Good afternoon and welcome to OmniAb's OmniUltra Launch virtual investor event. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the call over to Kurt Gustafson, OmniAb, Inc's Chief Financial Officer. You may begin.
Thank you, Operator, and good afternoon, everyone. This is Kurt Gustafson, OmniAb's Chief Financial Officer, and thank you all for joining us here to hear a little bit more about the launch of our latest technology, OmniUltra. There are slides to accompany today's prepared remarks, and they're available in the Investor section of our website at omniab.com. Before we begin, I'd like to remind listeners that comments made during this call by OmniAb's management will include forward-looking statements that fit within the meaning of the federal securities laws. These forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to be materially different from any anticipated results. These forward-looking statements are qualified by the cautionary statements contained in today's press release and our SEC filings. Importantly, this conference call contains time-sensitive information that is accurate only as of the date of the live broadcast today, December 15th, 2025.
Except as required by law, OmniAb undertakes no obligation to revise or update any forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances after the date of this call. Joining me on the call this afternoon is Matt Foehr, OmniAb's President and CEO, and also with me is Dr. Yasmina Abdiche, who is our Senior Vice President of Exploratory Research, who just finished up her presentation here at the AET Conference, as well as Todd Pettingill, who heads up Business Development and Strategy. During today's call, Matt will provide an overview of our new OmniUltra technology and, at the conclusion of the prepared remarks, we'll open the call to questions.
As I mentioned, we're here at the Antibody Engineering & Therapeutics Conference in San Diego, where Dr. Abdiche just finished up a talk titled, "OmniUltra: A New In Vivo Platform for Discovery of Novel Mini-Proteins and Structured Peptides." Tomorrow, we have another podium presentation titled, "OmniUltra: Leveraging Evolutionary Distance for the Discovery of Ultra-Long CDRH3 Antibodies with Broad Epitope Coverage." This technology is also being showcased in two poster presentations that you see listed on this slide. The slides for these presentations and the posters can be found on our website in the Scientific Publications section under the Technology tab. With that, let me turn the call over to Matt.
Thanks, Kurt. Good afternoon, everyone, and thanks for joining our OmniUltra launch call. Yas' presentation this afternoon here in San Diego was the first technical and scientific introduction of our newest technology that we've branded as OmniUltra. We believe OmniUltra is a really important advancement and a next evolution of discovery tools as it's the first and only transgenic chicken producing ultra-long CDRH3s, which is a structural feature of antibodies typically seen only in cows. Our new OmniUltra chicken has been engineered by our scientists to create antibodies with this special feature found in cows, but with human sequences to make them suitable as human therapeutics. The relevance of the chicken host species is to leverage the evolutionary distance to enable robust immune responses to human targets, even highly conserved ones.
Essentially, OmniUltra combines features of cow, human, and avian immune systems to really reinvent the way we can discover certain types of therapeutics and extends us at OmniAb beyond antibodies crossing over into the peptide space. Ultra-long CDRH3s are designed to enable getting at unique, deep, or recessed binding pockets and previously inaccessible epitopes, potentially unveiling therapeutic opportunities that we think are beyond the reach of other modalities. One of the things that our team is really excited about is the potential, which we've now demonstrated with multiple targets, of these ultra-long CDRH3s to be isolated as autonomous binding fragments known as picobodies . These can open up entirely new applications for partners when accessing this newest technology of ours. OmniUltra is creating a new way to discover a variety of therapeutics.
We see new opportunities with OmniUltra, as highlighted here on slide number eight, not only as a new antibody discovery platform, but one that's also leverageable for peptide therapeutic discovery, which is also an area of substantial and growing interest by the industry. This launch further highlights our team's innovation leadership, and we think can create more value for our partners and for all of our stakeholders. Importantly, OmniUltra can be leveraged within the infrastructure of our increasingly efficient operations at OmniAb. The science behind this is really remarkable as it's something that's never been achieved before. As Yas mentioned in her presentation just a bit ago, this isn't just an incremental improvement for novel drug discovery. It's really a leap forward in methodology that we think opens up some totally new possibilities for the industry.
I'm now on slide number nine, and I'm going to get into a little bit of the science here. I think it's important just as a baseline to note that alternative antibody formats are found in nature, and these arose independently during species evolution for a variety of reasons. Now, for cows that are shown on the right-hand side of this slide, about 10%-20% of the time they make antibodies with these ultra-long CDRH3s. W e and others in the industry think these structures have the potential to be really important. Slide number 10 references a peer-reviewed publication from about five years ago that got attention in the industry and that showed that a cow-derived antibody could target epitopes that were not reachable by other methods.
The ultra-long structures allowed the penetration of barriers like glycan shields and enabled binding to recessed epitopes that are seen here in the crystal structures of cow antibodies targeting the HIV gp120 protein. This unconventional binding mode, using only the tip of this protruding feature, in some ways inspired the design of OmniUltra, which brings the power of ultra-long CDRH3s into a human-compatible scaffold designed for therapeutic discovery. Now, on slide number 11, those that follow OmniAb know that we often reference the concept of what we coined years ago as biological intelligence. It's essentially a core belief that molecules that are generated in vivo are superior to ones from other sources because they're naturally optimized through an iterative process that preferentially selects for molecules with excellent specificity, mature affinity, and favorable developability profiles.
This can increase efficiencies in discovery and probabilities of success, which we think is an important part of why partners continue to come to us to access our technologies. We have an internal innovation engine around this that has continued to strengthen our differentiation in the industry, especially in relation to our growing suite of genetically engineered chicken-based discovery platforms. Moving to slide 12, now chickens are relevant because of their extreme evolutionary distance from us and other mammals. This evolutionary distance can be leveraged because chickens can inherently see more, if you will, from an immune system perspective. This allows you to generate immune responses in a chicken that you could not in other ways, and in turn, create repertoires of potential therapeutics to targets of interest. About half of all of the therapeutic targets are more than 90% conserved in mammals.
So using a chicken as an immunization host species for discovery can be really important and valuable in many instances. So our scientists considered how we can leverage our engineering capabilities and the evolutionary distance of chickens to create something that would meet a significant industry need, and that's in part what led us to the creation of OmniUltra. Slide 13 shows some of the data we're presenting here for the first time at the AET Conference, showing the strong immune responses of OmniUltra chickens to a variety of therapeutically relevant targets that are of interest to the industry. And I call out here BDNF, which is a target that's what's referred to as 100% conserved in mammals. So one would have significant problems eliciting immune responses in other sources. I also note here that we've already done three partner programs with early adopter partners.
Those targets are confidential at this point, but we and our partners are very excited about these programs. Well beyond the strong immune responses, as you can see here on slide number 14, with data for NKp46, EGFR, and B7-H3, we've demonstrated that you can get to novel epitopes with OmniUltra-derived compounds. Next here on slide number 15, and this is perhaps one of the most exciting parts from a technology perspective, and that is that, and really is one of the key points of today. Essentially, it's a new paradigm for discovering therapeutic peptides. We've shown that molecules discovered out of our OmniUltra animals can then be chemically synthesized as standalone peptides and still retain binding activity to their target. This has been done simply using standard custom synthesis techniques following discovery.
This flexibility opens up entirely new therapeutic possibilities and can drive significant efficiencies for licensed partners and shows that this is a potentially more efficient way to access libraries of peptides and to get to cost-effective manufacturing downstream. We think this is a pretty big deal from a technology perspective as we're leveraging that biological intelligence of our engineered animals and getting the benefit of the evolutionary distance of the chicken, and then using that in a really efficient way to find peptides with antibody-like affinity and specificity profiles that can be efficiently manufactured. Slide 16 is showing various peptide discovery approaches that have been used in the industry over time. Traditional peptide discovery takes two main paths that are conceptually distinct.
The first and the more aged path is a combinatorial chemistry approach that is combined with display technologies, which is sort of a brute force approach that screens massive libraries of sometimes random peptides without any prior knowledge of what a hit might actually look like. The second path is rational design, which starts with a defined peptide or structural insight and refines it using models, structural data, and computational tools. Each method has strengths and limitations. One explores things broadly while the other optimizes more deeply, and they can be combined or mixed and matched to some degree. Now, by contrast, OmniUltra starts by using in vivo optimization to generate antibodies with cow-like ultra-long CDRH3s in a stabilized human scaffold in a chicken host species. This approach allows for the discovery of peptides containing the entire antibody-binding paratope in a small unit while also reducing immunogenicity risks.
Again, by using a chicken as a divergent host species, we can leverage evolutionary distance to ensure robust immune responses and expanded epitope coverage to human therapeutic targets. We think this fills a critical gap by sourcing peptides from nature's own optimization engine, the immune system, rather than relying solely on brute force screening and design. This approach ensures high functional diversity and leverages peptides that are inherently bioactive and evolved for stability. Combined with a validated knob scaffold, OmniUltra offers a really powerful alternative to traditional methods. Now, I'm going to switch gears just to spend a few moments on the new opportunities that we think OmniUltra creates for the business.
Now, on slide 18, peptides are an important and growing drug class, fulfilling a unique role in the pharmaceutical industry, partly because they combine properties of small molecules and antibodies, making them versatile modalities across a broad range of therapeutic areas such as diabetes and weight loss, heart disease, and cancer. While peptides offer many attractive attributes such as high on-target specificity, structural versatility, low immunogenicity risk, and rapid tissue penetration and clearance, they've been limited historically by their intrinsically unfavorable biophysical properties and some manufacturing challenges, which we think OmniUltra helps to alleviate in some respects. There's been an increase in focus on peptide therapeutics by the industry, as shown here on the left side of slide number 19. You can see the substantial growth in the number of new peptides that have entered clinical trials and an acceleration of that in recent years.
And the right-hand side shows third-party projections of estimated global peptide sales, which are also expected to grow significantly. Slide 20 highlights the broadened applicability of OmniUltra and the potential total markets. What's shown here are the estimated sales of end drugs by relevant modality. And as you can see, where our relevant OmniAb discoveries each apply? Needless to say, these are very big markets, so the motivation of partners to get access to latest discovery technologies is high. And lastly, here on slide 21, from a business perspective, we think OmniUltra opens up new opportunities in licensing and can create more opportunity to drive chicken-based collaboration and service revenue at OmniAb. Importantly, OmniUltra is also opening up our client file to a large number of new companies, over 130 that have peptides in active development, and we hope can drive deal-making and increase the diversity of deal structures.
And with that, we have Yas and Todd here as well. I'd like to open up the call for questions about our newest technology, OmniUltra. Operator, I'll turn it back to you.
Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. Should you have a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. Should you wish to cancel your request, you may press star 2. Once again, that is star 1. Should you wish to ask a question? Your first question is from Stephen Willey from Stifel. Your line is now open.
Hi guys, this is [Tuliyong] for Steve. Thank you for taking our questions and congrats on the launch. We just have one from on our end. So you mentioned that there is already strong industry engagement with the three partners already using this platform. Can you please provide additional color on what indication they're using, whether their targets are confidential, but whether there are any preferential modalities that they're using for these indications, etc.? Thank you.
Yeah, [Tuliyong], thanks for the question. And yeah, you're right to highlight in the slides and in one of the presentations that we're doing here at AET, we highlighted a broad array of therapeutic targets that have already been assessed with the OmniUltra technology. That included the three confidential partner programs. I'll say they're ones that scientifically our team is really excited about, but we're really not at liberty to go into much more detail about the types of targets or the therapy areas at this point.
We generally look to our partners, and when they're comfortable disclosing their targets and what work they're doing, we'll obviously echo that and make a point to point that out to our stakeholders. But at this point, there's not much more we can add. We do expect at some point they will present data on these programs, so.
Thank you.
Thank you. Your next question is from Puneet Souda from Leerink Partners. Your line is now open.
Yeah, hi Matt a nd the team, thanks for taking my questions and for the presentation here. Just if you could elaborate a bit on how does OmniUltra help you penetrate the existing accounts and at the same time potential other partners that are not partnering with you today? Maybe they have tried your technology in OmniClic, OmniClic, or other approaches and are amenable to open to trying OmniUltra. Just want to understand sort of as you think about the partner and the opportunity for OmniUltra, where do you see it with the existing partners or with the newer partners?
Yeah, great. Thanks, Puneet, for the question. Maybe I'll offer some high-level perspectives, and then Todd can fill in any color that I leave out. I'll start by saying what sort of fuels innovation at OmniAb in a lot of ways is simple at its core, which is just listening to our partners. Now, with over 104 partners spread throughout the industry, we make a point of really listening not only to where they are now, but where we think they are headed, right? And because we have established ourselves really as technologists who are here to help drive meet those partners' needs, for us, that innovation becomes simple from the perspective of what tools we want to provide.
There's a lot of complexity in terms of doing it. What has been achieved here by our scientists from a scientific perspective, I think, really hasn't been achieved before, and I think that's exciting. So for some of the partners, like the three programs we highlighted in the slides, those are what I'll call early adopters. Those are folks that we know from the sorts of targets that they're working on that this is a technology that they will want to use. I think on the peptide space, it's all quite new. So Todd and his team have known this technology has been coming for a while. They've been positioning themselves to be ready for this launch that obviously started today.
And the peptide space, I think, is one that matches quite well with where we want to go not only from a technical perspective, or it's a nice place for us to expand into, but also from a business perspective. So Todd, anything you want to add?
Yeah, no, I think Matt covered pretty much exactly what I would say. I would just reiterate OmniUltra has a broad applicability to a wide range of different modalities: bispecifics, radiopharma, CAR-T engagers. We have partners in all those spaces, but this is something that's new that nobody else has. And so this is something that will be interesting as an additive to what they're using us for. But really, the big open kind of greenfield is the peptide space.
That's not something that we've been involved in in the past, and there are over 130 companies in the space that are new points of contact, new areas for potential deals. So we're really excited about the opportunity.
Yeah, and Todd, I mean, the point you raised about modality is a good one that I left off. I think partners increasingly realize that we've established ourselves as innovators around new modalities. Really, I mean, a couple of years ago, we launched the OmnidAb single-domain technology. Now we're at the point where there's already one in the clinic. There are others who are advancing quite quickly. And maybe, Yas, if you don't mind, you could probably provide a little more color on how partners see us from a novel modality perspective and helping them achieve their needs.
Yeah, happy to do so. I see the main kind of value proposition for this is that it provides a way of constructing unique molecular geometries. For example, in multispecifics, even if you have antibody units, putting them together to make a functional molecule, the modality and the actual geometry, all of that matters, but this gives another type of building block that may be small enough to do something or fit in a certain way. The other aspect is the standalone peptide things for radio. So people have been using antibodies or antibody fragments for radio, but a peptide that has an antibody-like character is probably optimal for radio to be seen, but those are the kind of areas where our partners are really interested to try a different type of modality.
Got it. Super helpful, and then just a quick follow-up. Among those 130 peptide companies, could you maybe just elaborate where you are today, sort of what penetration you have, and then how should we think about that metric to be potentially by end of 2026? Thank you.
Yeah, no, great question, Puneet. I mean, obviously, we're just getting started, right? We know we've got some existing partners who are active in the peptide space and are interested in it as well, right? So I expect we'll see nice adoption, but we'll obviously provide updates as we add partners and programs as we commonly do.
Got it. Okay. Thanks, Yas.
Thank you. Your next question is from Joseph Pantginis from H.C. Wainwright & Co. Your line is now open.
Hey, everybody. Thanks for taking the questions. Two, if you don't mind. So first, just going on your BD comments so far, what sort of strategy do you see potentially changing here? Obviously, you're going to focus more on a lot of new clients, but also what kind of efforts will you be sort of changing or adapting or just keeping status quo with regard to marketing this to existing clients?
Yeah, thanks, Joe. Really, strategy of the company completely unchanged, right? We are creating technologies that the industry needs. It's really the market opportunity that has grown and our ability to leverage our technologies to drive elements of the business. So, for instance, collaboration and service revenue element of the business, and also to continue to differentiate ourselves as being really at the forefront of new technologies. So in terms of how we're planning on implementing it, right, we can leverage it within our existing infrastructure, which has become increasingly efficient over time. And we will be present at some other conferences from a technical and scientific perspective.
We'll likely be publishing in other places, right, because we have a broader audience, but our overall strategy is unchanged.
No, that's helpful. Thanks. And then, look, more to the technology itself and even your other platforms. You mentioned today, obviously, looking to reduce immunogenicity of these products, but sorry, just playing devil's advocate, you have all these different technologies, multiple different kinds of structures, novel structures, and very diverse or a lot of genetic diversity there. So can you talk a little more to how this could potentially reduce immunogenicity based on the novelty of all these products?
Yeah, Yas, do you want to take that?
Yeah. Thank you for the question on immunogenicity. So very typically, the smaller something is, the kind of less chance it has to be immunogenic. So these are very, very small relative to even a nanobody or a Fab or an scFv.
So there's less opportunities for immunogenicity. These are also a knotted structure. So oftentimes, that comes with some stability. That also can reduce immunogenicity because potentially, it could be kind of better developability, so kind of less floppy, less kind of aggregating, things like that. So just the size and the more stabilized format lend itself to potentially be less immunogenic.
Thank you for that. Very helpful and way to go on the launch.
Thanks, Joe.
Thank you. Once again, please press star one should you wish to ask a question. And your next question is from Brendan Smith from TD Cowen. Your line is now open.
Great. Thanks, guys, for all the color on the webinar and for taking the questions. Maybe just a couple of quick ones from us, kind of piggybacking on some of the earlier ones. I guess first, fully recognize it's early days for the platform, but do you maybe have any sense of how we should think about really the cadence of new partnerships moving into 2026 and 2027? Just kind of curious, even broad strokes, how you're thinking about near-term impact versus kind of your historical cadence there. And maybe related to that, are you actually expecting that as folks are getting their 2026 budgets together in the coming weeks, that maybe some of these partnering decisions could actually be pretty imminent as those numbers get finalized, or should we maybe expect a bit longer tail for most of these over the coming quarters? Thanks.
Yeah, Brendan, thanks. Appreciate the question. In terms of partner cadence, one of the things as we look back on this business, one of the things that's clear is when we launch new innovative technologies, that generally drives not only new program starts, but also attracting new partners, right? In some instances, it can lead to maybe reviving programs from the past or something like that with a new angle, things like that, right? So hard to give you any exact number on what a launch like this will do to partner cadence, but I can say based on our past history that when we launch new technologies like this, it increases the work that our business development team is doing, their funnel, if you will, in terms of all of the discussions that are ongoing, the number of partners that get under, say, CDA or negotiating licenses.
And so I would expect that here as well. In fact, we're, I think, already seeing it. It was great seeing the response to Yas' talk just an hour ago now and just seeing the flow of questions and the follow-up really with our BD folks really immediately after the talk. So all of that was really, really good to see. And then in terms of your question around budgets and things like that, deals can take a variety of structures. Some deals get stitched together very quickly. Some take more time. Just given the broad nature of our portfolio of partnerships and partners, we kind of see all sorts. But generally, from an industry perspective, we've been really encouraged by what we're seeing in terms of the industry ramping up new programs and focusing on R&D investment.
So we think those things bode well for us as we kind of look into finishing up the year here and really seeing momentum build around this.
Got it. Makes sense. Thanks, guys.
Thanks, Brendan. Thanks.
Thank you. Your next question is from Matt Hewitt from Craig-Hallum Capital Group. Your line is now open.
Good afternoon. Thanks for taking the question and for providing all the detail. Just one for me, but given that there's over 130 peptide companies that you're now targeting, is that going to require some incremental investment either from a sales and marketing perspective or on the BD team or even in-house from a services perspective? Thanks.
Yeah, Matt. Thanks for the question. As I kind of generally referenced in prepared remarks, OmniUltra really can be leveraged within our infrastructure and what we see as an increasingly efficient operation. We've really designed our technologies to be very platformable, right, and the performance of the technology, and in this instance, obviously, the transgenic chickens and our downstream workflows with xPloration really allow us to have a very scalable business, so we feel like with the investments that have been made really years ago now in facilities and infrastructure, we are really at a point where we can leverage that efficiency in the business.
From a business development perspective, it's really a very similar model in many ways in terms of how we leverage Todd and his team from a business development perspective, how we leverage the science that is produced, so we really see this as fitting in within our existing infrastructure. We think this is highly leverageable, and we're excited to show that.
That's great. Thank you.
Thank you. Once again, please press star one should you wish to ask a question. There are no further questions at this time. Please proceed with the closing remarks.
Thank you, operator, and thank you all for joining today. We look forward to updating you on our full year results, which were expected in early March, and hope everyone has a great finish to the year and a happy holidays, and I want to end by thanking our team at OmniAb, both the science team and the business team. We've done a lot to get to this launch today, and we're excited to keep you updated. Thank you.
Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. That concludes our conference call for today. Thank you all for joining. You may all disconnect your lines.