of employees, actually the total other operating costs per employee has been going down fast. It has basically halved in the last two years. This is important because this helps us to keep the total cost under control. When again the revenue increases, you will see a positive impact on the EBITDA and the levels below EBITDA. One of the most important efficiency improvements we foresee going forward is the number of projects per line per year. On the right-hand side, you can see that last year we increased it from 1.3- 1.5. We believe that in the long term, the potential is to do more than five projects per line per year.

This will of course have a lot of impact on revenue, costs, margins, client happiness, because when you do a project fast and with high quality and at low cost, everybody is very happy. If we go to the following page. We talked earlier about the materials cost, but here you see the other two cost lines in the P&L. If we start with the other operating costs. On the previous slide, you saw other operating costs per employee. It had gone down a lot. Here you can see that actually rolling 12 months it has also gone down on an absolute number. In the last four quarters or the last year, we had EUR 5.7 million in other operating costs.

This includes everything else excluding materials cost and employee costs. This is again very good because this keeps the leverage going forward now. When revenue goes up, that means that if you can keep the costs flat or slightly increasing it only, then you will get an improvement in EBITDA and so forth. Then the final cost item, which is the employee cost. Here you can see that despite the fact that we increased the number of employees by 70%, last year. The rolling 12 months cost has not gone up by more than, roughly 10%. Going forward now if we hire 20-30 technicians and engineers to our lines, we don't expect employee costs to go up very much.

Overall, when it comes to all the cost lines, we have seen a trend where actually, despite the fact that we have increased the employees by 70% last year, we have been very efficient on the cost side, and that means that the EBITDA has been flat or even slightly improved during the last year. This is very important because this again, if we can keep this very tight cost control, it means that when we then start to add revenues, the EBITDA will start to turn north, and that means that we are on our way to getting first EBITDA positive, then EBIT positive, and by 2025, cash flow positive. Next slide. What about the future revenues? Future revenues can partially be described by orders received already.

Here on the left-hand side, you can see that what we have earlier been talking about, that there is a lag between orders received and when they are re-recognized as revenues. Last year, our revenue increased by some 200%, and we reached EUR 2 million in revenue, but actually our orders received increased much more and was more than EUR 5 million. Here on the right-hand side, you can see the number of projects contributing to revenue. You can also from that calculate that the value per project has been increasing. Actually, we have seen that there is a positive pricing momentum in the marketplace when it comes to our situation. If we then go to the following slide showing orders received and look a little bit deeper into it.

On the left-hand side here, you can see that in 2020, orders received exceeded EUR 1 million, and then it increased by a factor of five to more than EUR 5 million in 2021. At the same time, the revenue recognized went from EUR 0.7 million to EUR 2 million. If you look at the right-hand side, you can see that actually the orders received in the Q4 of last year, in the most recent quarter, was EUR 2 million, equaling the full-year revenues recognized. That was also 5x the EUR 0.4 million orders received in Q4 of 2020. We have seen a five-fold increase in orders received, and the revenues have been increasing slower than that. That, of course, indicates that our order book has been growing faster than 5x .

When it comes to going forward, of course, the EUR 5 million will help us. Of course, for this year, we expect naturally to sell more than we sold last year. Next slide, please. If we look at the KPIs, I want to draw your attention to two numbers. First of all, the CapEx, the investments in property, plant, and equipment on the left-hand side was EUR 7.7 million last year. This is in a year when we have built or are building, have ordered two GMP lines. We have started the ERP project. We have started the project with putting in a big CO2 tank and so forth. I think that this has been a sort of a very busy CapEx year.

This means that going forward, we think that this is on a good level, very good CapEx level, meaning that we don't expect a significantly higher CapEx on an annual level in the coming years. This is on a very good CapEx level already. As you know, our lines are not so expensive. As we become better at planning them, building them, so forth, we feel that this is a good CapEx level. Related to that, I want to draw your attention also to the cash. We had EUR 75.7 million in cash. That's almost 800 million SEK. That, of course, gives us a very, very strong position.

We are very strongly financed and for all the CapEx needs for building out the 35 lines in the coming years that we have communicated. If we then go to the final slide, the income statement, I would just point out that there is actually one line where I expect a little bit of growth also in this year when it comes to the cost side, and that is the IT expenses. It grew from EUR 309,000 in 2020 to EUR 780,000 in 2021. The reason for this is that, of course, we are doing the implementation of the ERP system and other IT systems, but also the fact that we believe strongly, as Edward say, in automation and computers.

As we want to be more productive, we want to make sure that we are on the edge of the technology from that point as well. That is a situation where we want to invest a little bit more in IT in the coming year than in 2021. Basically, that is the line where we see the clearest change versus 2021. On an aggregate level, as I've said, we don't see a big g rowth in the cost lines. On the contrary, we see very marginal growth, and that means that when we get more top line or revenues, you should have a positive impact on the EBITDA, EBIT and cash flow situation. That was my final slide, so I think we can go over to Q&A. Henri, please.

Henri von Haartman
Director of Investor Relations, Nanoform Finland

Thank you, Edward, Christian and Albert. Operator, we're ready for questions.

Operator

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, if you do wish to ask a question, please press zero one on your telephone keypad. If you wish to withdraw your question, you may do so by pressing zero two to cancel. There will be a brief pause while questions are being registered. Our first question comes from Lars Hevreng with Danske. Please go ahead.

Lars Hevreng
Equity Research Analyst, Danske Bank

Thanks. Can I just start regarding your first target for 2022, two new GMP lines for the year. Does that mean they're gonna be approved by regulators and ready to tech transfers, et cetera, intact and ready for shipments to clients? Or how far have you progressed with that they're gonna be ready for 2022?

Edward Hæggström
CEO, Nanoform Finland

Okay. Lars, thanks for the question. It's clear that we have progressed very well. We have the cleanroom at very high levels. We're starting the IQ, OQ, PQ for that. After that comes the isolator and then the lines and of course also the filing with Fimea. Fimea is always a little bit of an uncertainty. They have the right to take three months' time. Short answer to your question is, I would like to see at least one of the lines operational on this side and both lines installed. Operational means that we would have the Fimea stamps in place.

Lars Hevreng
Equity Research Analyst, Danske Bank

Okay, thanks. Just another question on the other target you have for the year, biologics pilot line for GMP. Could you elaborate a bit on what you may actually be able to deliver without having reached that target?

Edward Hæggström
CEO, Nanoform Finland

Yeah, sure. Basically it means that we have a line that from a hardware and a software perspective could be filed to Fimea and to obtain GMP stamps for it. It means also that we don't foresee to be able to do both the small molecule and the biologics line filings this year. What we can do with it is all the bullet points we showed in the deck basically help our customers on the biologics side with nanoforming and the Nanoform biologics API could then be used in clinical trials by our clients and customers.

Lars Hevreng
Equity Research Analyst, Danske Bank

All right. Thanks. Thanks for that.

Edward Hæggström
CEO, Nanoform Finland

You're welcome.

Operator

As a reminder, if you do wish to ask a question, please press zero one on your telephone keypad. Our next question comes from Christian Glennie with Stifel. Please go ahead.

Christian Glennie
Director and Equity Research Analyst, Stifel

Yeah. Good afternoon, gentlemen, and thanks for taking the questions, three then, and then if we take them in order. The first one relates to obviously key focus here, productivity and the reference to doing, you know, 1.3 projects per line last year, 1.5 in 2021. What are sort of the gating factors and what do you need to do to get to that sort of five projects per line? Obviously, at the moment, presumably there's an element of you know, having the project, you know, the incoming APIs and customers on time and all that sort of side of things, as well as having your lines ready to move on between one and the next. Just elaborate how you know. What are the key gating items there to get to that five per year?

Edward Hæggström
CEO, Nanoform Finland

Thanks for your question. First of all, it's important to remember that so far we have only built capacity. We have not optimized for productivity basically at all. STARMAP and nano targeting will help us choose molecules that are more suitable for nanoforming, which means that there is a smarter, faster ramp up and also a faster way to get them nanoformed to the specifications. Secondly, we will start to run recipes, which means that we have already now nanoformed so much that we know basically what kind of recipes one should try first, second, third, fourth. This will speed up things.

Of course, the lines have been used much more, so we have basically gotten out all the bugs that there is always in the technology. Third, or fourth, all the operators, they have more line hours under the belt, which basically means that they are just faster. Maybe a fifth bullet point will then be that we have put in place a system where we manage the lines as a fleet, which means that the line utilization will go up. All these taken together, according to our calculations, should take us well above the 5x.

Albert Hæggström
CFO, Nanoform Finland

Yeah. If I may continue on that. We already have examples of projects where the time for the project has been much less than what the time indicates from the five-year. We have single projects where we have implemented this, and we know that it's possible. To do it on a large scale on all lines and all crews takes a little bit time, but we are confident with that. Related to your question about we need, of course, to get APIs in a sort of orderly way and getting them in an optimal way. I think that is also one thing that will help us.

When the client knows us more, when we have a more broad client base, we could actually have a situation where we have a with large pharma especially, kind of a subscription model where they give us a certain amount of APIs every year to work on. Also the fact that we have many clients makes it easier for us to sort of book the lines a little bit like a hotel with different hotel rooms. When you know that people are coming there and there and there, you can optimize it better, both from a cleaning and from a API sourcing and then from a operating point of view.

Christian Glennie
Director and Equity Research Analyst, Stifel

Okay. Thank you. Turning maybe to the commercial side, couple of questions there. The first one was on what Christian mentioned the significance of the major biopharma company. I just wonder if I could get a bit more insight into the importance, I guess, of that contract. What you're seeing there, and is it because it's multiple APIs? Is it the nature of that partner? Just a bit more detail there would be interesting.

Edward Hæggström
CEO, Nanoform Finland

Christian, would you like to start and then Albert can from a finance perspective?

Christian Jones
Chief Commercial Officer, Nanoform Finland

Yeah. I mean, I guess, you know, we can't reveal identities of some of our partners, but we try to describe them in such a way that at least it gives an indication of the types of partners that we have. I think, you know, the traditional major global pharmas that start off in the small molecule space, we would call them a global major pharma company. Then the companies that would have started off perhaps as biotechs and grown into large companies that would classify themselves as biopharma companies that potentially have both small and large molecules in their portfolio, we would describe in that way.

You know, the latter is the type of client that we've brought on board more recently in the last quarter. It's really new clients, it's an important relationship, and we can't really say much more than that, unfortunately, in terms of the scope of the work, because whenever we can say that we certainly will tell you, and it's likely to be a press release. We can't say any more than that now.

Christian Glennie
Director and Equity Research Analyst, Stifel

Okay. Thank you. That's helpful. The follow-up on the commercial is what's the expectation or sort of focus of the team on sort of business development? You know, you've had a nice progression, obviously, in terms of the client wins per year over the last few years. You know, what is that pace sort of continuing or is it more about expanding and delivering within some of these existing larger businesses? What's the areas of focus?

Christian Jones
Chief Commercial Officer, Nanoform Finland

Yeah, great question. It's actually on both. You know, we have, as you saw, you know, really good group now of partners. They are very important to us. We want to work with them. We want to build the relationships to broaden and deepen those relationships, whether it's on a single molecule or on several compounds, and ultimately support them long-term strategically as a partner. That effort from a business development perspective is, I would say, focused in that area. Equally, we want to bring on as many assets and partners as we can. I would say, you know, we're sort of focusing in both areas.

However, what I would say we're doing probably slightly differently with both our existing partners and also new partners is really understanding the value that the technology can deliver to certain products. Also understanding the value that by nanoforming that product it could deliver to the end product and ultimately to the patient. I think that's, as Edward described it, that nanotargeting approach to be able to go into a client and talk a bit more specifically around the advantages of the technology is something that's helping us to win new business with new clients and also build on existing business with our existing partners.

Christian Glennie
Director and Equity Research Analyst, Stifel

Okay. Thank you.

Christian Jones
Chief Commercial Officer, Nanoform Finland

Thanks for the questions.

Operator

Our next question comes from Max Herrmann with Stifel. Please go ahead.

Max Herrmann
Managing Director of Equity Research, Stifel

Great. Thanks very much for taking my question. Just to follow up on from Christian's. Just in terms of the number of projects you talk about having 30 cumulative projects now at the end of 2021. I wondered what the makeup of that was between 505(b)(2) opportunities and NCEs, and then maybe a bit more color in the NCEs in terms of what stages of development the programs are.

Edward Hæggström
CEO, Nanoform Finland

Okay. If I start and then Albert, you can check the fraction. So basically, there are both 505(b)(2)s and NCEs. Then when it comes to the various phases, we have basically assets from all the phases, and this is something that we have always expected. Still, the numbers are too small to know whether they will be predominantly from a certain phase later on. But from a purely logical point of view, we think that there will be certain customers who wanna come in already very early, and then there will be certain customers who wanna come in around phase I would assume. Of course, the 505(b)(2)s then will be later than that. Albert, do you have anything to add on the ratio of 505(b)(2) to NCE?

Albert Hæggström
CFO, Nanoform Finland

I think that as we have said earlier that we see a growing trend in 505(b)(2) interest, and we are still at a sort of quite low levels. We have them, but they are not a big part of the total. We are seeing clearly a growing trend. We have also said that we don't want to do only 505(b)(2)s, even if it's lower risk and faster paybacks. We want to do both. I think that the industry is really waking up to 505(b)(2)s probably in the coming. It has already started a lot of interest, but it's clear that it's growing.

If you look at the different segments like oncology and ocular and so forth, I think that we resemble quite a lot the industry numbers. What is very good is that it is clear that this is a very broadly applicable technology. We have very many different areas of APIs. We are not only in oncology or only in something else. We have many different segments. As Edward say, the APIs are in different stages. We have preclinical, we have phase I, we have phase II, we have phase III actually also. Then we have some 505(b)(2)s in the market. The numbers are roughly according to industry and according to the numbers we showed on the Capital Markets Day last year.

Max Herrmann
Managing Director of Equity Research, Stifel

Great. Thanks very much.

Operator

Next, we have a follow-up question from Lars Hevreng with Danske. Please go ahead.

Lars Hevreng
Equity Research Analyst, Danske Bank

With the 505(b)(2) projects, are they typically related to the IP holders, i.e., the companies that have developed the compounds originally, or are they more typically related to other companies?

Edward Hæggström
CEO, Nanoform Finland

That's a very good question. If I answer like this, we have had discussions with both those groups. Both people who own IP, which means that it's a question of prolonging IP, and also people who want to use what I call the magic wand, which basically means that if you can take something on the market and make it a super generic. Christian, do you wanna add something to this?

Christian Jones
Chief Commercial Officer, Nanoform Finland

Yeah, I would say that it's both. It's both on providing novel differentiation within existing products to improve them, and it's the other, which is basically looking at marketed products where the originator might not actually be interested in the product, but finding opportunities to add further value for patients. I would say that we're flexible in both camps.

Lars Hevreng
Equity Research Analyst, Danske Bank

Okay. Can it also be that a collaboration you have with, for example, the non IP company that does not have the IP, that these rights later may be transferred to the IP holder?

Edward Hæggström
CEO, Nanoform Finland

This is, of course, logically a construct which is possible.

Lars Hevreng
Equity Research Analyst, Danske Bank

The GMP collaborations that you have announced with the mid-size European pharma, something like that. Is that the IP holder or not?

Edward Hæggström
CEO, Nanoform Finland

Henri, here I need to ask you for what have we publicly stated so far?

Henri von Haartman
Director of Investor Relations, Nanoform Finland

Yes. Good afternoon. We haven't detailed that, and we will not detail it today either. We have said that we work with a European international company on a blockbuster drug.

Lars Hevreng
Equity Research Analyst, Danske Bank

Okay. Thank you.

Operator

As of right now, we have no further questions. I will now hand back to the speakers for a final remark.

Edward Hæggström
CEO, Nanoform Finland

Henri, please.

Henri von Haartman
Director of Investor Relations, Nanoform Finland

Excellent. Thank you very much, everybody. On behalf of all the Nanoformers, we would like to thank our guests today, also Financial Hearings, and a special thanks also, of course, to the management presenting today. If somebody has some more questions, you're most welcome to contact us after this event. We wish everybody a great Tuesday afternoon and evening. Thank you so much.

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