Robert Lyne
Analyst · Peel Hunt
Thank you, Allison. Welcome, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. We are at a pivotal moment in the company's trajectory. Having announced our near-term operational focus in December, I'm pleased today to walk you through our refined strategy and portfolio progress. This next phase of our evolution is designed to translate our proven innovation model into greater shareholder value. As a reminder, PureTech is a Boston-based LSE-listed biotherapeutics company operating a hub-and-spoke model with a proven clinical and financial track record. Programs originate within the PureTech hub based on a thesis of targeting molecules with validated pharmacology and are then advanced through early clinical and technical derisking. At defined value inflection points, we scale them through founded entities backed primarily by external capital. This model is both powerful and differentiated for two reasons. First, it improves how we innovate. We focus on opportunities where the underlying mechanism has already shown evidence in humans, allowing us to reduce technical risk while improving probability of success. Secondly, it improves how we allocate capital. By leveraging external capital at the founded entity level, we maintain portfolio breadth, preserve balance sheet strength and retain long-term upside through equity milestones and royalties. Because we develop these programs internally, we typically begin with full ownership of assets and proprietary IP to which we can attach nondilutive milestones and royalties. This means that in contrast to traditional venture capital investors, we do not need to continue to write large checks for every subsequent funding round in order to preserve a meaningful equity stake. Instead, our model allows for prudent equity dilution, allowing us to retain large equity positions in multiple founded entities whilst they diversify their own shareholder registers. Having a balanced shareholder register makes it easier to raise external equity and is vital if our founded entities are to IPO. Throughout this process, our royalties and milestones are protected, providing optionality for derisking ahead of inflection points and preservation of long-term value for PureTech. This result is a model designed to create superior overall financial returns while limiting concentration risk. Through this model, we have developed meaningful clinical and regulatory success. We have generated 3 FDA-approved therapeutics from our innovation engine to date, including the schizophrenia treatment, Cobenfy. We've also achieved substantial cash flow, generating over 1 billion growth from monetization of our economics in our founded entities, all while continuing to build a diversified pipeline of future opportunities. Looking ahead, our focus is clear: sharpen execution, strengthen capital discipline and ensure that PureTech's distinctive model continues to translate breakthrough science into meaningful value for both patients and shareholders. To deliver on our strategy, we have focused on 4 pillars of operational refinement, a streamlined structure. We intend to operate a significantly leaner and more efficient hub following the completion of the CLA financing. As part of this initiative, we announced this morning our intention to voluntarily delist from NASDAQ, recognizing that the vast majority of our trading remains on the LSE some 5 years after our initial NASDAQ list. This step simplifies our structure and reduces cost and administrative burden for the business, whilst retaining our primary London listing, providing access to both U.K. and global investment community. Launching founded entities early. In recent years, we've advanced certain programs further internally before transitioning them to founded entities. While this allows us to retain larger equity stakes, it required greater capital and operational infrastructure at the PureTech hub level. Going forward, we intend to establish and capitalize these entities earlier in the development life cycle once programs have reached key clinical value inflection points. Since return on capital is typically higher early in the cycle, this approach will allow for the creation of a greater number of founded entities. And we believe, therefore, that overall financial performance from the portfolio will improve. A refined innovation focus. Our innovation engine remains the foundation of future growth. Led by my colleague, Eric Elenko, our expanding innovation team continues to progress their work with this goal in -- over the next 3 years, we plan to generate up to 2 development candidates, each of which has the potential to become a new founded entity supported by external capital, allowing us to drive the next wave of growth for PureTech. Moving to capital returns. Finally, this refreshed strategy strengthens our capital discipline and enhances our flexibility. To ensure shareholders benefit directly from our success, we intend to return a greater proportion of future cash generation to shareholders, particularly in the event of an outsized return, whilst maintaining appropriate operational runway for the business. PureTech's value today is underpinned by multiple distinct components. These include our economics in Cobenfy, Seaport Therapeutics, Celea Therapeutics and Gallop Oncology as well as an innovation engine capable of generating future opportunities. We believe this diversified structure is a meaningful strategic advantage and one that is not fully reflected in our current valuation. Across our portfolio, I'm pleased with the progress that was made during 2025 and so far this year. Celea is our most clinically advanced founded entity developing deupirfenidone for the treatment of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. Deupirfenidone demonstrated a robust efficacy with the potential to replace standard of care treatments in its Phase IIb trial and is now Phase III ready. I'm pleased to share today that Celea's fundraising is substantially complete, subject to continued negotiations. Plea has secured multiple nonbinding commitments from external investors in addition to participation from PureTech. Whilst mindful of macro factors, Celea is targeting to close the financing by early in the third quarter of 2026. The financing is intended to support the Phase III SURPASS-IPF trial, which Celea expects to commence in close proximity to closing the financing. This would represent an important value inflection point both for Celea and for PureTech. Next is Gallop, which is another founded entity, which we currently own 100% of. Last week, we announced positive top line data from the Phase Ib trial of LYT-200 in relapsed/refractory high-risk myelodysplastic syndrome, or MDS, and relapsed/refractory acute myeloid leukaemia. We are pleased with the data, which guided our strategic focus to advance LYT-200 for relapsed/refractory high-risk MDS. Gallop is now preparing to engage with the FDA regarding a potentially registration-enabling trial design in this indication. As Eric will discuss shortly, we believe Gallop represents another strong example of our model in action, differentiated science, disciplined development and the ability to attract external capital at the appropriate stage. Seaport is our most operating advanced founded entity. The company has progressed 2 clinical trials for neuropsychiatric conditions in 2025 and 2026. And as many of you will have seen, Seaport filed a registration statement for a potential initial public offering on NASDAQ. This progress further validates our ability to create and scale attractive stand-alone biotechnology companies from within the PureTech hub-and-spoke model. Beyond our core founded entities, we also retained rights to Cobenfy, a commercial stage product that originated in our innovation engine. PureTech is a co-inventor of Cobenfy, which we house in a founded entity called Karuna Therapeutics. Karuna was acquired by Bristol-Myers Squib $14 billion, though we continue to hold significant non-dilutive economic rights. Based on current analyst consensus of BMS sales expectations, the projected value of PureTech is approximately $160 million from these rights through 2033. Due to the nature of our Cobenfy economics, we are only exposed to the early performance of Cobenfy sales and any reduction in analyst forecast of early sales, even if modest, can therefore have a material impact on projected inflows. Nonetheless, we expect substantial financial inflows of PureTech from COBENFY and are confident that it will improve the lives of large numbers of patients around the world. Going forward, we intend to provide regular updates to PureTech's economic forecast of Cobenfy sales based upon evolving marketing consensus at important points during our earnings webcast in the future. We also note that any monetization events from any of our funded entities, including the Cobenfy economics, represent pure upside. We do not factor any potential inflows from these entities into our runway assumptions. Indeed, whilst we have the option to collect royalties and milestones as they fall due, we also have the flexibility to monetize such rights ahead of time. This was the case with Cobenfy, where we have already secured approximately $125 million in payments to date from a previous royalty sale. This provided PureTech with capital that is unaffected by future commercial sales fluctuations and demonstrates our disciplined approach to structuring founded entities and managing upside thoughtfully. Beyond these founded entities, we also maintain the interest in what I'll call our legacy holdings. These are historical founded entities that continue to have the potential to be a source of capital to us, but they are not a current focus of our capital allocation, nor do we currently expect them to have a material impact on the overall value of PureTech moving forward. As our founded entities continue to mature and secure external funding, we intend to provide greater transparency around valuation benchmarks where appropriate. This is consistent with our capital-efficient model of maintaining a lean hub while creating value through externally financed founded entities. It also builds on Seaport post-money disclosure, which we introduced last year. Our objective is straightforward: to help investors better model the embedded upside across our portfolio, bridge what we believe is a disconnect between intrinsic value and current market value and ultimately support stronger shareholder returns. As part of this transparency, we are today providing an update on our Q1 cash position with PureTech level cash and cash equivalents as of March 31, '26, standing at approximately $248 million on an unaudited basis. I would now like to welcome Eric Elenko, our Co-Founder and President. It is no overstatement to say that Eric has been instrumental to our many successes to date. He will walk us through the latest progress at Gallop Oncology as well as share what he and the innovation team are currently working towards.