Aptamer Group (LSE:APTA) — Full Year results for the year ended 30 June 2025

0:00 Good afternoon, and welcome to the APTAMER GROUP PLC investor presentation. Throughout this recorded presentation, investors will be in listen only mode. Questions are encouraged and could be submitted at any time by the q and a tab situated on the right hand corner of your screen. Simply type in your questions and press send. The company may not be in a position to answer every question it receives during the meeting itself. However, the company can review all questions submitted today and publish responses where it's appropriate to do so. Before we begin, I'd like to submit the following poll. I'd now like to hand you over to Aaron Tolley, CEO. Good afternoon, sir.

0:32 Hello. Good afternoon, and welcome to APTAMER GROUP's full year results, 06/30/2025. The presentation will be structured with an introduction to the presenting team, a recap on the technology for any new investors, finances, operational update, and then a look towards the future. We'll then go into some questions and answers, so please submit the questions as we go along.

1:02 So I'll introduce myself first. So I'm the cofounder and CEO of APTAMER GROUP. I have PhD and a background in structural biology and biophysics. And I founded APTAMER GROUP in 2008 and built the infrastructure to start essentially trading the company in 2012. I've run the business, for the past twelve years and guided it through a period of revenue growth subsequent to IPO. I'm now focused on building the team to take the company through a transition, developing licensable assets, and focusing the company's technologies in areas where it is suited to solve niche high value opportunities.

1:38 Good afternoon, everyone. I'm Andrew Repson. I'm CFO, APTAMER GROUP. I've got over 20 experience now as a chartered accountant. I joined APTAMER in August 22 and then took over the role as CFO in August 23, and I've now got just over ten years of experience working in the AIM environment.

2:00 So I thought we'd start with an overview of APTAMER GROUP. So we address a very large mature market with our proprietary platform, solving high value problems for pharmaceutical companies and large biotech companies. We have a proprietary platform for the discovery of molecules called Optimus, and they're used essentially as alternatives to antibodies, which I'll come on to explain a bit later. We have relationships with all of the top 10 pharma companies and now 85% of the top 20 pharmaceutical companies. We have a very talented team of 30 people. 70% of the the people within the the team have masters or PhD level qualifications, which is obviously a helpful requirement when operating in a biotechnology space.

2:45 So over the last ten years, we've built a reputation as a key global player in the APTAMER space, if not the best custom solution developer globe globally for this technology. And we're focused really on monetizing the platform in three areas. So fee for service for early stage revenue, licensing technology for passive income through commercial exploitation of the assets that we develop, and we're also developing high value therapeutic opportunities. And just some key key metrics for this year, and the first one is that we've increased revenue by 40% from last year. We've increased the number of licensable assets going from four to 11, and we've refined our data packs to make the proof of concept for the technologies to be used in therapeutic applications and initiated discussions with multiple, big pharma companies to look at collaborations in that area.

3:41 So we'll move on to just refresh and remind everybody what is an APTAMER. So an APTAMER is essentially a short strand of DNA or RNA. And these are isolated using our proprietary high throughput automated process that are that are designed to develop molecules that can specifically recognize targets of interest. So APTAMER has a flexible backbone. This allows them to bind to a large variety of different targets, and it solves a lot of problems that are inherent with antibody technology, such as we have better quality control, easier chemical modification, manufacturing to the kilogram scale is possible with these molecules if needed for therapeutic uses. They have lower immunogenicity profiles, meaning they're great for therapeutic use. Company wise, we've got a strong patent portfolio protecting our position all the way through from modified nucleotides, all the way through to patents protecting the manufacturing of certain variations of our product.

4:39 And someone that I read at some point came up with a really good analogy that I will shamelessly steal here. But if you think of antibodies like handcrafted keys, our platform is equivalent to a digital key cutting machine. It's faster, cheaper, and more capable of producing new and more complicated keys. Now the reason that this is important is because as more is understood about diseases, the locks in inverted commas are getting more complicated. So demand for these next generation keys will only grow as time goes forward. And this is why I think we have 85% of the top 20 pharma companies using our services. So let's just have a look at the market and where we fit in the market. So we operate in this really large, what's referred to as an affinity ligand market, $210,000,000,000 globally, in fact. And an affinity ligand is a term used to describe a type of molecule that can stick to another molecule.

5:34 So antibodies are not the only players within this market. The market currently is and it was dominated by antibodies. But as I touched on earlier, about 50% of antibodies fail to perform as expected. They're expensive and slow to develop, so there's a need for alternative solutions. So since the, I would say, the late eighties and early nineties, various different alternative platforms have emerged. So if you look on the on the slide, if you look at APTAMER the left hand side, who focus mainly on traditional antibodies, all the way through to our Genx, molecular partners, PETREDRENE, Bicycle Therapeutics, all having different variations on antibody or binder type technologies, all the way through from recombinant antibodies through to various different types of protein scaffolds, through to what's referred to as macrocyclic peptides, and then onto OPTIMA and APTAMER technology, which are essentially nucleic acid based binders.

6:30 So we're a platform tech company. We followed a traditional platform tech approach, solving problems, proving the market, and then focusing on niche areas where the technology excels, which is what we're hyper focusing on now. And as you you can see, some of the platform companies on the on the, slide here, hitting the right therapeutic indication, reaching the billion dollar valuation level. So to put this into into context, there's around 500 plus antibody related companies in the market, so there's a lot of noise. Over a 100 of those are involved in therapeutic developments with around 500 antibodies in trials. Conversely, there are a few dozen APTAMER companies. There's an increasing amount of activity in clinical trial clinical trials with APTAMER as people are exploring APTAMER based therapeutics. In fact, if people are ever questioning if there's an interest by big players in APTAMER, like 2023, Astellas Pharma acquired iveric Bio for $6,000,000,000, and that was actually an APTAMER based technology.

7:40 As a company, and where we fit into this, we are globally recognized as a key player in the space. It's a less crowded space than with antibodies. And as we work to develop data packs and evidence that that the binders that we're generating and the molecules we're generating can be used for gene therapy delivery. And with the recent RNS now, we're looking at developing radio pharmaceutical delivery. We're taking advantage of the unique properties of these molecules to leverage therapeutic partnerships. So we feel we're at a pretty much a good value inflection point as a company and as a business. So moving on to look a bit more in detail at our company. So as we know, these APTAMERs, Affinity Ligands, all these keys, we're developing as alternatives to antibodies.

8:30 We're paid on a fee for service basis for solving these problems, often unsolved problems, for our clients. And we generate revenues solving these problems in three broad areas. So first, on the bottom left hand side is critical reagents. So these are molecules that are used as quality control tools in developing assays for drug discovery and basically ancillary and support reagents. Very important reagents and batch to batch variability here is really key because if you're developing a drug and you require a critical reagent, you need to make sure that through the lifetime of drug development that that reagent performs the same every single time. And that's why we're picking up a lot of work and interest in our molecules. We're also looking at the application of APTAMAs in diagnostics. This is where you would use an APTAMER to develop, say, a lateral flow device for the detection of things like COVID or other various things that you would like to detect through standard diagnostic applications. And we've got loads of data that demonstrates APTAMER can be used and replace antibodies in a variety of different platforms.

9:34 And then finally, we're looking at looking at using APTAMER in the therapeutic space as delivery vehicles. And quite quite interestingly, the the fourth application area, which I've mentioned several times before, came a bit left of field, is using the technology in the deodorant space or the cosmetic application area. So the business model has three three strands generating revenue through fee for service, generating IP from those provision of services, and eventually hoping that that will lead to passive revenue streams from licensing royalties. And then we're planning to partner in key therapeutic areas. So I'll quickly go through a couple of examples of where this model has worked and it's turned into imminent licensing opportunities for the company.

10:25 So the first one here is an example of some optimists that we generated, to folic acid. So you can see on the right hand side, of the of the slide that you have multiple different variations of folic acid, and the one at the top is the one that's usually fortified and added to food products. So this data generally shows that the APTAMERs that we've developed can recognize folic acid, when compared to other versions of of folic acid or its derivatives, which is down to the fact that APTAMER can be highly selective. No antibodies have been able to do this as far as we're aware, and that puts us in a position to negotiate, to license these molecules, which we are currently doing with the global foundation. Now the reason we're doing this is because across the world, there are multiple food fortification programs that essentially aim to add folate to various different food stuffs in order to make sure that folic acid levels are are high, particularly in pregnant women due to the fact that a lack of folate can lead to what's referred to as neural tube defects that can cause babies to have spina bifida.

11:36 So this is a really important project for us in getting this technology out there into the market to solve real world problems is very important. The second area is an area that's referred to as enzyme modulation. So this is quite a complicated area, but broadly speaking, if you think about what's referred to as PCR enzymes, these enzymes are multi key to multi billion dollar PCR market. So if you remember during COVID times, the original tests were PCR based tests, and these are essentially molecular diagnostics that have these these enzymes at the at the core of that. So being able to modulate enzyme activity in this area can improve the diagnostic applications and improve the the performance of these molecules. So we're currently negotiating multiple licenses for molecules that we've developed that can perturb and modulate these PPR related enzymes.

12:38 The second area is the project with Unilever, which we've had, applications in cosmetics. So what what happened here is we were asked to generate binders that could recognize and penetrate odor causing bacteria, that lived in sweaty areas on the human body. And the project was to generate binders that could recognize the the bacteria, penetrate the bacteria, and then bind to these enzymes and modulate the enzymatic activity that could turn off that pathway in bacteria to effectively shut off the ability for your body to produce body odor or more accurately the bacteria to produce body odor. So, obviously, if this is commercialized, it will be, a significant value inflection point for the company, generating passive income and be a real good validation for the for the platform.

13:27 So thirdly, I'll move on to an example in targeted therapeutics, is where the real high value is. So so currently, we decided to focus on liver. And the reason for this is liver is a hot area, with multiple big pharmaceutical companies interested in solutions, for delivery to the liver. There's around two million deaths per year from liver disease, and it's the only major disease where death rates are currently rising. And interestingly, there's only one licensed treatment for liver fibrosis, so there's very high unmet needs. So traditionally, there's a molecule used called GalNAc, which is basically owned by a company called Alnydium in The US. Now this company is a big company. It's valued at around $61,000,000,000.

14:13 And the the basis of the technology is to deliver gene therapies to the liver. I mean, Al Nidem recently signed a deal with Roche in twenty three, three hundred and ten million upfront in payments with a total deal value of 2,000,000,000. So transformative and enormous deals can be done in this particular space. The GalNAc targets what's referred to as the ASGPR receptor, which is a receptor that's highly expressed on liver cells, but it's not expressed on hepatic stellate cells, which are the primary drivers of liver fibrosis. Meaning that the delivery technology that's primarily aimed at liver therapeutics does not target these types of cells. So there was a need for a delivery system to be developed to target drugs to fibrotic liver cells. And effectively, that's what we've done. We developed a technology that solves the problem and addresses a clear unmet need. We're currently in the preclinical stage of development, and the images on the slide that you can see there, effectively, the top left hand image that's titled fibrotic liver cells, essentially, APTAMERs with a fluorescent marker attached to them binding selectively to fibrotic liver cells or cells that are representative of that.

15:30 And you can see there's no binding to other cells or related cells in that kind of panel of different tissues. So we're currently in multiple discussions with pharmaceutical companies for potential licensing opportunities and opportunities to move that through preclinical development. So at this point, I'll pause and talk about the recent radiopharmaceutical announcement that we did. This is really important as a layer of differentiation for the company. It's another interest in the use of APTAMER as delivery vehicles. In this situation, though, instead of delivering an siRNA or an antisense oligo, which is commonly associated with what we would do with liver technology, here we'd be looking to deliver

16:13 radioactive particles, essentially, to cancer cells. And deals in this space can be similarly transformative. In 2023, Bicycle Therapeutics signed two deals, both with around 50,000,000 upfront and both with around 1,700,000,000 in downstream payments. And these were one was with Novartis. And bicycle were focused on developing what's referred to as radio bicycle radio conjugates, and we are focused at the moment on developing our alternative to that, which is what we refer to as an APTAMER radio conjugate. And we're aiming, obviously, for deals like the ones with bicycle to create massive investor upside. So, obviously, you know, that's quite a a lofty aspiration and one that we're confident that we can achieve. But while we're developing these relationships and the technology, the day to day running of the business fee for service generation and generated licensable technology and generating passive income from that has to go on.

17:15 So over the past twelve months, we've completed projects giving us an increase of four to 11 opportunities, many of which were in active discussions. And we're we're we're essentially focused on evolving these, solving these practical problems, intractable problems, and evolving all of the opportunities that we have for fee for servicing to licensable income. And there are several new success based additions that have the potential to be added to this wheel. Things like the project with Envisius that we've just signed, which is in the area of kidney disease, the radioligand project that we just signed with the top three pharma company, and there's a few other opportunities in critical reagents that we've just signed. So we may be pushing 11 to 15 different opportunities fairly quickly here based on success.

18:02 So now that we've covered the the background, areas of focus for the company with some examples, I'll pass to Andrew now to go through the finances for the past year. Thanks, Aaron. So firstly, we'll, take a look through the income statement and the cash flow. The revenue for the year was 1,200,000. That's up 40% on the 860,000 reported in the prior period. We took forward much improved sales and production pipelines into this latest financial year, resulting in the increased revenue. We've continued to convert deals steadily throughout the year, continuing to focus on retaining IP to make the business more financially secure in the future. We've seen a strong mix of repeat business and new contracts, and we closed a series of new contracts in the final quarter, an element of which will roll over into the new financial year. This includes a couple of notable contracts.

18:58 We're very pleased to agree a second fee for service contract with Unilever. For us, that demonstrates the value they've seen in the technology from the first project. We also have repeat business with a top 20 pharma partner, where we successfully retained the IP in a contract worth a £126,000 in fee for service revenue. In that case, target material was delivered quickly to us, which meant we recognized some revenue in f y twenty five, and the remainder will roll over into f y twenty six. And it's also worth noting, we had a project with a top five pharma company that was signed in November 24, and that's progressed very successfully, resulting in a contract extension that we announced in August 25. The customer has evaluated the APTAMA in a parallel application, showing that the APTAMA significantly outperforms all previously tested antibodies.

19:51 As a result, the customer has placed repeat orders of the APTAMA to expand internal testing and evaluation of the technology. This developed APTAMER will be used to support the current clinical drug development program. The increase in revenue resulted in an increase in margin. This is due to an element of cost of sales relating to staff costs. And for these costs, the increased revenue has been accommodated with staffing capacity, rather than needing more staff. If we look onto administrative expenses, they reduced from 3,200,000 to 2,900,000, which is a result of the continued focus on a lean cost base despite the wage and supply chain inflation. The current headcount reduced from 38 to 31 at the end of the year.

20:38 We look at the cash flow, and the net cash used in operations was 1,900,000, and that's largely reflective of the adjusted EBITDA loss of 2,200,000 after adjusting for 200,000 of non executive director fees paid in shares rather than cash. This outflow was funded by the fundraise completed in August 24, with net proceeds of £2,600,000 And we closed the year with a cash balance of 1,100,000 And shortly after year end, we raised 1,800,000 net of expenses.

21:12 I thought now we'd just have a quick look through the licensing progression. And FY 2025 has been a significant year in terms of asset progression. As Aaron has mentioned, we have significantly advanced the asset portfolio, starting the year with four assets in the licensing pipeline and concluding the year with 11. This is a significant step forward and demonstrates that technology has long term value to customers. This is an area we worked hard on over the last two years. Increasingly, we try and protect our position regarding IP generated from the fee for service projects. This means that securing fee for service contracts is slightly more difficult, and it gives us the ability to benefit from downstream commercialisation through passive licensing revenue. We're particularly pleased that two of these assets have reached signed licensing terms during the period.

21:58 One to Neurobio in the development of an early Alzheimer's diagnosis test, and the second to Glasgow University as a vaccine adjuvant. We now look forward to seeing how these customers progress the development of these assets into end use applications. You can see on the table there we've recently signed a development contract with a major multinational conglomerate to deliver APTAMER FC for inclusion in immunohistochemistry kits. And this deal includes a 2% royalty on net sales from assay kits. At the bottom of the table, we show three late stage legal review licensing deals for enzyme modulating optimus. We had two customers that approached us separately early in the financial year, with a view to carrying out fee for service work with their enzymes, and both projects progressed very successfully.

22:47 One of those customers then initiated a second enzyme project with us, and that has also progressed very well. So the technology seems to perform very well in this setting, and we've now got two customers with whom we've agreed heads of terms, and we're progressing through legal contracting with a view to licensing the technology. An exciting element for us as an early stage company, is that enzyme modulation optimers are capable of being moved into a commercial setting very quickly. This means we could see optimers incorporated into products very soon, and consequently start generating royalty revenues from This has underscored our belief in the business strategy we've adopted to target retention of IP in the work we do, so that ultimately we can benefit from the commercialization of any arising products. It's worth pointing out that this stance is not always possible to execute, but the majority of our fee for service projects now are executed in this manner and allow us to benefit from downstream commercialization.

23:43 I'll just turn on to the balance sheet. The net assets at the end of the period were 1,400,000, compared to 900,000 for June '24. The cash position at the end of the year was 1,100,000, and we raised a further 1,800,000 net of expenses shortly after the year end. So at the end of July, we had a cash balance of 2,700,000. And we expect the overhead to be just over 3,000,000 for FY '26, so we expect the current cash to last us into 2027. We had strong support for the fundraise this time around, which is oversubscribed and puts us in a much stronger position to execute our plans over the near term. Other items on the balance sheet, we saw a slight rise in trade receivables, and that reflects the three significant contract wins in the final quarter as we got those projects underway and started recognizing revenue.

24:38 The tax receivable is 43 k lower than last year. That's due to updated, r and d credit scheme tax credit scheme, which, is now slightly reduced from where it was in the prior prior period. There was no CGU impairment in this period or the prior, but there's a slight increase in intangibles, and that's due to the patent costs relating to some of the assets that we've already touched on. So a quick look at the post period review. So we as we mentioned, we successfully raised the 1,800,000, and there's five key areas that we're looking to deploy funds from that fundraise. One is asset licensing negotiations.

25:25 So as we've touched on, we've got a number of assets that are going through legal contracting, and these processes include supply due diligence and testing, and they can be quite lengthy. And so ensuring we have financial stability to complete these negotiations and onboarding processes is key to us getting a good outcome. Aligned with that is manufacturing investment. So as a company today, we've only provided APTAMER to customers, for research and development. If we get to a point of signing commercial agreements for licensing, we'll be able to we'll we'll need to be able to upscale our production, to produce commercial scale. And so we're we're reviewing that at the moment, and we're looking to invest, if needed in in it. So, third area is advancing the liver fibrosis program.

26:14 That requires investment in animal models as a next step. If that was successful, this will open doors to other partner programs to assess the value of this technology as a delivery system.

26:26 Along with the liver fibrosis work, we identified the biomarker, and being able to identify biomarkers has gained strong interest at industry conferences, and has the potential to become a revenue generating service for us in its own right. And indeed, we did launch this as a service post year end. And then lastly, we would like to look, at AI and machine learning. We have a huge amount of data here in in the company, and we feel that we we can leverage that to more efficiently select and predict optimus. The speed of development in this particular area is significant, and being able to leverage a database like ours could differentiate our service offering. We've seen strong commercial momentum post period. We've made a number of positive announcements on fee for service contract wins over the last couple of months. We now have 1,140,000 in contracts signed, which are at various stages of progression through the lab, and that we'll look to recognize throughout FY '26.

27:26 This is a good place to be with over two thirds of the year remaining, with which to add further contracts from the 3,300,000 pipeline and be able to start recognizing revenue in this financial year. Indeed, we have a number of contracts in negotiation which are at late stage, and we look forward to updating you on those in due course. We've won a particularly significant contract with a top three pharma, develop APTAMER for targeted radiopharmaceuticals worth £360,000 Again, this is another contract that has the benefit of downstream value, should we be able to deliver a working binder to, and the partner look to commercialize it. Both the top 10 and top five pharma company partnerships are repeat business, which encouragingly is starting to show the value that these large companies are starting to place in this technology.

28:12 Both projects have followed successful projects earlier in FY twenty five. As part of the liver fibrosis programme, we've successfully identified the biomarkers I mentioned, and we're now pleased that we've managed to launch that as a service offering. And we've seen, expansion of licensing opportunities. One, with a global health organization looking to license our folate binder, and the two companies I've already mentioned looking to license enzyme modulating optimas. Each of these potential licenses have the ability to generate revenue in the near term, particularly the enzyme modulation optimus. So we could see passive royalty revenue from those products, if they can be commercialized quickly. So that gives you a quick, overview of the post period highlights. I'll now hand back to Aaron to talk more about the investment case.

29:03 Yes. Thank you, Andrew. So one of the the the key things to to to take from this is that we're delivering cash flow at the moment. We're creating value for short and medium and long term, and we're doing this in these these three broad areas. I'm just gonna cover an overview of these areas and what we're planning to do. So the first area is the fee for service. You know, it helps to contribute towards costs, builds assets to license. We've increased 40% from last year. So far, we have around 800,000 in new contracts, layering on top of 350,000 in deferred income from last year. So we have visibility of total contract value of around 1,150,000 just out of quarter one. We've built a 3,300,000 pipeline over the last eighteen months that's now beginning to convert with around 1,000,000 in late stage discussions.

29:54 We've also launched, as Andrew touched on, this new, biomarker ID service, and we have existing interest in the pipeline already, within the first couple of days of launching. We'd had, inquiries into the pipeline.

30:07 This year, we're gonna continue to build and expand the pipeline, close opportunities, and convert them through to licensing. So then we're gonna focus on the existing pipeline of assets. So the the general concept here, as of we've we've already touched on, is to generate passive income to support medium and long term revenue over the life cycle of these assets with revenue layering on as licenses come in and start to pay. We've increased the portfolio up to 11 assets, and we have multiple opportunities in late stage negotiation. Andrew mentioned the word soon in in his section, but on signature, we would expect to generate some licensing revenue, and we would hope that we would be able to generate some modest licensing revenue in this financial year should those contracts come to fruition.

30:56 This year, we'll focus on completing these transactions and getting more of those 11 opportunities signed and starting to build these licensing revenue streams. The third area effectively is underpinned by areas one and two. This is the therapeutic development area. And here, we will focus over the next twelve months to develop more data packs. It will give us much more capability to position ourselves for these higher value opportunities. Now if you look at the work we've done in liver delivery technology, we've already got good, what's referred to as in vitro data, and we look to get in vivo data by putting the molecules that we've developed into animals. So we will also, this year, diversify into looking at radiopharmaceuticals.

31:43 We already have one partnered asset with a top three pharmaceutical company, which means there is a potential outlay for that technology or an outlet for the technology should it be successful. And we also have on our scientific advisory board people experiencing radiopharmaceuticals. That's not by any accident because we we know that the technology is well suited to this application area, and we've been working on this over the past twelve months. So we're gonna be looking at also generating some internal datasets.

32:14 Under underpinning all of this really is the is the application areas in in AI and machine learning. So as we go through all of these different technology developments, we will obviously generate data, and we will be curating and preparing the data ready for application in these machine learning tools. So we're currently in the process of recruiting and building that expertise within the company. So I'd like to leave, really, the presentation with four key take home messages. So the first one is our platform is targeting this big $210,000,000,000 market. We have established relationships with 85% of the top 20 companies, and we're getting repeat business as we prove the technology platform is has high value.

33:03 Secondly, we're diversifying our asset portfolio with a mixture of licensing opportunities representing short, medium, and long term revenue and also value. Last year, we said we would move licensing opportunities forward, and that's what we've done. We've taken that from four to 11 in the past twelve months. Thirdly, we will continue to focus on securing intellectual property, based positions where we can have licensing and royalty revenues from the successfully developed solutions. This is particularly important in the potential application for therapeutics where the upside can be can be pretty tremendous if we deliver successful molecules. And, fourthly, just to point out, you know, that we're funded and we we have underpinning revenue streams and potentially in the shortest term licensing that can start to layer on. So we've got the foundations. We've got the relationships with the big pharma companies, and we've got a platform for growth. I think we've successfully reshaped and improved the business over the last twelve months, and we continue to work very hard to deliver opportunities, news flow, progress for the shareholders. So we're looking forward, essentially to keeping you updated with exciting news and updates.

34:24 So that concludes the presentation, and, thank you very much for your time. And we'll now move on to questions. Aaron, Andrew, thank you very much for your present presentation this afternoon. And if I may just bring back up your cameras. Ladies and gentlemen, please do continue to submit your questions just by using the q and a tab situated on the right hand corner of your screen. Just while the company take a few moments to review those questions submitted today, I'd like to remind you that recording of this presentation along with a copy of the slides and the published q and a can be accessed via your investor dashboard. As you can see, we have received a number of questions throughout today's presentation. And if I may just start off with the first question here, which reads as follows. With the amount of new contract opportunities rising, do you plan to increase staff headcount, or is it containable within your present staffing levels? So I'll take that one. Yeah.

35:11 I mean, as I mentioned in the it's a a a one line throwaway comment that we that we essentially our technology is based on high throughput liquid handling robots. So with a a staff base of around 30 people, we have more than enough capacity, to generate binders, and increase revenue within the company.

35:34 So there's no plan. The next question here reads, in July, your r and s states enough cash to last till 2027. Is this still the case? Yes. Yeah. So we have we've made no changes from that announcement that we made in in July. Yes. We had 2,700,000 of cash at the end of July. We're running with a cost base of around 3,000,000, just over 3,000,000. So even with no revenue, that sees us through another year, but revenue projections are are quite good given the contract closing that we've seen over the last few weeks. So, yes, we've still got a focus going through to 2027. It's worth bearing in mind as well that these financial statements have just gone out.

36:22 The auditors have have been in. They've effectively agreed with the going concern assumption, which requires stress testing downside scenarios and being able to agree that we've got, at least twelve months of visibility on cash runway. Yeah. So there's nothing that's changed from from what we said in July there. That's great. Just moving on here. What are the key drivers behind the 40% revenue growth this year?

36:49 So we we started the year strongly. We took forward a a much stronger pipeline, both in sales and production. The prior year had seen us rebuild those pipelines, and so that contributed to most of the revenue growth this year. We've maintained the good momentum in deal closure. As we've been updating on over recent weeks, we still have a pipeline of 3,300,000, and that includes circa 1,000,000 of late stage deals. And we've got 1,140,000 of contracts that are, now signed, and and we're looking to recognize those throughout f y twenty six.

37:29 Perfect. With adjusted EBITDA losses narrowing to 2,200,000, when do you believe you will reach breakeven or generate positive cash flow? So that's hard to say. We're continuing to focus on building the fee for service side of the of the business. And and really, our one of our main focuses of the current period is to start, getting some licensing agreements in place. You could see from, the update we've just given that they're progressing well. We've increased the number of assets, and some of those are progressing quite well. We signed two deals in the period, but the ones that we talked about recently post period, one with the Global Health Organization, a couple for enzyme modulating APTAMERs, have the potential for near term revenues.

38:17 Licensing deals, by their nature, are much higher margin than the fee for service work. So that just brings close to that breakeven point, makes it more achievable. So that's our focus for the for the current period. Thank you. Just turning to the next question here. How much of the 3,300,000 sales pipeline is near term contracts versus longer term opportunities? Yeah. Do you want to take that, Aaron? Yeah. That's no problem. So, typically, it it it can take anywhere between a couple of months through to maybe six to nine months to fully go through the contracting process. Now we've been rebuilding the pipeline for eighteen months, So we have projects and opportunities that are in various stages of close.

39:04 The ones that are in late stage in in late in in the late stage, which is what we would define as likely to close within the next one to three months, is around 1,000,000 out of that 3,300,000. But, obviously, as we go forward in time, more of that pipeline will be replenished at the top end and more of it will move through. So, hopefully, we're in a position now where we can start more regularly closing opportunities out of the pipeline. Thank you. Of the 11 licensable APTAMER assets, which are expected to generate near term royalty or licensing income? Well, yeah, I think I just touched on this in one of my answers. But the enzyme modulation optimists, we've got, three of those that we've developed for the two companies that I talked about.

39:50 They've both performed well. We've got heads of terms in place there and, yeah, both companies have indicated I want to license those assets. So they look nearer term as does the folate binder that we've discussing with the global health organization. I think they're our our best opportunities for near term licensing revenue. Thank you. Just turning to the next question. The recent top three pharma contracts on radiopharmaceuticals suggest diversification into therapeutics and oncology. Is this now a key strategic focus area? Yes. I would say it absolutely is. Given the the kind of references I made to the potential, deal values and unmet needs within these particular market areas, I think our platform is well positioned to take advantage of its unique properties to enable us to move into that space.

40:48 So that will be almost certainly a key area of focus for us both in gene therapy delivery and also radionuclide delivery over the next twelve months and going forward. Perfect. The fibrotic liver delivery vehicle showed the reversal of scarring in lab tests. What are the next preclinical milestones, and what is the commercial potential? So the next preclinical milestone so we've we've done everything that we can do broadly in an in vitro setting, means in a in a test tube. So we've done all of the cell based assays, pro proven phenotype reversal, which is which is what that's referred to, to show that we can take cells that have become activated such that they show fibrotic phenotypes, and then we can reverse that by the the delivery in inverted commas of these s I RNA constructs. So the next phase of development would be to demonstrate this this functionality in an animal based model. So we're currently in discussions with providers of services that can do that and also looking at partnerships with pharma companies who would like to evaluate that technology within their own animal models.

42:01 In terms of value inflection points and value for the companies, I think value for the opportunity, if you look at any of these kind of opportunities, they come with potential for multiple tens of millions in downstream in in kind of research fees and and potentially hundreds of millions of downstream payments if you if you can demonstrate the correct functionality and efficacy of the molecules. So I think we stand as good a chance as as any pivoting into this particular space. Thank you. The next question we have here reads, can you provide updates on the advanced licensing negotiations for the enzyme modulating OPTIMA assets and expected timing of deal completions? So, yeah, I think, again, I'll probably cover this a little bit.

42:52 So those deals, obviously, we're working through the licensing and working through the the structure of those deals. This is a this will be a a new type of deal for us. It will require us to supply. And as I mentioned, with the use of proceeds, it requires us to be able to manufacture. So there'll be element of there'll be an element of supply agreement as well as having some, sort of royalty basis to to these agreements as well. In terms of the timing of the deals, it's hard to say. These have progressed really well. Like I say, we've progressed through heads of terms. We're now in contracting. We've had, with one of the customers. We've had, several turns of, licensing terms, that we've that we've been through.

43:41 So, yeah, they've they've reasonably advanced into but I'm not sure exactly when they will, complete. Hopefully, it's it's within, you know, weeks to months rather than than years. Yeah. Absolutely. Thank you. The next question we have here reads, what early traction have you seen for the new biomarker discovery service, and how material could this be to the future revenue? That's a good question. When we launched the the service a while back, within the first two days, we've had two or three opportunities that come into the pipeline just on the kind of announcement of the of it. That's those are now working their way through the pipeline.

44:27 For me, it's additional revenue that that wouldn't necessarily have been have been planned. In terms of value for the projects, you can do a quick Google search yourself. So I'm not providing any guidance on the kind of size of deals biomarker discovery. I think the the big value is in the identification of novel biomarkers for novel application areas. Those those can have significant values attached to them. So potentially, it could generate reasonably good additional revenue for the company for the fee for service side of things. But again, the the big upsides for it is the ownership and the licensing of the intellectual property on those biomarkers, particularly if they turn out to be novel. Or, for example, functional as a gateway for a drug delivery, application.

45:21 Thank you. If the on person testing with Unilever is successful, what kind of commercial milestones or royalties are linked to the APTAMA deodorants? That's a good question, and it's one we would love to know the answer to. At at the moment, we are in the process of going through the on skin safety studies with Unilever. Assuming success, we will be going through a process of manufacturability, which is kind of how you would prepare the the the APTAMERs for application in in deodorant products or or other products. And at that point, we would start to discuss the the BD terms, but I would hope that they would be pretty transformative to the company. Thank you. With headcount reduced to 30, how are you maintaining the capacity to deliver multiple commercial and r and d programs?

46:15 Again, that goes back to the the question previously with our high throughput liquid handling robots. And I think at the moment, we've we've got a potential with the current contracting. There's quite a lot of work coming in that will be done over the next several months. So we're looking at how we can maximize the use of automation internally to get more throughput out of the existing people. So automating things that are currently done manually outside of the existing automation processes. So what we would hope to be able to do there is increase bandwidth to handle more projects at once with the existing staff. It's just not been necessary to do that up until this point. Thank you. Just turning to the next question.

47:01 Will you retain IP ownership of all future APTAMER licensing deals? Yeah. That's a, again, a very good question. We it's important to to clarify ownership and the ability to generate revenue. So from downstream commercialization, so not every single opportunity, we will own the intellectual property. So in some cases, we may sign an agreement where the intellectual property is transferred to the customer, but it's not able to be commercialized unless market fair commercial terms are arrived at. But in general, the position that we start out at is that we retain intellectual property on everything that we do, and we offer fee for services kind of research services, and the molecules that are developed are our IP.

47:54 Thank you. How is AI and machine learning being incorporated into the discovery process, and is this expected to materially shorten development timelines? So this is quite a complicated question to answer. A lot of existing molecules that are considered to be undruggable are what's referred to as RNA binding proteins or nucleic acid binding proteins. So if you look at things like KRAS or, I believe, t d p 43, these are a couple of examples of target proteins. The current technologies will be trying to drug those molecules with antibodies or small molecules. Now if they're a natural nucleic acid binding molecule, it makes sense to me that a protein or a small molecule wouldn't be a a natural bedfellow for that if you're looking at modulating activity.

48:50 Our platform is based on nucleic acids, so they're obviously the a better molecule for modulating or interfering with RNA binding proteins. We've got fifteen years of data associated with interactions between nucleic acids and proteins. So collating and curating all of that data into a a a dataset that can then be uploaded and analyzed through machine learning tools is is pretty key, essentially, to adding value. Once we've done that, though, we'll be able to understand much more deeply how nucleic acids and proteins interact and how better to design APTAMER. So what we would hope is not only would it shorten the development process, but it would also lead to much better quality molecules for for drugging particular targets.

49:40 So that would obviously come with a with a with a requisite increase in value and therefore revenue into the company. So I hope that explains it. That's great. Who are your main competitors, and what is your competitive advantage against them? That's a good question. There a a number of companies all over the world, as I mentioned earlier, there's a handful of APTAMER companies around 20. I won't mention particular names for for obvious reasons. But our USP, as a company, I suppose, is that we have automated the selection process. We've got fifteen years experience in developing binders to various types of targets.

50:27 And whereas a lot of our competitors will only have one process for generating binders. We have three very, very different processes for isolating binders to different molecule classes, all of which are automated with high quality. And I think it would be fair to say that where our where our customers have gone to competitors in the past, we have very often picked up projects that have failed with other companies and being successful. Our competitors have failed, which is what leads me to believe that we're the the best out there for customer development and why we have 85% of the top 20 pharma companies as our partners. Thank you. When do you expect license income to pick up substantially? I can take this one, Aaron. So I think we've we've touched on where where we're near stages with some of the licensing of assets that we think have near term revenue potential.

51:26 So I guess, this current financial year will be, will give us a good indication of, you know, when that sort of licensing revenue will will will materialize. Clearly, we will be keen to make everyone aware when we start, getting revenues from licensing of assets. But, yeah, we hope that's gonna be in the near term. Thank you. Just moving on here. Can you say what percentage of turnover is attributed to licensing fees and royalties? So at the at the moment, we haven't got any revenues from from royalties, from license fees. We have a small amount, for production, if you like, for synthesis of of binders, but most of our revenue, comes from fee for service contracts at this stage.

52:17 This is our strategy now to start monetizing some of those assets that we've managed to retain IP on. That's been our our focus really for the last sort of eighteen months to two years to get us in this position where we can start generating licensing fees and because it's more passive income, and that that will just help, to get us to a point where we can get to breakeven and and beyond, and really shows the the value of the of the technology. Thank you. And just turning on to the final question here. The licensing deal with Glasgow University was announced some time ago. When do you expect to receive first income from this deal? Do you want that one now? Yeah. So that's an interesting question. So for for us, as far as we're aware, we would be expecting commercialization of that over the next twelve months.

53:10 That's pretty much what I understand to be to be the situation. I believe the University of Glasgow, during the development of that, already had a commercial partner, and they're working through the the processes of commercialization as we speak. That's great. Aaron, Andrew, thank you for answering all those questions you can from investors. And, of course, the company can review all questions submitted today, and we'll publish those responses on the investment company platform. Just before redirecting investors to provide you with their feedback, which I know is particularly important to the company, Aaron, could I please just ask you for a few closing comments? Yeah. I would just like to say thank you for taking the time to listen to the presentation, and thank you for your support and staying with the company and effectively being a good solid shareholder base.

53:59 Aaron, Andrew, thank you for updating investors today. Can I please ask investors not to close this session? It should now be automatically redirected to provide your feedback in order that the management team can better understand your views and expectations. This will only take a few moments to complete, and I'm sure will be greatly valued by the company. On behalf of the management team of APTAMER GROUP PLC, we'd like to thank you for attending today's presentation, and good afternoon to you all.