Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Everest Medicines Full Year 2021 Earnings Conference Call. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Leah Liu, VP of Corporate Affairs. Please go ahead.
Thank you, operator, and good morning, everyone. Thank you all for joining this call. For this call this morning, we would like to discuss our 2021 full year results and give you an update on our business. The details of the full year results is available on our website. Joining me today from the company are Dr. Kerry Blanchard, our CEO; Ian Woo, our President and CFO; and Neo Zhang, our COO. Before we get started, I'd like to remind you that the speakers of this conference call may make statements that constitute forward-looking statements, including descriptions regarding the intent, belief, or current expectations of the company or its officers with respect to the business operations and financial conditions of the company, which can be identified by terminology such as will, expect, anticipate future intents, plans, beliefs, estimates, confident, and similar statements.
Such forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve risks and uncertainties, and actual results may differ from those in the forward-looking statements as a result of various factors and assumptions. The company or its any of its affiliates, directors, officers, advisors, or representatives have no obligations and does not undertake to revise forward-looking statements to reflect new information, future events or circumstances after the day of this conference call, except as required by law. I will now turn the call over to Kerry to give you more details on our 2021 operations and 2022 business update. Kerry?
Thanks, Leah, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. I'll walk through this presentation to review Everest's 2021 full year business highlights. Since the company's founding in July of 2017, we have strategically built a portfolio of 11 promising clinical-stage drug candidates. We established our platform with four key areas with late-stage products to be launched in 2022 and 2023 that address critical unmet medical needs. Our four therapeutic areas are oncology, renal diseases, infectious disease, and messenger RNA therapeutics. In oncology, we have TRODELVY, a Trop-2-directed antibody-drug conjugate expected to be approved in China in the first half of 2022. In cardiorenal, TARPEYO or NEFECON is the first and only treatment approved by the U.S. FDA for IgA nephropathy, and there are about five million IgA nephropathy patients in China.
In infectious diseases, we have XERAVA for the treatment of complicated intra-abdominal infections to be launched in China within this year. Our messenger RNA platform, with a potentially best-in-class PTX-COVID19-B vaccine, is exploring multiple regulatory approval pathways and has potential to launch in 2023. Apart from the four mentioned anchor assets, we have remaining seven assets we are expecting approvals for over the next two to six years, assuring that we will have continuous growth momentum. 2021 has been a banner year for Everest, with important achievements across all aspects of our business. Next, I'll review our key accomplishments in 2021 and thus far in 2022. I believe we have achieved China speed with global quality.
We received the first in a series of expected approvals for TRODELVY in Asia from the Singapore Health Sciences Authority. We also filed six NDAs or BLAs for TRODELVY and XERAVA in Asia, a testament to the impressive execution capability of our team. We had four positive top-line data readouts from trials conducted by Everest and our partners during this period. TRODELVY had positive top-line data from our phase II-B bridging trial in triple negative breast cancer, and TROPiCS-02 trial in hormone receptor-positive, HER2-negative breast cancer. Our partner Venatorx reported positive results from its pivotal phase III cefepime-taniborbactam trial, which included patients from Everest territory. In March, our partner for etrasimod, Pfizer, announced positive top-line results from the phase III ELEVATE UC 12 trial in ulcerative colitis patients.
We have also received four IND approvals from the China NMPA to execute our future clinical development plans for TRODELVY, XERAVA, and SPR-206. 2021 was also a breakout year for Everest in broadening its pipeline by licensing potentially best-in-class and first-in-class drug candidates. We entered into a comprehensive licensing agreement with Providence for their messenger RNA platform, including their best-in-class messenger RNA COVID vaccines. In addition, in September 2021, Everest licensed EVER001 or XNW1011, a covalent reversible BTK inhibitor from Sinovent and SinoMab to complement our existing portfolio in renal disease. To form a multi-pronged approach to combat COVID, we licensed global rights to Singapore's Experimental Drug Development Centre oral viral 3CL-like protease inhibitors as potential best-in-class treatment for COVID-19.
To boost the build-out of our discovery capabilities in oncology, we also established a collaboration with AbCellera's AI-powered antibody discovery platform. On top of our top-line milestones, we built our organization to over 400 employees. Our expanding discovery team moved into a new 1,700 sq m research facility in Pudong's Zhangjiang Hi-Tech Park, while advancing multiple projects in oncology, renal diseases, and messenger RNA vaccines. Additionally, our manufacturing facilities in Jiaxing, Zhejiang Province, was topped out in 2021. To supplement our commercialization efforts, we entered into a series of strategic collaborations with Tencent, Medbanks, MediTrust, and Yuanxin Group in digital platforms, mobile terminals, medical insurance, innovative payment solutions, and other initiatives. Also, Everest formed a strategic cooperation with Sinopharm for supply chain and distribution. Here's our overall pipeline.
We have 10 potentially first-in-class or best-in-class assets in our four therapeutic areas, as well as one late-stage messenger RNA COVID vaccine, and three preclinical messenger RNA vaccines for infectious disease from our messenger RNA platform. TRODELVY is the first FDA-approved Trop-2 antibody drug conjugate. It has been approved by the U.S. FDA for second-line or greater metastatic triple-negative breast cancer and for metastatic urothelial cancer. The left side of the slide shows the breadth of the clinical program carried out by our partner, Gilead. Gilead is running phase III trials in breast cancer, lung, and bladder cancers. For Everest, we have filed BLA or NDAs for TRODELVY in second-line or greater metastatic triple-negative breast cancer in China, Taiwan, and South Korea, with the expectation of approval in China and Taiwan in 2022.
In hormone receptor-positive HER2-negative breast cancer, our fully powered phase III regional trial will enroll 330 patients in Asia. The enrollment is expected to be completed in the first half of 2022, with data read out in early 2023. For bladder cancer, we joined Gilead's global phase III confirmatory trial last August and will continue and will contribute to patient enrollment in our territories. In lung cancer, Everest will be a part of the global phase III trial led by Merck through our existing collaboration agreement with Gilead. Finally, we are also running a phase II basket trial in esophageal, gastric, and cervical cancer and potentially additional cancers to evaluate TRODELVY as a treatment for cancers prevalent in Asia. Moving to the market opportunity for TRODELVY.
As you can see on the left-hand side of the slide, the indications currently in our clinical trial programs, the incidence patients in 2019 in China totaled 1.9 million patients. On the right-hand side, given about 80% of cancers incidence have Trop-2 overexpression, we view TRODELVY as having substantial upside in a broad range of tumor types. The next slide shows the clinical trial data for TRODELVY in metastatic triple-negative breast cancer. In the global ASCENT trial, the median PFS progression-free survival was 5.6 months for TRODELVY versus 1.7 months for chemotherapy, with an objective response rate of 35%. The right-hand side highlights the results from our phase II bridging trial.
In this trial, we generated an objective response rate of 39%, numerically higher than that in the global ASCENT trial, with a similar progression-free survival to ASCENT. It is gratifying to see the results of the Chinese trial replicate the ASCENT trial. Moving on to NEFECON or TARPEYO, our anchor product in renal diseases. Our partner, Calliditas, received accelerated approval from the U.S. FDA for NEFECON to reduce proteinuria in IgA nephropathy last December. NEFECON is the first and only FDA-approved treatment for this disease state. We joined part B of the phase III global NefIgArd trial by contributing 60 patients in China. We expect to file an NDA in China in the second half of 2022.
NEFECON has been granted breakthrough therapy designation by the China NMPA, and we expect priority re-review once the NDA is filed. In our antibiotic portfolio, we have three best-in-class assets in various phases of development. XERAVA is already approved and commercialized in Singapore and is expected to be launched in China in the second half of 2022. We see our messenger RNA platform having three pillars in development. The first is PTX-COVID19-B, which is in a pivotal trial and to which we have rights in China, Southeast Asia, and Pakistan. Second are two collaboration assets with Providence Therapeutics, which are in preclinical development with expected entry into clinical stage next year. These two candidates will be messenger RNA-based upgrades of marketed, inactivated, or protein-based vaccines that are designed to offer enhanced dosing and safety profiles.
A third asset is under development in our third pillar, for which Everest owns full global rights. The third candidate will be for a viral-based disease with no existing marketed vaccine. This is data from the phase I trial of our COVID-19 vaccine, PTX-COVID19-B, as you can see in the right-hand panel, there is robust neutralization antibodies against COVID-19, and the comparison of our 40 microgram and 100 microgram dose levels to convalescent titers result in an 8.6 and 23 fold higher than convalescent serum. In terms of a timeline and pathway to approval, our partner Providence is running a head-to-head phase II study against Pfizer's messenger RNA vaccine to demonstrate our messenger RNA vaccine will generate a similar antibody titers.
After consultation with the stringent regulatory authority, we expect the phase II study to be a pivotal registration trial. Data readout of this trial is expected in mid 2022, and a rolling EUA submission to follow at the end of 2022 or early 2023, with a potential launch in 2023. Meanwhile, a phase III registrational booster trial will be initiated in Asia in mid 2022. The company's manufacturing plant with an annual capacity of 700-800 million doses will become commercially ready by the end of 2022. Phase I of our manufacturing plant is intended for messenger RNA COVID vaccine production with a plant capacity of 700-800 million doses annually.
The top half of the slide shows the mock-up of the site in Zhejiang, in Jiaxing. The bottom half of the slide is our new research laboratory in Zhangjiang, Shanghai, which will help accelerate the growth of our discovery platform. It is fully operational with 1,700 sq m of state-of-the-art facility equipped with 1,000 sq m lab space, including a BSL-2 laboratory. During 2021, Everest has transitioned into a commercial stage company under the leadership of Mr. Kevin Guo, Chief Commercial Officer. The commercial team's headcount has grown to over 120 employees and includes industry-leading commercial experts. We've already initiated our commercial operations in Singapore.
For TRODELVY, we're building our commercialization efforts with the aim at the launch to cover 80% of the market in China for breast cancer. The team has already conducted more than 90 symposiums with about 400 expert speakers and more than 300,000 attendees from the healthcare professionals. Our commercial team has been working extensively on the launch of TARPEYO or NEFECON as well. Everest has a proven track record in asset selection through our business development effort. For five of our licensed assets since 2019, our overseas partner has been acquired by a large MNC or biotech. In December 2021, Arena was acquired by Pfizer for etrasimod. In July of 2021, Spero was licensed SPR206 to Pfizer. In October 2020, Immunomedics was acquired by Gilead for TRODELVY.
In July 2020, Tetraphase was acquired by La Jolla for XERAVA. In January 2019, Arena licensed out ralinepag to United Therapeutics. This really showcases Everest's extraordinary strength in identifying promising drug candidates ahead of key data readouts or the culmination of strategic buyer interest. It is worth noting that we have been approached by various global and regional companies who view our portfolio of late-stage, first-in-class and best-in-class products to be undervalued and who have expressed interest in collaboration. We will entertain these discussions that create substantial shareholder value. With that, I'll turn over the call to Ian Woo to review our financial highlights.
Thank you, Kerry.
Ian?
Yep. Can you hear me? Yep.
Yes.
Thanks, Kerry. I will now review Everest Medicines'-
Yes, we can.
Financial results for the full year 2021. We generated revenue of RMB 54,000 in 2021 through commercial sales of XERAVA in Singapore. Cost of revenue was RMB 23,000. This is the first step in our transformation to a commercial stage company, which is expected to accelerate in 2022. General and administrative expenses decreased by RMB 35.1 million to RMB 242.7 million for the year ended December 31st, 2021. This is primarily due to decreased expense related to the company's public listing in 2020.
Research and Development expenses increased by 63% to RMB 613.4 million for the year ended December 31st, 2021, primarily due to increased number of clinical trials for our drug candidates and the expansion of internal development and discovery teams to build up in-house R&D capabilities. Distribution and Selling expenses increased by RMB 165 million to RMB 198.2 million for the year ended December 31st, 2021. Primarily due to the expansion of our commercial organization and pre-launch and launch activities. Our IFRS net loss for the year ended December 31st, 2021 was RMB 1,008.7 million.
Primarily attributable to the decrease in loss from fair value change in financial instruments issued to investors, as tied to the conversion of preferred stock to common at the time of our IPO. Now turning to non-IFRS adjusted loss, which is the figure that we disclose every year. This was RMB 777.1 million for the year ended December 31st, 2021. Representing an increase of RMB 174.4 million. Primarily due to an increase in R&D expense and distribution and selling expense. We ended 2021 with a cash balance of RMB 2,640.1 million. We also had investments in I-Mab Biopharma, worth RMB 798.5 million as of December 31st, 2021.
In terms of cash needs for 2022, we are guiding to RMB 1.5 billion-RMB 1.8 billion. The range will be impacted by a number of factors, including the timing of commercial launch of our products, which will generate revenue. We will also explore a number of options at our disposal to strengthen our balance sheet. Our goal is to ensure that the company has at least two years of cash. Now turning to the last two slides. These slides summarize our upcoming catalysts. Our team is committed to advancing our drug candidates, and we look forward to sharing our progress with you over the coming years. I would like to reiterate some of the key milestones coming up in 2022, which Kerry had already highlighted earlier in the presentation for individual assets.
In the second quarter of 2022, we expect BLA approval of TRODELVY in second-line metastatic TNBC in China, and commercial launch in the second half of 2022. While in the second half of 2022, we expect approval of XERAVA in complicated intra-abdominal infections in China. Also, in the second half of 2022, we expect NDA filing for TARPEYO or NEFECON in China for IgA nephropathy. Phase I initiation for EDDC-2214, that's our 3CL protease inhibitor. Phase II immunogenicity data readout for our mRNA COVID-19 vaccine, and the completion of the build-out of our Jiashan manufacturing facility. You know, clearly I did not touch upon all of the milestones on these two slides, but just wanted to highlight a few of the what we consider to be the most important items.
For 2022, again, we believe will be a year where we continue to build our capabilities, advance our portfolio, and initiate commercial activities in China. We look forward to sharing these exciting developments with you throughout the year. With that, I will invite the operator to begin the Q&A. Thank you.
At this time, if you have a question, please press star then one on your touchtone telephone. If your question has been answered or you wish to remove yourself from the queue, please press the pound key. Again, if you have a question at this time, please press star then one. One moment for questions.
Yeah, I'd like to jump in and say that, if you want to ask a question, you'll have to dial in through the telephone line instead of using the online link. You know, I think gives people a few seconds to actually dial into the conference line versus the website link.
It does look like we have a question from Linh Hansel with Goldman Sachs. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Hi. Can you hear me?
Yes.
Yes, we can.
Hi, this is Linh Hansel from Goldman Sachs, and I'm just curious about our R&D expenses this year. I know that we had this agreement with Providence about the messenger RNA vaccines, which includes the upfront payment of $100 million. Am I right to say that these expenses are not included in this year's R&D expense? What is our plan to recognize this expense?
Hey, Ian, I think we'll send that message to you.
Sure.
The question.
Thank you, Kerry. Yeah, let me just make sure that I understand the question. Do you mean? Are you referring to the milestone payments?
No, the upfront payment.
Yeah, the upfront payment. Yeah, okay. Yeah, as you know, under IFRS, the upfront and milestone payments associated with licensing deals are capitalized. They do not impact our...
Okay.
They're not in the R&D expense, and do not hit our P&L.
I see. Not only the upfront and the following, the future milestones will also be capitalized, right?
Correct.
Got it. Thanks.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Jack Lin with Morgan Stanley. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Hi, this is Jack Lin from Morgan Stanley, calling on behalf of Shan Wu. First, congratulations to the company for all the success in the past year. I just have two questions from him. First one is, wondering how confident the management is in terms of getting the mRNA vaccine for COVID approved based on immunogenicity, and if you could kind of give us more color on the potential, market potential outside of China. That's the first question. Second one is also, wondering how many share has company bought back and how do the company plan to use it all up. These are the two questions. Thank you.
Okay, thank you, Jack. Neo, would you like to take the first question on the immuno- bridging approach to messenger RNA approval? Ian, you can take the second question on the share buyback.
Sure, yeah. So we are very much working closely with Providence together on the ex-China registration plans that we've already had some very good meetings with written confirmation on registration authority in Western countries about using immuno-bridging, i.e., the head-to-head comparison with Pfizer in the primary vaccination setting as a potential registrational trial. We'll do a similar study also in immuno-bridging method to get approvals in the boosting setting. Our current plan is to initiate that boosting study in the first half or mid of this year.
We will be in a position to launch the PTX-COVID19-B in ex-China markets with this regulatory plan. Speaking of the market potential, just to remind, we have Greater China, South Asia and Pakistan. Excluding mainland China, that population is about 900 million population. In this part of the world, actually, most speaking of the South Asian countries, very populous countries, they most of them are at about 50%-60% primary vaccination rates as of early this year. Most of the countries just started boosting programs.
A little bit uniqueness about this market is that close to half of the primary vaccination shots given are the inactivated vaccines. For boosters, most of these countries are adopting mRNA or AstraZeneca vector vaccine as a boosting strategy. Some of the more affluent countries, for example, Thailand, are trying to switch over into mRNA vaccines similar to what the U.S. and Europe have done. Some other low- to middle-income countries like the Philippines or Indonesia are still adopting both mRNA and AstraZeneca vaccines. However, some of these countries have approved Sinovac as a homologous boost.
In reality, their policy is trying to use as much Sinovac vaccines for the completion of the primary series rather than use them in the booster setting. What we think, based on our knowledge on the ground, is that the boosting programs will not be finished until very late next year to boost everybody. We still have a pretty significant market in this booster upgrade from inactivated vaccines to viral vector vaccines all the way to mRNA vaccine. That's clearly the preferred choice for all these countries.
Thank you, Neo. Ian?
Thank you.
Sure. Yeah. On the second question, you know, we actually have a press release that we put out on November 7th last year. That press release summarized that we have repurchased roughly 1.6 million shares. As of November 5th, we have not undertaken any further share buybacks since then.
Thanks, Ian. Thanks for your question, Jack.
Thank you.
Thank you. And again, if you have a question at this time, please press star then one. And our next question comes from the line of Ethan Ding with SPDB International. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thank you for taking my question. Can you guys hear me?
Yes.
Okay, great. I have two quick questions about TRODELVY. Your partner, Gilead, has recently reported that TROPiCS-02 study on HR-positive breast cancer has met primary endpoint, but no specific data was disclosed, which I think makes our investors a little bit concerned. I'm not sure if you have been communicating with Gilead, but could you give us some confidence about the results, especially the survival benefit data? Also for TRODELVY, I'm kind of I want to ask about your pricing strategy once it's launched, and if it's successfully launched in first half, it might be, you know, up for reimbursement negotiation. Could you provide us more color on your reimbursement, you know, strategy as well? Thank you.
Thanks for the questions, Ethan. I think on the TROPiCS-02 data, I mean, Gilead has publicly released that the data are consistent with their previous experience and that they met their primary endpoints. You know, that's the full extent of Gilead's data release. We don't have anything new to add to that. From the pricing strategy that's still being worked out today, we anticipate with an approval time in the second half that we would launch towards the end of the year.
Maybe, Kerry.
Ian.
Yeah, if I might, you know, maybe just add a little bit to it. You know, that's not on the Gilead TROPiCS-02 data. It's, you know, this is what they've announced. I think it's worth noting that our own HR-positive HER2-negative study, 330 patients, across mainland China, Taiwan and South Korea, is, you know, within that patient population. I think there are a couple of important differences compared to TROPiCS-02. Number one, because CDK4/6 use is not as prevalent, especially in mainland China, compared to the U.S., we will actually have, you know, roughly about half of our patients who are naive to CDK4/6.
You know, they would have failed hormonal therapy and gone straight chemotherapy, and if they failed two rounds of chemo, they would be eligible to our study. That is an important difference because if prior CDK4/6 use does impact you know, efficacy to TRODELVY, then I think you know, our study you know, may do better than compared to TROPiCS-02. The other difference is on the comparator side. As you recall, the control arm has four chemotherapies and one of them is eribulin, which in what we understand is that in the U.S. and Europe is used quite frequently as the physicians choose a chemotherapy in this setting.
Eribulin, you know, is also one that investors worry that has the highest efficacy across the four chemotherapies that physicians can choose from. We understand that in our part of the world, especially in China, the use of eribulin is going to be much less frequent because of primarily cost considerations. You know, we may have our comparator arms may also do not as well as TROPiCS-02. These are speculations, but if some of the concerns that investors have, you know, for TROPiCS-02, you know, become true, you know, we think that given the difference in treatment and patient makeup, you know, our HR-positive, HER2-negative study should do better than TROPiCS-02.
Thank you, Ian.
Sure.
Thank you.
Great. Thank you very much.
Again, ladies and gentlemen.
Thank you.
If you have a question at this time, please press star then one. Our next question comes from the line of Zoe Bian with Citi. Your line is open. Please go ahead. Again, ladies and gentlemen.
Hi, management. This is Zoe Bian from Citi. Thank you for taking my question. We know that this year we will become the first commercial year for Everest and for your key products such as TRODELVY, XERAVA, and NEFECON. What kind of peak sales would you estimate at this stage? And how much revenue do you expect them to contribute in year one? Thank you.
I-Ian?
Sure. Happy to. Sorry, I didn't get your name, but thank you for the question. You know, at this point, we're not giving guidance on, you know, first year sales or peak sales. I think you can, you know, look at, you know, I think the peak sales for our products are actually, you know, quite, you know, I think the research community have a, you know, very good assumptions on those. You know, I will say that, you know, with TRODELVY, let's just go through these one by one, right?
You know, we certainly feel that this has the potential to be one of the largest oncology products in China, given the fact that, as Kerry mentioned earlier, you know, Trop-2 being expressed in about 80% of the solid tumors, and given the broad development program that Gilead and Everest are undertaking. Given that, you know, in addition to multiple indications and tumor types, we're also exploring, you know, earlier lines of therapies and combination therapies, right?
You know, you saw each of these play out much more concretely, you know, over the last few months, with Gilead and us, you know, working on going into first line non-small cell lung cancer, and Gilead going into first- line TNBC, and exploring combinations with checkpoint inhibitors. You know, we certainly feel that TRODELVY has an opportunity to be one of the largest oncology products in terms of peak sales. For NEFECON and TARPEYO, I think, you know, we believe that in China there are roughly about five million patients. You know, whereas in the U.S. and Europe, IgA nephropathy is an orphan indication.
With five million patients, even with low diagnosis rates and low treatment rates, as the first and only product having a formal label for IgA nephropathy, right? In the U.S., and we expect to get the same in China. If we're successful in doing that, you know, I think the unmet medical needs and the patient population is very significant. You know, we also have very high expectations for NEFECON in China. XERAVA, too, is, we believe, a very attractive antibiotic for multidrug-resistant Gram-negative infections.
It's a next generation tigecycline, and I think everybody knows that the tigecycline class has done very well in China. We believe that, you know, eravacycline could have a sort of similar peak sales potential. You know, if you just look at our top three products, we certainly have very high expectations on each of these products. At the moment, we're not, you know, ready to give guidance on first year sales or peak sales.
Thank you, Ian.
Thank you. To follow up, we know that you have hired over 100 commercial staff. Could you break down how many are based in China, and how many are in other Asian countries? How many more salespeople would you expect to hire this year and next year? Thank you.
The bulk of our commercial team is in China, certainly 90%. We have small teams in South Korea, Taiwan and Singapore, less than five people each. For the current commercial team is almost entirely a central commercial team, so without sales force, since we are still at least six months away from launch. We will start to hire our sales team in the beginning of the second half of 2022. As we have stated in the past, we expect in breast cancer to be able to cover 80% of the breast cancer institutions in China.
Our anticipation will be, this will be low hundreds of sales reps.
Thanks a lot.
Thank you.
My final question is that we've heard that the global biotech financing has been a bit squeezed these days. Have you felt any valuation decrease when you do your BD jobs, and what's your plan for business development in the future? How many projects have you been reviewing these days and found promising? Thank you.
Well, we continue our BD efforts and they take several different flavors. You know, I think the initial type of BD effort is the, you know, post POC regional deals and recently you've seen that we've shifted our focus a bit to deals that have a global component. I personally do not see much change so far in the deal economics that people are expecting. And I think there will be a bit of a lag in changes in that regard. Ian, do you have any additional color to add?
No, I think you covered it. I mean, I think, but you know, I do think you're spot on saying that there is a lag. You know, I think it also depends on how active the private financing environment is, right, in China. Because you know, we certainly do believe and expect the number of competitors that we see in business development situations to decline. You know, as the capital markets become more tight, and you know, companies may not be able to raise the right level of capital to be very aggressive on business development transactions.
They also may find it, you know, difficult to hire the right people and to attract them from, you know, multinational pharmaceutical companies. You know, we're starting to see signs of that. You know, I could also say that we are becoming much more stringent, right, you know, when it comes to how we look at business development deals. I think that the bar for us to continue to do BD deals is going to be very high, you know, especially considering the existing portfolio that we already have.
Thank you very much. It's very helpful. That's all my questions.
Thank you, Ian. Thank you.
Thanks for the question.
Thank you. At this time, I'm showing no further questions in the queue. Mr. Blanchard, I'll turn the conference back to you.
Thank you. I'd like to thank you all for joining us on our conference call today. We look forward to keeping you updated on our progress. Thank you. Take care, and be safe in this new environment.