AGM 2020

Sep 24, 2020

Good morning, everyone. My name is Mitchell Sayer, chairman of the board of directors of Altimmune Inc. The meeting is now called to order. I've asked Joseph Ties Jr. Of Goodwin Promptor LLP, our outside legal counsel, to record the minutes. It's a pleasure to welcome our shareholders and visitors to the annual meeting of Altimmune Inc. We're excited to be hosting our meeting virtually, which allows us to be more inclusive and reach a greater number of our shareholders who are attending via the web portal. This meeting is being held in accordance with the corporation's bylaws and Delaware law. Our meeting today will consist of two phases. First, we'll take care of the formal business at hand, which is described in our notice and proxy statement, a copy of which was mailed on or about 08/21/2020 to all of our stockholders of record at the close of business on 08/10/2020. During this portion of the meeting, all discussion will be limited to the official business at hand. Following adjournment of the formal meeting, Vipin Garg, President and Chief Executive Officer, report on the highlights of the corporation's results and recent developments. Please hold any general questions you may have concerning the corporation's operation until this time. Before proceeding to the formal business, I'd like to introduce the directors and officers of the corporation who are with us today. Our outside directors are David Drutz, MD, John Gill, Philip Hodges, Diane Jerkoski, MD, Wayne Pizzano, and Claus Schaefer, MD. Our officers are Vipengard, PhD President and Chief Executive Officer, William Brown, Chief Financial Officer, Scott Roberts, PhD Chief Scientific Officer, and Scott Harris, MD Chief Medical Officer. Thank you to each of you. Our independent auditors, the firm of Ernst and Young LLP is represented at this meeting by Steve Canaris. Our outside counsel, the firm of Goodwin Proctor LLP is represented by Joseph Tice. Thank you. Now let's proceed to the formal business of the meeting, notice of which was sent to all shareholders of record as of the close of business on 08/10/2020. Shareholders of record on that date are entitled to vote at this meeting. We have at this meeting a record of stockholders as of that date. A duplicate record has been on file at the principal place of business of the corporation for the last ten days immediately prior to the date of this meeting, and has been available for inspection by any stockholder during that period at any time during normal business hours. If any stockholder wishes to address the chairman during the formal part of this meeting, please do so by entering your question in the text box provided on the web portal. I request that your comments be brief in order to allow our stockholders the opportunity to ask questions or provide comments, and that comments be directly related to the proposal under consideration. If you have any questions on the rules of conduct for the meeting, we have posted the rules of conduct to the web portal. The board of directors has appointed Jim Rate, who is joining the meeting telephonically, to act as inspector of election for this annual meeting, and he will tabulate the results of the voting. The inspector of election has signed the oath of his office, which will be filed with the minutes of this meeting. Mister Rait, do we have a quorum present? Mister chairman, of the 32,911,833 shares of common stock and public votes at this meeting. 27,097,999 shares are represented either in person or by proxy and therefore a quorum is present. Thank you. I declare that a quorum is present. We may now proceed to transact the business for which the meeting has been called. Let me briefly describe the voting procedures. We will vote by proxy and by written ballot via the web portal. If you have previously turned in your proxy and you do not intend to change your vote, it is not necessary that you complete another proxy or ballot. Your vote will be counted. If you are eligible to vote and have not submitted your proxy, or if you wanna change your vote, please submit your vote via the voting buttons on the web portal. So it is now 10:05 Eastern Daylight Time on 09/24/2020, and the polls for each matter to be voted on at this annual meeting are now open. Okay. Our first item of business is the election of directors. At this meeting, we will be voting on eight nominees for director to serve for a term of one year, all as set forth in the proxy statement. In accordance with the bylaws, your directors have nominated Mitchell Sayer, PhD, Vipin Garg, PhD, David Drutz, MD, John Gill, Philip Hodges, Diane Jorkowski, MD, Wayne Pizzano, and Claus Schaefer, MD, to be elected to serve as directors. The corporation's bylaws require that a stockholder provide advanced notice to the corporation of a stockholder intent to nominate persons as directors. No such notice was received. Accordingly, I declare the nominations for directors closed. Board of directors unanimously recommends that stockholders vote in favor of this proposal. Are there any questions regarding the proposal? Anyone who is voting via the web portal, please mark your vote now. The second item of business is the ratification of the appointment of Ernst and Young LLP as the corporation's independent registered public accounting firm for the fiscal year ending 12/31/2020. The Audit Committee of the Board of Directors, which is comprised entirely of independent directors appointed Ernst and Young LLP as the corporation's independent registered public accounting firm to audit the corporation's financial statements for the fiscal year ending 12/31/2020. The Board of Directors approved the selection of Ernst and Young LLP and has asked the stockholders to ratify the selection. Stockholder ratification is not required by the corporation's bylaws, however, the Board of Directors is submitting this to the stockholders for ratification as a matter of good corporate governance. If the stockholders do not approve the selection of Ernst and Young LLP as the corporation's independent registered public accounting firm, the Board of Directors and the Audit Committee will reconsider the appointment. Are there any questions regarding the proposal? Anyone who's voting via the web portal, mark your vote now. The third item of business is the approval on an advisory basis of the compensation of the corporation's named executive officers as disclosed in the proxy statement. The board of directors unanimously recommends that stockholders vote in favor of this proposal. Are there any questions concerning the proposal? Anyone who's voting via the web portal, please mark your vote now. The fourth item of business is the approval of the authorization to adjourn the annual meeting, if necessary or appropriate, to solicit additional proxies in favor of the foregoing proposals if there are not sufficient votes to approve the proposals. The Board of Directors unanimously recommends the stockholders vote in favor of this proposal. Are there any questions concerning the proposal? Anyone who is voting via the web portal, please mark your vote now. You must submit your ballot via the web portal now in order for your vote to be counted. Inspector of Election will not accept ballots, proxies, votes, or any change or revocations submitted after the closing of the polls. It is now seven I'm sorry, 10:11 Eastern Daylight Time on 09/24/2020, and the polls for each matter to be voted on at this meeting are now closed. No additional ballots, proxies, votes, and no changes or revocations will be accepted. Mister Wraith, please report on the results of the voting. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. With regards to proposal one, a plurality of the shares present or represented and entitled to vote has been voted in favor of the election of the persons nominated. With regards to proposal two, majority of the shares present were represented and entitled to vote have been voted in favor of the ratification of Ernst and Young, LLC as the corporation's independent registered accounting firm for the fiscal year ending 12/31/2020. With regards to proposal three, majority of the shares present or represented and entitled to vote have been voting in favor of the approval on advisory basis of the compensation of corporation's named executive officers as disclosed in the proxy. With regard to proposal four, majority of the shares present were represented and entitled to vote have been voted in favor of the approval of the authorization to adjourn the annual meeting if necessary or appropriate to disclose the additional proxies in favor of the fraudulent proposals if there are no not sufficient votes to approve the proposals. And that is all Mr. Chairman. Thank you Mr. Reid. I declare that all of the proposals presented at the meeting have been overwhelmingly ratified or approved by the stockholders. The final results of voting, including any ballots and proxies recorded during this meeting will be set forth in the report of the inspector of election, and will be included in the minutes of the meeting. The final results will also be included in our reports filed with the Secretary. There being no other, oh, I'm sorry, with the SEC. There being no other matters for consideration at this meeting, I hereby adjourn this meeting. And let me now turn the floor over to, doctor Vipin Garg, our CEO and, and president. Vipin? Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Having concluded the formal business of the meeting, I would like to take a few minutes to provide an update on our progress at Altimmune and share my perspective for the outlook of our company, which I believe has never been more promising. Before I begin, however, just a quick housekeeping note. I am required to inform you that these statements may include forward looking information based on the company's current expectations. These forward looking statements are subject to a number of significant risks and uncertainties, and our actual results may differ materially. For a discussion of factors that could affect our future results, please refer to our most recent 10 Q filing with the SEC. It has been a transformational year for Altimmune and our shareholders as we rose to the challenge of finding novel solutions for the COVID-nineteen pandemic. Never have we had so much opportunity to build value and so many promising shots on goal that are advancing towards clear inflection points over the next twelve months. As the COVID-nineteen pandemic took hold around the world and quickly escalated throughout 2020, I am exceptionally proud of our team as we swiftly deployed our expertise and capabilities to develop two new and promising portfolio candidates, de COVID and ad COVID to combat this global threat. Much of our focus this year has been dedicated to rapidly developing these candidates and preparing to commence human clinical trials. As these studies get underway, we're very proud to see Altium join the ranks of some of the world's leading pharmaceutical companies in finding desperately needed solutions for this global crisis. While there are many companies in the race, our approach is unique and highly differentiated from other COVID-nineteen vaccines and therapeutics and could offer significant advantages compared to other approaches. As you know, both AdCOVID and T COVID are administered intranasally, which provides important benefits. First, nasal administration is optimal both for ease of use and because it delivers vaccine directly to the site of viral entry and infection. This has the potential to provide numerous downstream benefits by blocking the infection at the site of its origin, the nasal cavity, and helping to prevent further spread of the virus. Second, intranasal delivery is the only delivery method that can stimulate what is called nasal mucosal immunity, which is a very important component of the body's immune response. Vaccines that are delivered by intramuscular injection are unable to activate this important first line of defense. The preclinical data are very encouraging and demonstrate that a single intranasal dose of AdCOVID stimulates a broad immune response, promoting strong systemic and mucosal immunity to provide improved protection from disease and disease transmission. On the practical side, we expect AdCOVID to have excellent stability allowing for common storage conditions at community based vaccination centers without the need for specialized freezer storage required from some other vaccine candidates. In fact, we expect to ship AdCOVID to vaccination centers at room temperature, greatly simplifying its distribution and reducing costs. And combined with our simple scalable manufacturing process, AdCOVID becomes an ideal vaccine candidate which exceeds the World Health Organization's expectation for a COVID-nineteen vaccine. We are very excited to move this candidate into human clinical trials, which is planned to start in the fourth quarter with a data readout anticipated in early twenty twenty one. Also moving forward is our novel COVID-nineteen therapeutic, t COVID. We're especially excited about this program as it represents a novel mechanism of action with tremendous promise. T COVID is one of the few COVID-nineteen therapeutics intended to stop the progression of early COVID-nineteen to severe disease and hospitalization. The Phase I EPIC study is underway and we have several sites that are actively screening patients. We also recently announced that we have completed enrollment in our Phase 1b trial of NasoShield for anthrax and expect to provide a data readout in the fourth quarter. If NasoShield is shown to be safe and immunogenic, the remaining options of our $130,700,000 contract with BARDA could be awarded to conduct Phase II clinical testing with the path to begin stockpiling NasoShield in the strategic national stockpile. We're also very excited about ALT-eight zero one program, which remains on track to begin human testing in the fourth quarter. We expect to have a readout around the 2021 on two key endpoints, body weight loss and reduction in liver fat. This will be an important value inflection point for Altimmune and our shareholders as positive data would position ALT-eight zero one squarely at the forefront of NASH development. We are very encouraged as our preclinical data suggests that ALT-eight zero one could be better tolerated than similar therapies and achieve weight loss and improvement in liver fat without need to dose titrate for GI tolerability, which has negatively impacted other GLP-one investigational candidates. In addition, we plan to initiate a twelve week trial in patients with non alcoholic fatty liver disease. We expect data readout from this study in the second half of twenty twenty one. Depending these results, we would then transition rapidly to the Phase two biopsy trial based on NASH endpoints. Finally, we are on track to begin a Phase II trial for HepTcell, our chronic hepatitis B immunotherapeutic. The Phase II trial is designed to evaluate the antiviral activity of HepT cell in chronically infected patients and is an important milestone in our goal to develop a functional cure for this disease. We anticipate commencing this study in the fourth quarter. As you can see, this is an exceptionally productive time for our company. Following the completion of our capital raise this year, Altimmune is solidly positioned to advance multiple candidates to value creating inflection points over the next twelve months. In closing, this past year has clearly been a transformational one for our company, positioning us to pursue success on several fronts with our product candidates advancing, a solid foundation beneath us and momentum building in our pipeline, we see significant opportunity ahead of Altimmune and our shareholders and we are committed to realizing this potential. Once again, I thank you for your continued support for Altimmune and for your participation today at our Annual Meeting of Shareholders. Have a nice day. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.