Good afternoon, everyone. It is a pleasure to welcome all of you to the 2026 Annual Meeting of Stockholders of Septerna, Inc. My name is Gil Labrucherie, Chief Financial Officer at Septerna. I will serve as chairman and secretary for our 2026 annual meeting, and Mark Wilson, our chief legal officer, will be taking minutes for the meeting. Please note that this meeting is being recorded and held in accordance with the company's bylaws and Delaware law. We are conducting the annual meeting virtually instead of in person, in order to facilitate the attendance and participation of our stockholders via the web portal provided.
Our meeting today will start with the formal business at hand, which is described in our proxy statement and notice of internet availability of proxy materials, a copy of which was mailed on or about April 30th, 2026, to all stockholders of record as of the close of business on April 29th, 2026. A record of stockholders as of that date has been available for inspection at the principal place of business at the company during formal business hours for the last 10 days immediately prior to the date of this meeting. During this portion of the meeting, all discussion will be limited to the official business of this meeting. Only questions that have to do with the official business of this meeting will be addressed, and only validated stockholders may ask questions in the designated field in the web portal.
Once we have completed the formal business portion of the annual meeting, we will adjourn and continue with a brief update on our business, where we can address any general questions from our stockholders as time permits. At this time, I would like to take a moment to remind you of the current membership of the board of directors and of the individuals serving as executive officers of the company. The following are the members of our board of directors: Jeffrey Tong, Jeffrey Finer, Abraham Bassan, Bernard Coulie, Alan Ezekowitz, Shalini Sharp, Jake Simson, and Keith Gottesdiener. Our executive officers are Jeffrey Finer, Chief Executive Officer and Director, Liz Bhatt, President and Chief Operating Officer, myself, Gil Labrucherie, Chief Financial Officer, Samira Shaikhly, Chief People Officer, Mark Wilson, Chief Legal Officer, Uwe Klein, Senior Vice President, Biological Sciences, and Daniel Long, Senior Vice President, Drug Discovery.
Our independent registered public accounting firm, Ernst & Young LLP, is represented at this meeting by Abdul Kazi, and he's available to answer questions. The board of directors has appointed James R. Alden of American Election Services LLC to act as Inspector of Election for this annual meeting, and he will tabulate results of the voting. The Inspector of Election has signed the oath of office, which will be filed for the minutes of the meeting. Now, let's proceed to the formal business of the meeting. Rules of conduct for the meeting are available through the virtual meeting platform. Please note that only stockholders who have logged in using their 16-digit control number will be able to vote and ask questions at the meeting.
I have been informed by the Inspector of Election that of the 44,949,189 shares of common stock entitled to vote at the meeting, 41,510,056 shares are represented either in person or by proxy, and therefore, a quorum is present. We may now proceed to transact with the business for which this meeting has been called. Let me briefly describe the voting procedures. Voting will be by proxy, and if applicable, by using the voting link provided through the virtual meeting platform. 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 vote again via the web portal. Your vote will be counted.
If you are eligible to vote and have not submitted your proxy, or if you want to change your vote, you may do so by clicking on the voting link provided through the virtual meeting platform. If you have a question, please submit it via the web portal. During the formal portion of this meeting, we will answer questions on any matters in the agenda to be voted on by the stockholders before the voting is closed. We will limit each stockholder to two questions related to the official business at hand. In order to allow stockholders to vote through the virtual meeting platform at any time during this meeting, I now declare the poll open for voting. It is now approximately 2:05 P.M. Pacific Daylight Time on June 26th, 2026. Our first item of business is the election of directors.
At this meeting, we will be voting on two nominees for Class 2 directors to serve for a term of three years, all as set forth in the proxy statement. In accordance with the bylaws, the board of directors has nominated Shalini Sharp and Jake Simson to be elected to serve as Class 2 directors. The company's bylaws require that a stockholder provide advance notice to the company of a stockholder's intent to nominate persons as directors. No such notice was received. Accordingly, I declare the nominations for directors closed. The board of directors unanimously recommends that stockholders vote in favor of each of these nominees. Anyone who is voting via the web portal, please vote now. The second item of business is the ratification of the appointment of Ernst & Young LLP as the company's independent registered public accounting firm for the fiscal year ending December 31st, 2026.
The audit committee of the board of directors, which is comprised entirely of independent directors, appointed Ernst & Young as the company's independent registered public accounting firm to audit the company's financial statements for the fiscal year ending December 31st, 2026. The board of directors approved the selection of Ernst & Young and has asked the stockholders to ratify this selection. Stockholder ratification is not required by the company's bylaws. However, the board of directors is submitting this appointment to the stockholders for ratification as a matter of good corporate governance. If the stockholders do not approve the selection of Ernst & Young LLP, the board of directors and the audit committee will reconsider the appointment. Anyone who is voting via the web portal, please vote now. As a reminder, if you have a question, please submit it via the web portal.
At this time, we are not seeing any questions in the web portal pertaining to the two items of business. Anyone who has not yet voted and desires to do so, please cast your vote now through the virtual meeting platform in order for your vote to be counted. The Inspector of Election will not accept proxies or votes or any changes or revocations submitted after the closing of the polls. I will pause for a brief moment to allow for any final votes to be cast. It is now approximately 2:08 P.M. Pacific Daylight Time on June 26th, 2026, and the polls for each matter to be voted on at this meeting are now closed. No additional ballots, proxies or votes, and no changes or revocations will be accepted. I have been informed by the Inspector of Election of the preliminary results of the voting.
With regard to proposal one, a plurality of the votes properly cast have been voted in favor of the election of the persons nominated to serve as Class II directors. With regard to proposal two, a majority of the votes properly cast for and against the proposal have been voted in favor of the ratification of Ernst & Young LLP as the company's independent registered public accounting firm for the fiscal year ending December 31st, 2026. I declare that all proposals presented at the meeting have been preliminarily ratified or approved by the stockholders. The final results of voting, including any ballots or proxies reported during the meeting, will be set forth in the report of the Inspector of Election and will be included in the minutes of this meeting. The final results will also be included in our reports filed with the SEC.
Now that we have completed the formal matters of the meeting and there being no other matters for consideration at this meeting, I hereby formally adjourn the 2026 annual meeting of stockholders of Septerna, Inc. Prior to ending our meeting today, our CEO, Jeff Finer, will provide a brief update on our business. During Jeff's presentation, he will make certain forward-looking statements pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such forward-looking statements reflect the current views of the company and are subject to known and unknown risks and other factors that may cause actual events or results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by any forward-looking statements, which are, in some cases, beyond the company's control.
Risks that contribute to the uncertain nature of the forward-looking statements include those risks and uncertainties set forth in the section titled Risk Factors in our most recent quarterly report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ending March 31st, 2026, filed with the SEC as well as any subsequent filings with the SEC. With that, I will now hand it over to Jeff.
Thanks, Gil. I'd like to personally thank everyone for attending Septerna's 2026 Annual Stockholder Meeting. I'll give a brief update on the business and what's ahead for Septerna. Since last year's annual meeting of stockholders, we've continued to execute against our strategy of building a leading company focused on unlocking the full potential of previously difficult to drug GPCRs, powered by our Native Complex Platform. During this period, we advanced our wholly-owned pipeline, deepened external validation of our platform through partnerships, and maintained a strong financial position to support continued execution. With respect to our wholly-owned pipeline, we made important progress in both endocrinology and immunology and inflammation. In September 2025, we announced SEP-479 was selected as our next generation oral small molecule PTH receptor agonist candidate for hypoparathyroidism. More recently, in April of 2026, we announced the initiation of our Phase I clinical trial for SEP-479.
Dosing is currently underway in healthy adult volunteers, and we currently anticipate data from this study in late 2026 or early 2027. We also made strong progress with SEP-631, our oral small molecule MRGPRX2 negative allosteric modulator for mast cell-driven diseases. After initiating the Phase I clinical trial in healthy volunteers in Q3 of 2025, we announced positive Phase I clinical results in March of this year. SEP-631 was well-tolerated, demonstrated pharmacokinetics that support once daily oral dosing, and showed robust inhibition of a codeine-induced skin wheal formation across the entire range of dosage studies, ranging from 10 milligrams to 200 milligrams once daily. Importantly, this result provided clinical proof of mechanism for SEP-631's ability to inhibit the MRGPRX2 pathway in skin.
Based on these results, we plan to initiate a Phase 2B clinical trial of SEP-631 in chronic spontaneous urticaria in the second half of 2026, to be followed by an open label study of chronic inducible urticaria. We're also continuing to evaluate additional mast cell-driven disease indications where targeting MRGPRX2 may have therapeutic potential. Beyond these lead programs, we continue to advance our TSH receptor negative allosteric modulator program with the goal of delivering a potentially disease-modifying oral treatment for Graves' disease and thyroid eye disease. We also continue to progress discovery stage programs across multiple therapeutic areas using our Native Complex Platform. With regard to our partnered programs, our collaboration with Novo Nordisk formally initiated in July of 2025 with the goal of discovering and developing potential oral small molecule therapies for obesity, type 2 diabetes, and other cardiometabolic diseases.
Under this partnership, we received a $195 million upfront payment, and Novo Nordisk is responsible for all research and development expenses. In addition, Septerna is eligible to receive up to approximately $500 million in research, development, and commercial milestone payments for each program, and we're also eligible to receive tiered royalties on global net sales of marketed products. Separately, in Q3 of 2025, we also received a $12.5 million milestone payment from our collaboration and asset purchase agreement with Vertex Pharmaceuticals. We believe these partnerships reflect meaningful validation of both our platform and our broader approach to GPCR drug discovery. In total, the past year has been a period of meaningful progress and execution for Septerna. We've advanced key programs into and through important clinical milestones and continue to expand the validation of our platform through partnerships.
We remain in strong financial position to continue to drive forward our pipeline programs with $522 million on the balance sheet as of March 31st, 2026. This gives us cash runway at least into 2029. Looking ahead, our priorities remain clear. Continue progressing SEP-479 through phase I, advance SEP-631 towards phase II development, move our TSH receptor program closer to initiating clinical development, and continue building value across both our wholly owned and partnered pipeline. I want to thank all of you for your continued support. If you have a question related to Septerna's business update, please submit it via the web portal. At this time, we aren't seeing any questions in the web portal. With that, I'll turn it back to Gil.
Thank you, Jeff. That concludes the annual meeting of stockholders and our business update. Thank you all for joining us today. The meeting is now adjourned. Have a good afternoon.
That concludes our meeting today. You may now disconnect.