Oxford Biomedica H2 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

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April 9, 2025
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Frank Mathias
Frank Mathias
Chief Executive Officer at Oxford Biomedica

So good afternoon to everyone here in London, and also good morning to those who are joining us from overseas. Thank you for attending this call today, our analyst briefing for our 24 preliminary results. It's great to see so many people here in the room, known faces. Thank you for joining. But we have also a few people joining virtually.

Frank Mathias
Frank Mathias
Chief Executive Officer at Oxford Biomedica

So hello to everyone again. Presenting with me today, we have our Chief Financial Officer, Doctor. Lucy Creptree, who started to join us in September and has already made a significant impact during this short period. I'm also pleased to welcome our Chief Business Officer, Doctor. Sebastien Ribaud.

Frank Mathias
Frank Mathias
Chief Executive Officer at Oxford Biomedica

You are known, I believe, well here and a lot of you are familiar with him. So disclaimer. Let's before we dive in, let's start with our agenda for today. As you can see, we will start with an overview of the key achievements across the business, highlighting what sets up OXP apart from our peers and how our differentiated pure play CDMO strategy and cell and gene therapy continues to drive our success. I will then hand over to Sebastien to provide us an update on the strong momentum we are seeing on the commercial side, and then Lucie will take us through our financial performance before handing back to me to wrap up ahead of the Q and A session.

Frank Mathias
Frank Mathias
Chief Executive Officer at Oxford Biomedica

This is a nice slide. I would like to start by highlighting some of the key figures, which demonstrates OXP's outstanding financial performance in 2024. The company has achieved an impressive organic revenue growth of 81% with total revenues increasing by 44% to nearly £130,000,000 During 2024, our team grew the pipeline by 30% to and this is in dollar $570,000,000 and increased customer orders by 35% to in pounds again £186 We also delivered an EBITDA profit in the second half of the year. This strong business momentum fueled by growing order book and pipeline, reinforces our confidence in achieving both attractive growth and sustainable profitability in line with our forecast. These are all remarkable achievements in 2024.

Frank Mathias
Frank Mathias
Chief Executive Officer at Oxford Biomedica

So let me now elaborate on the successful execution on our pure play CDMO strategy, which we have started more than one year ago. By integrating our global activities, we have improved our client service, unlocked operational synergies and strengthened our position as a differentiated multi vector, multi site CDMO. In January, we completed the acquisition of OXP in France, formerly RBL Europe, expanding our operational footprint and ability to meet growing demand across Europe. Less than a year later, we successfully enabled lentiviral vector development and manufacturing capabilities at our France sites, complementing the offering of our facilities in The UK and US. In 2024, the company maintained its focus on quality and innovation, including the launch platform for better AAV production, technologies in GMP manufacturing to enhance vector yield and quality.

Frank Mathias
Frank Mathias
Chief Executive Officer at Oxford Biomedica

The FDA inspection of our Oxford manufacturing site in July resulted in zero written observations and this underscores for me the strength of our robust quality management system and commitment to the highest standards. Our focus on client centric excellence and an unmatched commitment to quality innovation position OXP as the global partner of choice for pharmaceutical and biotech clients at all stages of their development journey. The second column here in the middle highlights our strong commercial momentum, and Sebastian will come back to that, reflecting an increased demand for OXP specialized services and expertise across all vector segments. As already mentioned, the contracted value of client orders signed during the year reached approximately £186,000,000 an increase of approximately 35% and a significant improvement compared to last year or to the year before, sorry, 2023. Primarily driven by late stage lentiviral orders, these figures also include an increase in AAV client work with the number of contracts signed for AAV now almost as high as lentiviral vectors.

Frank Mathias
Frank Mathias
Chief Executive Officer at Oxford Biomedica

We are also pleased to see a rise in orders for other viral vectors, now representing approximately one third of our new contracts. But 2025 has also got off to a strong start with contracted client orders of £72,000,000 at the February, so after two months, providing excellent visibility on the year ahead. This momentum can be seen in the broader cell and gene therapy sector, forecast to grow at a CAGR of approximately 20% from 2025 through 02/1930 sorry, 02/1930, a market in which OXP is well positioned to thrive. Now returning to our excellent financial results, we have reported full year 2024 revenues of £128,800,000 marking a 44% increase over the last year and an organic revenue growth of 81% and Lucy will certainly come back to that. The strong revenue growth was driven by several factors including increased lentiviral vector manufacturing for clients in the clinical phase and those preparing for commercial launch, clients advancing their clinical development pathway and new contribution from OXP in France.

Frank Mathias
Frank Mathias
Chief Executive Officer at Oxford Biomedica

We also delivered a significant improvement in our operating EBITDAI, loss now at €15,300,000 for last year, which significantly narrowed by something around £37,500,000 compared to 2023. And we achieved a 5,000,000 operating EBITDA profit in the second half of twenty twenty four. All this is demonstrating our effective execution against our objective. This results together with strong commercial momentum and growing client demand, reinforces our confidence in delivering significant revenue growth and EBITDA profitability for full year 2025. Turning now to the next slide.

Frank Mathias
Frank Mathias
Chief Executive Officer at Oxford Biomedica

This is the first set of full year results we are presenting under our new brand IdentityOXB. Our global integrated network now provides clients with access to best in class platform technology and global capabilities across all three geographies: U. S, UK and Continental Europe. To reflect this evolution, we have rebranded as OXP last September, establishing a stronger, more distinctive visual identity whilst bringing all our sites under one new unified brand. At the heart of our continued success is our unique competitive positioning in viral vector manufacturing, a key driver of the strong performance we are announcing today and the foundation for sustained long term growth.

Frank Mathias
Frank Mathias
Chief Executive Officer at Oxford Biomedica

With over thirty years of manufacturing experience by now and deep expertise across lentiviral, AAV and other vector types, OXP is a truly vector agnostic partner trusted by global pharma, established biotech and emerging innovators alike. Our integrating offering spans the entire value chain from developments to GMP release, powered by world class facilities, scalable platforms and a team of leading experts in vector optimization. Our track record speaks for itself. Over nine sixty GMP batches delivered in the past decade, supporting more than 45 client programs, 30 INDs and more than 65 successful audits. OXP is now positioned as the global partner of choice with integrated capabilities and best in class platform technologies that continue to deliver for our clients and drive our growth.

Frank Mathias
Frank Mathias
Chief Executive Officer at Oxford Biomedica

And therefore, I would like now to hand over to Sebastien to provide us an update on the commercial pipeline and some market fundamentals.

Sébastien Ribault
Sébastien Ribault
Chief Business Officer at Oxford Biomedica

Thank you, Frank. I will start by repositioning Oxford Biomedica, OXB, within the global market environment. And it explains why we've been very successful at growing the company last year and continue to do so. The company made the decision back in 2022 to become a global organization. So Oxford Biomedica made that first decision to acquire a site in UK to deliver process, analytical development and clinical manufacturing from US.

Sébastien Ribault
Sébastien Ribault
Chief Business Officer at Oxford Biomedica

The integration of that site started in Q2 twenty twenty two. The integration of the site is final now. It was part of the one OXB strategy to make sure that we could deliver lengthy viral development and manufacturing from US, something that we do now very successfully and that we'll continue to do in the future. It wasn't the only part of the strategy. That wasn't only about expanding in U.

Sébastien Ribault
Sébastien Ribault
Chief Business Officer at Oxford Biomedica

S. It was also about expanding in Continental Europe to capture the programs executed in Continental Europe, but also make sure that we would have enough capacity to acquire clients coming from Asia Pacific. That's the case today with a network of sites: Bedford, Massachusetts Oxford, U. K. Lyon and Strasbourg in France.

Sébastien Ribault
Sébastien Ribault
Chief Business Officer at Oxford Biomedica

And with these four sites, three geographies, we are able to access 75% of the market. And when I'm saying 75%, and it's what you see on that slide, I'm not talking in business volume. It's not a pounds or a dollar value. It's the number of active programs in cell and gene therapy. It may be surprising that we address the Asia Pacific market from Europe and U.

Sébastien Ribault
Sébastien Ribault
Chief Business Officer at Oxford Biomedica

S, but I mean it's a fact that our Japanese clients are very happy to be served out of Bedford, Massachusetts. And we have very active discretion for execution of projects from Oxford for companies based in Korea or Australia, to give you only two examples. So we're very well positioned, geographically speaking, to address 75% of the market. And this 75% today fill our capacity, explaining in part our good results. The market keeps growing.

Sébastien Ribault
Sébastien Ribault
Chief Business Officer at Oxford Biomedica

I know that we talk a lot about the bad news, but if we're looking at what happened last year and what we plan for the next ten years, we still expect a growth of the market in terms of number of programs 20% year on year, at least up to 2,030, if I look at the best projections that we have so far. Why do we continue to see a strong market? Number of program continues to grow, clearly, for the different vector segments that we serve as a company. AAV is the fastest growth. And Frank mentioned the Innovate platform that is today delivered from the site in U.

Sébastien Ribault
Sébastien Ribault
Chief Business Officer at Oxford Biomedica

S. But also from the site in France, with a potential to deliver commercial activities from U. K. In the future. And the second and third fast growing markets are lentivirus, where historically, the company has always been very strong and where we see a lot of maturity, a lot of late stage activity came to us because the CDMOs that were serving this project didn't have the commercial track record and didn't have the commercial capacity and capabilities that we already had in place with the company.

Sébastien Ribault
Sébastien Ribault
Chief Business Officer at Oxford Biomedica

So that explains also why we've been growing nicely last year. The third one, and it will be the last that I will be mentioning here, adenoviruses. I mean you probably all remember the COVID times and Oxford Biomedica manufacturing the AstraZeneca COVID vaccine based on an adenovirus, and we continue to have adenovirus demand. Part of the reasons why we acquired the site in Strasbourg in France was also because they had experience in adenovirus manufacturing, and we have additional capacity from Continental Europe for projects that require a smaller scale of execution than what we deliver in Oxford for adenovirus projects. The long term drivers are still the same.

Sébastien Ribault
Sébastien Ribault
Chief Business Officer at Oxford Biomedica

We continue to see the shift from treatment to cure. There was recently, about a week ago or two weeks ago, an interesting article in Nature showing that the likelihood of success of a gene therapy program when it starts its Phase one is 2.5 times above any other drug: ADC, biologics, any other drug, 2.5x higher when it starts in Phase I. And the demographics have not changed. I mean there is still the same trends in demographics. So the market is strong, and I believe will continue to be around the 20% CAGR that Frank mentioned earlier, and that we see when we look at the projections in terms of projects.

Sébastien Ribault
Sébastien Ribault
Chief Business Officer at Oxford Biomedica

Number of program is one thing. Indication is a different one. You see on that slide the type of indication that can benefit from cell and gene therapy. There are many. Oncology is obviously the strongest segment.

Sébastien Ribault
Sébastien Ribault
Chief Business Officer at Oxford Biomedica

I don't believe it's a surprise. But CNS, central nervous system, ophthalmology, metabolic disorders are also very strong indications. The biggest change we've seen in the last years, and we're looking here on the right side of the slide at the period between 2022 and 2028, the biggest change is the number of patients that can today benefit from cell and gene therapy, below one hundred and fifty thousand before 2022, over one point six million from 2024 and continuing to 2028. So multiplied by more than 10 in less than ten years. And it's a trend that I believe will continue when I see the programs that are in development, not only with us, but with many other companies or CDMOs.

Sébastien Ribault
Sébastien Ribault
Chief Business Officer at Oxford Biomedica

And that's the reason why we have grown our pipeline significantly. And I'm going to start with the pipeline before moving to the number of contracts that we've signed. I often have the question, how do you know that your pipeline is healthy? Well, I know that the pipeline is healthy if we don't have discussions, but we have negotiations. Discussions, we don't know if the project is solid.

Sébastien Ribault
Sébastien Ribault
Chief Business Officer at Oxford Biomedica

We don't know if it's funded. We don't know if there is a sound strategy. When we're discussing, there is an ambition, but there is not a project yet. When we're moving to the negotiation stage that you see here in purple on the left, 62% of our pipeline, or when we're moving to the contract finalization, 29% of the pipeline, that's where we know there is something that is solid. 62% plus 29%, the vast majority of our pipeline are well advanced discussions where the clients want to work with us.

Sébastien Ribault
Sébastien Ribault
Chief Business Officer at Oxford Biomedica

And that's why we're actively working on the contract negotiation. But the maturity of the pipeline is not only about at which stage are we in the negotiation. The maturity of the pipeline is also what are the clinical stages of the programs that we negotiate at the moment. And if you look at what we have here on the right side of the slide, commercial activities or preparation for commercial launch, 32% of our pipeline. Phase 16% of our pipeline.

Sébastien Ribault
Sébastien Ribault
Chief Business Officer at Oxford Biomedica

So said differently, about 50% of the project on which we currently work with clients to finalize an agreement are between Phase III and commercial activities. That's where I see the maturity of our pipeline, and that's why I can say, yes, the pipeline is healthy. Looking at the pipeline, it's a big number, and we often have the question, is there behind? Behind the pipeline, there's the risk adjusted pipeline, where we have the probability of success of the program, the probability of success of the negotiation, comparing the value of the risk adjusted pipeline at the end of twenty twenty two to the value of that risk adjusted pipeline at the end of twenty twenty four, we've seen a growth of 61% of the risk adjusted pipeline. We chose that we're handling not only many more opportunities today than two years ago or even than last year, but the maturity of these opportunities in terms of business side is much higher than it was in the past.

Sébastien Ribault
Sébastien Ribault
Chief Business Officer at Oxford Biomedica

Is that coming from early stage activities or late stage activity? It's not fifty-fifty. It's 40 five-fifty five, as you see it in the middle of the slide here, but 45% of the activities on which we work in terms of percentage of potential revenue for the future, late stage activities. These are the Phase III and commercial activities I mentioned before. By vector type, if we had had that same discussion at the end of twenty twenty two, the vast majority, if not all the projects we were discussing, were lengthy, few exceptions, in the adenovirus space.

Sébastien Ribault
Sébastien Ribault
Chief Business Officer at Oxford Biomedica

As of the end of last year and even as of now, 50% of the pipeline, still antivirus projects, meaning that now Oxford Biomedica is really a company that is delivering on all vectors, including the adenoviruses and the AAVs that I mentioned before and a few others, but that didn't make it to this graph because we're talking really about a few exceptions. So we define our core offering with AAV and Lenti. The noncore is including many vectors, including adenoviruses. And you see here that the noncore is about 17% of the ongoing negotiation at the moment. Moving from opportunities to contract now.

Sébastien Ribault
Sébastien Ribault
Chief Business Officer at Oxford Biomedica

Frank said it's GBP 186,000,000 of signed order in 2024. We have happy clients. The client satisfaction is extremely high, I mean, the highest I've seen in my career, and kudos to our team for such an excellent job. And that's the reason why 53% of the opportunities we signed last year were coming from our existing clients, continuation of existing program, new programs that they have started with us. We have about one third of our existing client base working with us on multiple programs.

Sébastien Ribault
Sébastien Ribault
Chief Business Officer at Oxford Biomedica

47% of the opportunity is coming from new clients, not only new vectors, but new clients as well with existing vectors. If we're looking at the split between vectors, that's the biggest change we've seen compared to 2023. Seventy '6 percent of the contracts that we have signed last year were AV contracts. Again, to what we were two years ago with a massive number of lengthy projects and a few exceptions in AV or adenoviruses, seventy six percent of the new clients were on the AAV side, 12% on lenti, 12% on other vectors. And if we were, in the past, a company delivering from U.

Sébastien Ribault
Sébastien Ribault
Chief Business Officer at Oxford Biomedica

K. With a huge base of U. S. Clients, it's also changing. 65% of the opportunities that we won last year are opportunities coming from U.

Sébastien Ribault
Sébastien Ribault
Chief Business Officer at Oxford Biomedica

S. Still, but we have 30% coming from Europe now. And I mentioned Asia Pacific. It's today 5% of the contract we have signed in 2024, and I hope it will be growing this year as we expand our BD presence in Asia Pacific and in Europe as it was initially planned as part of the 1.0xB initiative. I will conclude on that slide before handing over to Lucy.

Sébastien Ribault
Sébastien Ribault
Chief Business Officer at Oxford Biomedica

When we're talking about the number of program, it's one thing. What is that covering exactly? That's what you see here on the slide. We have about onethree of the portfolio of active projects at the feasibility stage. Is it working?

Sébastien Ribault
Sébastien Ribault
Chief Business Officer at Oxford Biomedica

Yes, no, preparation for process development, meaning that twothree are between process development, Phase I, Phase II, Phase III and commercial activity. And if I look at the percentage of the late stage activities in the market and the same percentage of late stage activity with Oxford Biomedica, the OXB portfolio has a relatively high proportion of late stage activity. That's because we have the commercial track record. It's because we're manufacturing commercial products already and we've demonstrated that we knew how to successfully transfer a program from process development into manufacturing, then go through process characterization and validation to finally build inventory and help our clients launching their products. I started in that presentation talking about the many indications that can today benefit from cell and gene therapy.

Sébastien Ribault
Sébastien Ribault
Chief Business Officer at Oxford Biomedica

What you see here on the right side of the slide is the type of indications that we're covering. No surprise that we're covering the key indications that I showed earlier. The portfolio is diversified. The pipeline is diversified. That's why we had great results in 2024, and that's the reason why I am very optimistic for the 2025 results, but I will leave it to Lucy to dig more into these details.

Lucinda Crabtree
Lucinda Crabtree
CFO at Oxford Biomedica

Thank you, Sebastien.

Lucinda Crabtree
Lucinda Crabtree
CFO at Oxford Biomedica

So as you know, I joined the company seven months ago and have had the great pleasure to get to know the team and the business in this period. And I wanted to start by highlighting what a transformative year we had in 2024, much of which I can't take credit for, but certainly get the privilege to report to you today. As Frank mentioned earlier, we've had a standout year, impressive organic revenue growth of 81%, with total revenues increasing to £128,800,000 This growth was driven by an increase in manufacturing of GMP batches for clients in the clinic and those preparing for commercialization. We have also seen an increase in process development revenues, including from process characterization and validation work. For our twenty twenty four accounts, we have created two new reporting lines to replace the line previously disclosed as bioprocessing revenues.

Lucinda Crabtree
Lucinda Crabtree
CFO at Oxford Biomedica

We will go into this in more detail shortly however, this disclosure provides enhanced transparency. As mentioned by Frank and Sebastian, commercial momentum in 2024 was strong, and this trend has continued into 2025. We received £186,000,000 in client orders in 2024, and at the February, this stood at £72,000,000 for the first two months of twenty twenty five. Our revenue backlog is strong and stood at just under £200,000,000 at the February. This figure represents the amount of future revenue available to earn from current orders.

Lucinda Crabtree
Lucinda Crabtree
CFO at Oxford Biomedica

Our balance sheet remains strong and sufficient for our needs. Cash at year end stood at £60,700,000 with a net cash position of £20,600,000 I will go into more detail on our working capital movement shortly in order to give you this additional color. A key priority for me is ensuring that our business is set up for sustainable profitability. As such, we will continue to be disciplined on costs while having the resources to grow our business. Our operating EBITDA loss narrowed significantly in 2024 from a £52,800,000 loss in 2023 to a £15,300,000 loss in 2024.

Lucinda Crabtree
Lucinda Crabtree
CFO at Oxford Biomedica

The second half of twenty twenty four was positive on operating EBITDA for the group. While this was mainly driven by The UK, we saw narrowing losses in The U. S. And France, which is a step in the right direction for us as we target an operating profit EBITDA profit for the full year 2025. With our new revenue disclosure, we are able to show you the split between Manufacturing and Development Services.

Lucinda Crabtree
Lucinda Crabtree
CFO at Oxford Biomedica

Manufacturing services includes GMP manufacture for clients, including early stage clinical GMP manufacture and late stage activity. Development services includes process and analytical development across preclinical and early stage, but can also include late stage process characterization and validation work, which grew in 2024. We saw strong double digit growth in both areas, reflecting the diverse nature of our business. Another additional update is that we have added a new revenue line, procurement and storage services. This is part of our maturing position as a CDMO, where the standard approach to manufacturing includes providing clients the surety of sourcing, supply and storage of raw materials.

Lucinda Crabtree
Lucinda Crabtree
CFO at Oxford Biomedica

This is especially important for clients undergoing commercial preparation activities. Moving on to costs. I am pleased to report that we were able to deliver this impressive revenue growth without a significant increase in our cost base. In fact, on an operating expense basis, excluding impairment, our cost base decreased by 24% from £128,400,000 to £97,600,000 This is reduction of around £31,000,000 in line with the business commitment to reduce our annualized ongoing cost base by £30,000,000 which was communicated to you at the interim results in September 2023. Looking at an adjusted basis, which is the chart on the right, we split out the costs included within operating EBITDA, stripping out noncash charges, including, of course, depreciation, amortization and the share option charge and excluding the benefit of RDEC credits.

Lucinda Crabtree
Lucinda Crabtree
CFO at Oxford Biomedica

You will see that raw materials increased, which was a direct result of an increase in manufacturing and development activity. Manpower costs reduced due to the restructuring completed in 2023, while other costs remained relatively flat. It is our goal to continue looking at operational efficiencies and improved utilization rates on an ongoing basis. Next, I would like to discuss our cash position. We started 2024 with just under £104,000,000 of cash.

Lucinda Crabtree
Lucinda Crabtree
CFO at Oxford Biomedica

The net cash outflow during 2024 was £42,100,000 which was largely driven by the funding of our operations and by a negative working capital movement of £35,400,000 This working capital movement, as shown in the operating cash flow note in our release, is primarily driven by the year on year movement in trade and other receivables as a result of the high levels of activity in the latter part of 2024. With revenue growth in the second half of the year, this was in line with expectations, and we can expect this trend to continue in 2025 with the second half weighting of our activity again this year. Moving on to our expectations for 2025. As communicated in our trading update in February, we expect revenues of between 160,000,000 and £170,000,000 for the year. Importantly, of our current orders, GBP 141,000,000 relates to 2025, so over 80% of that revenue guidance is already covered by existing orders.

Lucinda Crabtree
Lucinda Crabtree
CFO at Oxford Biomedica

As Sebastien mentioned earlier, we have an impressive business development pipeline, which gives us confidence in achieving this revenue guidance. Considering we are still in the first few months of the year, this is impressive and worth noting that the GBP 141,000,000 order figure is higher than revenues reported for the whole of 2024. This is a stronger position than was communicated at the same time last year, where at the 2023 preliminary financial results, we had £82,000,000 of orders relating to 2024, which is equivalent to 64% of full year revenues. For operating EBITDA, we expect to achieve a low single digit million profit in 2025. Important to reemphasize, both revenues and EBITDA are expected to be second half weighted, as is usual for our business.

Lucinda Crabtree
Lucinda Crabtree
CFO at Oxford Biomedica

This is in part due to shutdowns and annual routine maintenance that occurs at the start of each year. In terms of CapEx, we will continue to take a disciplined approach to spend, with a focus on maintenance CapEx and certain key capital expenditure products throughout 2025. This is expected to be around the low double digit million range for the year. With our business sensitive to FX fluctuations due to revenues being receivable in U. S.

Lucinda Crabtree
Lucinda Crabtree
CFO at Oxford Biomedica

Dollars, sterling and euro, with certain expenditures payable in euro and U. S. Dollars also. This guidance excludes the impact of FX fluctuations. Beyond 2025, we reaffirm our existing financial guidance, which you will be familiar with.

Lucinda Crabtree
Lucinda Crabtree
CFO at Oxford Biomedica

We communicated a three year revenue CAGR of more than 35% for the years 2023 to 2026. This is based on the approximately £90,000,000 of revenue we had for the full year 2023. With the revenue growth of 44% for 2024, we are well on track for this and continue to target an over 35% CAGR for 2023 to 2026. For EBITDA, we continue to target operating EBITDA margins of approximately 20% by the end of twenty twenty six. Our expectations for 2026 include an increase in manufacture of GMP batches compared with 2025, primarily driven by commercial and late stage client activity.

Lucinda Crabtree
Lucinda Crabtree
CFO at Oxford Biomedica

Early stage GMP manufacturing is expected to increase as programs for new and existing clients advance into the clinic across UK, US and France. Looking beyond 2026, we look to continue to outperform the broader market. With the expectation of market growth of approximately 20% CAGR to 02/1930, and our continued strengthening competitive positioning as a CDMO focused on cell and gene therapy, we are confident we can exceed market growth. Our aim is to have a market leading position, not just within Lenti, but across all key viral vector types. As Sebastien mentioned, explained earlier, sorry, we have the right building blocks to achieve this with our thirty year track record, diverse client portfolio and the ability to service clients globally.

Lucinda Crabtree
Lucinda Crabtree
CFO at Oxford Biomedica

We are confident in our ability to deliver. Longer term, we expect manufacturing revenues as a proportion of total revenues to increase from approximately 50% in 2024 to circa 70% in 2029. With a growing top line, we expect to benefit from operating leverage and to also target continued margin expansion throughout this period. As I wrap up the financial section, I want to leave you with this. We're at the start of a long term growth journey.

Lucinda Crabtree
Lucinda Crabtree
CFO at Oxford Biomedica

We're building a disciplined, scalable business with strong growth expected through 2026 and continued margin expansion with the potential to outperform the market beyond that. I've taken a hard look at the fundamentals, and I believe what we've guided is not just deliverable, it's the foundation for something bigger. With a sharp focus on cost discipline and sustained revenue growth, we're entering a phase of real opportunity. These results reflect not just strong commercial and financial momentum, but a step change in delivery and a management team focused on execution. The team has delivered what we set out to achieve for full year 2024, and we're determined to keep meeting, if not exceeding expectations.

Lucinda Crabtree
Lucinda Crabtree
CFO at Oxford Biomedica

I'm genuinely excited about what's ahead, and my focus remains laser sharp on driving earnings momentum and delivering value in the next chapter. Thank you. I'll now pass to Frank.

Frank Mathias
Frank Mathias
Chief Executive Officer at Oxford Biomedica

Thank you so much, Lucy. Very nice figures, very encouraging figures and a very strong outlook for the years to come. So let me just briefly turn to our vision, mission and values, which drive everything we do at As part of our transformation in 2024, we took the opportunity to sharpen how we express these core elements. Our vision is to transform lives through cell and gene therapy, and our mission is to enable our clients to deliver life changing therapies to their patients. Supporting this are our new values that we launched last year in the summer.

Frank Mathias
Frank Mathias
Chief Executive Officer at Oxford Biomedica

We call them the four Rs of our DNA at Responsible, responsive, resilient and respect are principles that guide how we work and how we grow as a business. As we look ahead now, this clear sense of purpose will continue to guide our strategy and shape the future. Today's results, I believe, speaks volumes about the progress we have made over the last year and more importantly, how OXP is positioned to capitalize on the significant growth opportunities ahead. Our clear strategy, delivered by a highly experienced team under one OAXP, is already driving successful business transformation. As mentioned, we continue to see strong market demand for our CDMO services, both in terms of our growing client base and the 35% increase in contracted client orders.

Frank Mathias
Frank Mathias
Chief Executive Officer at Oxford Biomedica

This reflects clients recognizing the value of our multivector expertise and integrated global network. While lentiviral vectors remains the majority of clinical stage and commercial program in our portfolio, the number of projects for AV and other vector types is growing, with early stage projects providing the foundation for future growth. With capabilities and infrastructure in place to support clients across all stages of clinical development in cell and gene therapy, we are well placed to grow our global portfolio and increase market share across all vector types. As a result, and as it was mentioned by Lucie, we affirm our expectation for 2025. We are on track to achieve significant growth revenue consistent with our medium term guidance, which is above all industry levels.

Frank Mathias
Frank Mathias
Chief Executive Officer at Oxford Biomedica

And we are also on track to reach operating EBITDA profitability for the full year 2025. Now before we come to the Q and A session and open the floor for questions, I want to take a moment to sincerely thank our employees across The U. S, U. K, and France for their dedication, hard work, and ability to embrace change. Our pure play CDMO strategy and the sound and the foundation we have cemented in 2024, such as operational excellence and exceptional team, strategic client relationships and technological innovation, together with strong financial results and commercial momentum provide a robust platform for scaling our business and creating long term value for all our stakeholders.

Frank Mathias
Frank Mathias
Chief Executive Officer at Oxford Biomedica

So we will now start to take your questions first from the room before we then open for the conference call. Sofia?

Charles Weston
Charles Weston
Senior Healthcare Analyst at RBC Capital Markets

Hi. It's Charles Weston from RBC. Thanks for taking the questions. Three, if I can, please. The first on tariffs.

Charles Weston
Charles Weston
Senior Healthcare Analyst at RBC Capital Markets

I know that we don't know what they are yet, but can you talk about what your exposure might be? And specifically, whether you're in charge of exporting from The U. K. To The U. S.

Charles Weston
Charles Weston
Senior Healthcare Analyst at RBC Capital Markets

Or whether you deliver well, I suppose, whether you deliver to your customer at the factory? Second, on the market environment, things seem to have turned worse in the last month or two. Obviously, you had a lot of contracts signed in the first couple of months. But has the nature of your discussion with your biotech customers, in particular, changed in the last month or few weeks? And if not, perhaps, why not?

Charles Weston
Charles Weston
Senior Healthcare Analyst at RBC Capital Markets

And then lastly, just on the guidance for margin in 2026. You talked about an exit rate of 20%, roughly 20%. Does that mean a second half does exit mean second half basically? And what might it mean for the full year?

Frank Mathias
Frank Mathias
Chief Executive Officer at Oxford Biomedica

So we have three questions. Tariffs, market environment and guidance, let's perhaps start with the tariffs and Charles, can we say. The only thing we can say is that we currently monitor all this very seriously. Up to yesterday, it was said probably notaries for pharmaceuticals. It apparently changed overnight.

Frank Mathias
Frank Mathias
Chief Executive Officer at Oxford Biomedica

So we'll consider all this. However, we are, I believe, in a good position. We have a site in U. S. We're able to produce out of U.

Frank Mathias
Frank Mathias
Chief Executive Officer at Oxford Biomedica

S. We have even started to make some investments there prior to all this announcement. So I believe we see that the value of having a footprint in U. S. Is growing obviously.

Frank Mathias
Frank Mathias
Chief Executive Officer at Oxford Biomedica

So I believe we are, and that's what we have started to do since eighteen months. We are a very agile organization. We are able to adapt to multiple situation, and that's exactly what we will do. We'll look at it. We'll react accordingly.

Frank Mathias
Frank Mathias
Chief Executive Officer at Oxford Biomedica

If we need to increase production in US, we'll do it. We will look at our supply chains and everything. I I believe we are we are observing this not just since yesterday. We do this on a permanent basis, and therefore, I believe we cannot exactly say what might be the impact, but I believe it be below. And if I look at how many is coming out of of Europe going to U.

Frank Mathias
Frank Mathias
Chief Executive Officer at Oxford Biomedica

S, you might answer this one.

Lucinda Crabtree
Lucinda Crabtree
CFO at Oxford Biomedica

I mean, it's relatively modest, to be honest, Charles. It's I mean, obviously, we're going to be tracking this quite significantly. We have some, you know, materials that we source outside of The U. S. Into The U.

Lucinda Crabtree
Lucinda Crabtree
CFO at Oxford Biomedica

S, but actually, it's a very modest a very, very modest part of our cost base as it stands.

Frank Mathias
Frank Mathias
Chief Executive Officer at Oxford Biomedica

That's, I the beauty of the pandemic, where we learned how we need to adapt supply chains very quickly, and we will be able to do this again. Environment?

Sébastien Ribault
Sébastien Ribault
Chief Business Officer at Oxford Biomedica

First, to your point, are we exporting to U. S? No. We deliver the drug at the door of our facility in U. K, so we're not exporting to U.

Sébastien Ribault
Sébastien Ribault
Chief Business Officer at Oxford Biomedica

S. And indeed, the market is changing with this tariff discussion. And I mean, the market is constantly changing anyway. I showed it. Oncology is still the biggest indication.

Sébastien Ribault
Sébastien Ribault
Chief Business Officer at Oxford Biomedica

There are many others. So I mean, the market constantly evolves. Tariff is one additional factor we have to take into account. There may be some benefits for OXB because we have a site in The U. S, because we made the decision two years ago to look at the expansion plans to make sure that, that site would be commercial soon enough, something that we started way before the tariffs discussion.

Sébastien Ribault
Sébastien Ribault
Chief Business Officer at Oxford Biomedica

And we still are on track to have a commercial ready facility in 2026 in U. S. So if we had demand from our clients to deliver the commercial product in U. S. For U.

Sébastien Ribault
Sébastien Ribault
Chief Business Officer at Oxford Biomedica

S, we would be able to do so in a few quarters from now. Again, did that decision have anything to do with the tariff? The answer is no, but it will be ready anyway in case that is necessary. Have we seen a change in the discussions with our clients? Not that much.

Sébastien Ribault
Sébastien Ribault
Chief Business Officer at Oxford Biomedica

Why? I don't think that any client who's today in Phase II or Phase III and ready to move to the commercial stage, I don't think that any of them are holding their breath waiting for what's going be next on CNN. There is a clinical program. Patients are treated. We're not interrupting the supply of drugs to patients.

Sébastien Ribault
Sébastien Ribault
Chief Business Officer at Oxford Biomedica

They don't interrupt the supply of drugs to patients. So we continue the discussion. On the very early stage activities, the 14 programs that I showed at feasibility stage, indeed, some of them may delay the start of process development activity if they have difficulties accessing funds. But as of now, it's not something that happened. We've seen two of our clients asking more details about the time line of our U.

Sébastien Ribault
Sébastien Ribault
Chief Business Officer at Oxford Biomedica

S. Facility. Does that mean that they've changed anything in their request to OXB in terms of timing? The answer is no. We continue on the same time line.

Sébastien Ribault
Sébastien Ribault
Chief Business Officer at Oxford Biomedica

We haven't seen any change in timing for 2025. I cannot even say that those who plan to file BLA in 2026 have changed their plan either. I was discussing with our Head of Business Development who's on I mean, I have two Head of Business Development in The U. S, East Coast and West Coast. And I was talking with the one in charge of the West Coast yesterday, telling me that she even had additional demand to accelerate a BLF that is planned Q1 next year.

Sébastien Ribault
Sébastien Ribault
Chief Business Officer at Oxford Biomedica

So the environment may be difficult. Again, people are not holding their breath. They continue doing their work.

Frank Mathias
Frank Mathias
Chief Executive Officer at Oxford Biomedica

So this brings us to the guidance.

Lucinda Crabtree
Lucinda Crabtree
CFO at Oxford Biomedica

So guidance, yes, you're absolutely right, Charles. Operating EBITDA margins of approximately 20% by the end of twenty twenty six. This is an we're pointing to an exit rate. But I can tell you, I mean, the business, the management team couldn't be more focused on driving continued margin expansion. That is as well as revenue growth, that is a real priority for us, and that's looking across the board on operational efficiencies, utilization rates, key contracts, managing inflation, all of those sorts of things that you might expect.

Lucinda Crabtree
Lucinda Crabtree
CFO at Oxford Biomedica

So what you will see from us is a commitment to continued margin expansion.

Andy Smith
Life Science Analyst at Equity Development

Andy Smith from Equity Development. I've got just a couple of questions actually. The first one, I'm hearing a lot or am I reading a lot on CAR T for inflammatory diseases or autoimmune diseases. Do you have to do anything different with an antiviral vector for an inflammatory indication than you would do for an oncology indication? And then secondly, following up on sort of Charles' question on tariffs, sorry, Lucy.

Andy Smith
Life Science Analyst at Equity Development

Does the appearance of the procurement services line in your accounts, does that mean that clients have been over ordering ahead of the prospect of tariffs? Or is that something am I reading that wrong?

Lucinda Crabtree
Lucinda Crabtree
CFO at Oxford Biomedica

No, that's not the case. That's a completely separate situation. I mean this is a situation where clients want the surety. Where we've got binding forecasts for demand, we need to have the surety that we cater for that

Frank Mathias
Frank Mathias
Chief Executive Officer at Oxford Biomedica

binding So they all

Frank Mathias
Frank Mathias
Chief Executive Officer at Oxford Biomedica

go in advance, but not necessarily for prospects of tariffs.

Lucinda Crabtree
Lucinda Crabtree
CFO at Oxford Biomedica

Yes. And we provide a service there in terms of storage, procurement of, you know, exactly what it says. I think you should see that completely separate from the tariff situation.

Andy Smith
Life Science Analyst at Equity Development

And

Andy Smith
Life Science Analyst at Equity Development

then on CAR T for inflammatory diseases, it's a big market, right? You have capacity for that?

Sébastien Ribault
Sébastien Ribault
Chief Business Officer at Oxford Biomedica

We have capacity for that. We have a number of clients working in that space with us. The process is exactly the same. Absolutely no change. But you're absolutely right.

Sébastien Ribault
Sébastien Ribault
Chief Business Officer at Oxford Biomedica

It opens a very big market. So we're very excited by the opportunities to develop lentiviruses for this space with our clients.

Frank Mathias
Frank Mathias
Chief Executive Officer at Oxford Biomedica

This is in line with what Sebastian has shown previously. When we think about lenti, we think immediately in terms of oncology, but there are a lot of additional areas.

John Priestner
John Priestner
Equity Research Analyst at JP Morgan

John Priesten, JPMorgan. Just a couple from me, if I may. So first of all, thinking about the 2025 guidance and the revenue phasing, should we think that this is similar to 2024, a kind of forty-sixty split and actually the relative growth should be pretty even for 2025? And then also thinking about what that means for operating EBITDA, would it be right to think that it's most likely that there would be an operating EBITDA loss in H1 twenty twenty five? And then maybe just one more on the pipeline.

John Priestner
John Priestner
Equity Research Analyst at JP Morgan

In terms of what you reported for the unadjusted BD pipeline, I believe the absolute value was relatively flat from what you reported in September. So just were there any movements in terms of projects under that top line? And do you expect to continue to be able to grow that BD pipeline? Or are you kind of capturing the maximum opportunity you can with what you currently have and you'd need to make further expansions to kind of access more of an opportunity? Thank you.

Frank Mathias
Frank Mathias
Chief Executive Officer at Oxford Biomedica

Thank you so much. We start with guidance 2025 and the phasing.

Lucinda Crabtree
Lucinda Crabtree
CFO at Oxford Biomedica

Yes. So that's an easy one. I think you should assume a similar weighting in H2, as we've said. And I don't think your assumptions on operating EBITDA are misguided either.

Frank Mathias
Frank Mathias
Chief Executive Officer at Oxford Biomedica

Pipeline movements?

Sébastien Ribault
Sébastien Ribault
Chief Business Officer at Oxford Biomedica

Yes. It's actually a very good question. And we had an interesting discussion, Frank, Lucia and I, about the pipeline in general and the risk adjusted pipeline. And the question was, how far do you plan to go the pipeline? And my answer was, I'm not planning to go the pipeline.

Sébastien Ribault
Sébastien Ribault
Chief Business Officer at Oxford Biomedica

I'm planning to keep the pipeline stable. I'm planning to grow the number of signatures. Because when you look at the risk adjusted pipeline, keep in mind, and that's your question, that anything that goes out falls off that number and needs to be replaced by something else. So it means that when we signed GBP 186,000,000 last year, which is more or less the size of the risk adjusted pipeline, we replaced by the same amount, dollars or pounds wise, of opportunities to fill the GMP suites and process development labs for the next year. So we signed pretty much the entire risk adjusted pipeline, and that was replaced by other opportunities.

Sébastien Ribault
Sébastien Ribault
Chief Business Officer at Oxford Biomedica

So my ask to the BD team is to make sure that we continue to grow the maturity of the pipeline. I want to see more late stage activities. I want to see more projects ready for routine manufacturing. I want to see more large volume projects where we can anticipate the need for manufacturing, which makes my colleague's job in operations easier in terms of planning for the future years. I want more GMP suites fully booked for next year, which is already the case.

Sébastien Ribault
Sébastien Ribault
Chief Business Officer at Oxford Biomedica

We have two of our suites fully booked for 2026 already now. So I want more of that. I want a more mature pipeline. But value wise, I would like to keep the risk adjusted pipeline around $200,000,000 to the question why is it in dollars when the rest of the numbers are in pounds. Because with a majority of the contracts negotiated in dollars, I want to make sure we don't see the FX impact on the pipeline value.

Sébastien Ribault
Sébastien Ribault
Chief Business Officer at Oxford Biomedica

So that's why so keeping it stable but increasing the maturity.

Frank Mathias
Frank Mathias
Chief Executive Officer at Oxford Biomedica

Let me translate this from French to English. When you say you want to see, you see it already. Okay, you see it already, or what you want to see.

Sophia Bolhassan
Sophia Bolhassan
VP - Head of Investor Relations at Oxford Biomedica

We'll now take one more question two more questions in the room, and then we'll move over to the phone line.

Analyst

Thank you. Just wondering if you're beginning to see any impact of the changes that have gone through at the FDA?

Sébastien Ribault
Sébastien Ribault
Chief Business Officer at Oxford Biomedica

Not at all. Zero. No change in the cadence of our clients meeting with the FDA. No change in the inspection timing. Nothing.

Sébastien Ribault
Sébastien Ribault
Chief Business Officer at Oxford Biomedica

But the news was, I mean, two weeks ago. So these programs are multi year programs, so I don't expect to see in two weeks any change.

Analyst

There was some disruption earlier in the year, so I was wondering if any of that had come through initially?

Sébastien Ribault
Sébastien Ribault
Chief Business Officer at Oxford Biomedica

No. Not

Sébastien Ribault
Sébastien Ribault
Chief Business Officer at Oxford Biomedica

at all.

Analyst

Excellent. And I was wondering, does the effect of what's going on now change where you're looking at investing as far as U. S. Versus U. K?

Sébastien Ribault
Sébastien Ribault
Chief Business Officer at Oxford Biomedica

I mean we mentioned during the presentation, Frank first and me, I the 1.0xB initiative started almost two years ago now. We made the investment decision. Either we were very wise or very lucky, but we had plans to invest in U. S. And Continental Europe, and we are growing very well in U.

Sébastien Ribault
Sébastien Ribault
Chief Business Officer at Oxford Biomedica

S. And Continental Europe. And the capacity we had in U. K. Was sufficient for the planned 2023 to 2028.

Sébastien Ribault
Sébastien Ribault
Chief Business Officer at Oxford Biomedica

It's still sufficient. Will we see upside from some of the clinical projects where we see a request for acceleration. There may be upsides, but even with these upsides, the investment plan that we made will be sufficient for the next, let's say, three years. So we've made the good decisions in the past. We're benefiting from these decisions today.

Jens Lindqvist
Senior Equity Research Analyst - Healthcare at Investec

Jens Lenkowitz from Investec. A couple of quick ones for me. First of all, in statement, you referred to a postponed investment in Auxbox manufacturing capacity. Just wondering if you could provide a bit more color on the rationale for that. And also secondly on I think you've been a little bit more explicit this time in stripping out FX movements from your financial guidance.

Jens Lindqvist
Senior Equity Research Analyst - Healthcare at Investec

Can you just remind me, please, what the main sensitivities are at that EBITDA?

Lucinda Crabtree
Lucinda Crabtree
CFO at Oxford Biomedica

So in terms of FX, I mean a big majority of our revenues are in dollar denominated. We have a sort of a proportion of our costs that are also dollar, but not to the same percentage. So strong dollar, good for revenue.

Sébastien Ribault
Sébastien Ribault
Chief Business Officer at Oxford Biomedica

On the Auxbox expansion, that plan was built in 2022 and was not activated because the long range plan shows that we will not need additional capacity in OXXOX before at least 2029. That's the reason why if we activate it, we think today that we will activate it around 2028, but that was already the case last year and even the year before. So if we need to accelerate, the plan is ready. But as of now, there's no need or plan for an active investment short term in Auxbox.

Sophia Bolhassan
Sophia Bolhassan
VP - Head of Investor Relations at Oxford Biomedica

We're now moving on to questions on the phone.

Operator

Thank We will now take our first question from Rick Ginkowski of Cantor Fitzgerald. Please go ahead.

Rick Bienkowski
Analyst at Cantor Fitzgerald

Hi, good afternoon and thanks for taking the questions. And I really appreciate the level of detail you've been able to share with us today. First, just a quick follow-up on U. S. Tariffs.

Rick Bienkowski
Analyst at Cantor Fitzgerald

Do you anticipate any potential increase in input costs for manufacturing in The U. S. That could materially affect your COGS based on where the starting materials are sourced from? And second, you already touched on this a bit, but it looks like the greatest opportunities for revenue growth are through the conversion of late stage clients to commercial and from early stage clinical to late stage clinical. So could you speak to the historical stickiness of clients as they transposition between development stages and how you're currently thinking about the probabilities of success for your clients' programs?

Lucinda Crabtree
Lucinda Crabtree
CFO at Oxford Biomedica

Shall I start with tariffs? Look, I mean, this is all sort of breaking news and evolving. So we can't sit here today and say we're sort of shielded completely from the impact of tariffs. But on initial look, it's not something that's unduly concerning us. I think at this juncture, we believe the exposure is manageable.

Lucinda Crabtree
Lucinda Crabtree
CFO at Oxford Biomedica

But never say never, and we'll continue to monitor this and risk mitigate as where possible. Like I said earlier, for example, in The U. S, we bring in very sort of small relatively small quantum of raw materials outside of The U. S. Into The U.

Lucinda Crabtree
Lucinda Crabtree
CFO at Oxford Biomedica

S. For our U. S. Development activities, for example. So I would expect that impact to be modest.

Lucinda Crabtree
Lucinda Crabtree
CFO at Oxford Biomedica

But look, it's evolving. But at this stage, we're not unduly concerned yet.

Sébastien Ribault
Sébastien Ribault
Chief Business Officer at Oxford Biomedica

On the conversion of clients, I don't believe that what we see is different from any clinical data you will find out there. The vast majority of the project fail in clinic. But if they are successful, they stay with us. I cannot remember in the past two years any client who decided to leave OXB after successful development in Phase one, they all stayed with us. So I don't think we enjoy a higher conversion rate.

Sébastien Ribault
Sébastien Ribault
Chief Business Officer at Oxford Biomedica

We just enjoy a high client satisfaction and the clients stay with us. This being said, we also see a constant flow of companies coming to us saying, we decided to work with a local CDMO. They did a good job in Phase one. They don't have the capabilities for Phase three. They don't have experience in commercial.

Sébastien Ribault
Sébastien Ribault
Chief Business Officer at Oxford Biomedica

Can we take transfer the project to you guys? Can you support the tech transfer in? And that's coming on top of the conversion of existing clients. So we see a bit of both. It's probably twothree to onethree.

Sébastien Ribault
Sébastien Ribault
Chief Business Officer at Oxford Biomedica

Twothree are existing clients who progress and onethree are clients coming to us asking for help on Phase III and commercial activities. But again, I don't think we see a different conversion rate than others.

Operator

Thank you. There are no further questions in queue. I will now hand it back to Frank Matthias, CEO, for closing remarks.

Frank Mathias
Frank Mathias
Chief Executive Officer at Oxford Biomedica

Thank you. Thank you so much. So I would like to thank you all for having been part of this session today. Thank you for your time, for your attention, but also for your thoughtful questions. The year 2024 was a significant year, a year transition as we have announced it at the beginning of last year and I believe we made it very successful year.

Frank Mathias
Frank Mathias
Chief Executive Officer at Oxford Biomedica

We appreciate your support. Thank you for that and I wish you now a good end of the day wherever you are, I mean for those here at the end of the day being earlier than for those in The U. S. That's what I wanted to say. Thank you so much.

Sébastien Ribault
Sébastien Ribault
Chief Business Officer at Oxford Biomedica

Thank you.

Executives
    • Frank Mathias
      Frank Mathias
      Chief Executive Officer
    • Sébastien Ribault
      Sébastien Ribault
      Chief Business Officer
Analysts
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CrossFirst Bankshares H2 2024
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