Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to Arix's annual results presentation for the year ended 31st December 2021. We shall begin with an overview of the financial results for 2021, followed by a strategy update and portfolio update, ending with a summary and outlook. 2021 was a challenging year. It came off the back of record performance in 2020, where we increased our NAV by over 60% and delivered a total shareholder return over 100%. From this starting position, we have in 2021 experienced one of the worst biotech bear markets for many years. Our closest public benchmark, the NASDAQ XBI, has to date fallen by over 50% since its peak in February of last year. This incredibly challenging public market has inevitably impacted our NAV performance in the year just gone. Our NAV per share has fallen by 18% to GBP 1.98 at year-end. This was driven largely by a reduction in the value of our public holdings. However, strong past performance means that our NAV per share has still grown at an annualized rate of over 15% over the last 36 months. Indeed, the decline in 2021 was cushioned by our significant cash balance of GBP 134 million at year-end. All of this cash can be matched to previous realizations from within our portfolio. This strong capital pool gives us a generous position from which to invest in new opportunities going forward. 2021 was also a year of significant organizational change at Arix. Following a period of shareholder engagement, the board was reconstituted under the chairmanship of Peregrine Moncreiffe, who was joined by Maureen O'Connell and Isaac Kohlberg. We were delighted to be joined by Sir Michael Bunbury as our senior independent director in October of last year. This all formed part of the strengthening of corporate governance in Arix during the period. Given the significant deterioration in the public funding markets for biotechs in 2021, we are pleased and reassured that our portfolio companies collectively raised over $750 million in the year. This leaves them well-placed to deliver on their important clinical programs without significant funding needs in the near term. The year also saw our second M&A exit from the portfolio with the sale of Amplyx to Pfizer in April 2021. While the upfront return on this exit was only slightly in excess of our cost, there's the potential for a further 2x of our cost to be returned if milestones are met going forward. We were also pleased to see that this exit was consistent with our now refocused strategy of targeting investments into companies with a strong likelihood of acquisition by big pharma. Our net asset value is valued on a truly objective basis, with over half being accounted for by cash. This is the result of realizations from within our portfolio to date. Another quarter at year-end was in listed companies valued at their market price, with just over a fifth in private holdings, which are valued at cost or a recent third-party investment. We're proud that this reflects our prudent and transparent valuation policy. During the year, we continued to deploy capital into new and existing portfolio companies with just under GBP 60 million invested in the period. Just under GBP 40 million was realized from within the existing portfolio. This largely consisted of sales from public holdings, many of which are legacy positions where we no longer have the conviction in their ability to deliver the multiple returns that we see as potential in our new investments going forward. The final adjustment is the downward revaluation of GBP 54 million, of which GBP 43 million came from a reduction in the value of our public holdings, reflecting the challenging markets which I described earlier. This slide shows the growth in our NAV per share over time. Despite the headwinds of the last year, it has still grown 30% since inception. Biotech is an inherently volatile industry, and while we attempt to mitigate this by a diversified portfolio, some volatility is inevitable. Nonetheless, we are greatly encouraged by the longer-term trend and the potential that we see within the portfolio and investment opportunities we're looking at to drive future growth. Following the reconstitution of the board last year, we have refocused our strategy. Nonetheless, our purpose remains to generate superior returns for our investors and to make a tangible difference to patients' lives by investing in a focused portfolio of innovative biotechnology companies addressing areas of high unmet need in healthcare. As mentioned earlier, last year saw the reconstitution of the board together with the return of Mark Chin to our investment team as Managing Director. Mark and I have worked together since Arix's IPO in 2017, with Mark leading many of our most important investments, including VelosBio, whose exit drove our stellar performance in 2019. I'm delighted that Mark has rejoined us and that he's joining us today from his base in the U.S. Together with the reinvigorated board, we are well placed to deliver on our refocused strategy. This refocused strategy starts with sourcing the highest quality investment opportunities on a transatlantic basis. This reach is particularly useful at times of volatile public and private valuations for biotechs, as we can take advantage of the arbitrage between valuation in Europe and in the U.S. We are now focusing down on therapeutic areas where we have domain expertise and are confident that there is big pharma interest which can drive acquisitions. In order to generate the greatest return, we also focus solely on companies with the potential for first-in-class or best-in-class programs. In addition, we now have a new focus on nearer-term value inflection points, having shifted away from early-stage drug discovery and company building. This focus now is on clinical stage companies and those companies who have a clear path to entering the clinic in the near term. These companies typically have meaningful clinical milestones within 24 months of our investment, giving the opportunity for positive revaluations and crucially, M&A activity. As part of the selection process, we also focus very heavily on the quality of the team as well as the science. Our experience in investing has shown us how important the team is in mitigating the inevitable clinical risk which all our companies face, as well as maximizing the upside when exiting to Big Pharma. This approach to building a well-balanced portfolio in order to mitigate the inevitable risks and volatility of biotech investing is reflected in our portfolio balance at year-end. The portfolio was spread across therapeutic areas with a bias to oncology, where we have confidence in the appetite for Big Pharma to make acquisitions when clinical trials show real promise of an effective drug. We continue our work during the year to rebalance the portfolio towards later stage companies in the clinic, and have also retained a balance between private and public holdings to mitigate the impact of public market volatility. I'll now hand over to Mark, who's gonna take us through an illustration of our investment cycle and also talk to the new investments that we've completed in the second half of the year, as well as to discuss the public opportunities portfolio which we've put together in response to the significant value we see in the currently depressed public markets. Great. Thanks, Rob. Hi, everybody. This slide really outlines, I think, our investment cycle. You know, in drug development at a high level, it starts with preclinical development, which is primarily in animals, and then moves to the clinic, which is in humans. As we looked at our investment strategy and where we were successful in the past few years, optimal window was about 2 years before human clinical trials. As you can see, it's noted here on the slide in early Series A and through phase I and phase II human clinical trials, in the window here. We've made two investments thus far, the reorganization of the company around this model, so specifically Sorriso Series A and then Disc Medicine, late Series B and C. We'll give you more details on that. The reason we really think that this is the optimal window is because again, within the next kind of at least 18-24 months provides us the opportunity for, number one, an IPO window. I think as Rob has really outlined, the environment has quickly shifted. I think in the past 5-6 years, companies were able to go out very early in their maturation cycle, most of them preclinical. Nowadays the window has gone back to where it typically has been, where you've got to generate at least early human clinical data to go public. Then more importantly, I think for our business, even though IPOs are great, those are just financing events. We really do focus in on M&A, right? The ultimate, quote, unquote, "customer" being pharma and other biotech companies buying our companies. That typical window for what we do is typically around phase II, phase III. If you look at the optimal place to invest, we really do believe it's strongly either late preclinical or early clinical. I'm gonna dive into one of our more recent investments, a company called Disc Medicine, which is in the benign hematology space. This company has all the hallmarks as Rob just described, of why we like certain investments. First, the team has done this, quote, unquote, "done this before." The operating team here used to be the former team of a company called Acceleron, which is acquired by Merck for over $11 billion in 2021. Importantly, the company had two clinical stage compounds at the time of our investment. One of those compounds was actually from Roche. You know, as you guys may know, a top pharma company in the business. That compound had been in phase II and demonstrated efficacy and safety. The Disc team was planning to repurpose that for a different indication. We came in and invested $11 million in the $90 million Series B that was led by OrbiMed Advisors. We and OrbiMed both took a board seat as part of that investment. You know, we are very excited about the performance of the company both operationally and financially. Both products will have phase II readouts at the end of the year, and the data has been promising. The Arix and Disc team have worked very closely to expand the clinical pipeline of products that the company is considering. The next company that we invested in most recently has again stuck with a very similar theme of a team that's done it before. The company's name is called Sorriso, and it's led by Ciara Kennedy, who is actually the former CEO of another Arix portfolio company, Amplyx, which was acquired by Pfizer in 2021. This company has a portfolio of assets that focuses on inflammatory bowel disease. The product has actually already been in the clinic in a slightly different conformation or formulation, and is being repositioned with a next generation version. We co-led the Series A here with an outstanding including NEA. We hold both the board seat and observer seat. This financing, importantly, going back to kind of the tenets of our investment thesis cycle, focus on taking the program through clinical proof of concept. Again, we feel that is the inflection point where companies either go public or ultimately bought or sold by pharma. We wanted to debut a new idea, which is, Rob alluded to at the start. Recently in about February of this year, we started a public opportunities portfolio, and the concept is pretty simple. As the public valuations have become more and more depressed, as Rob mentioned, the XBI is down 55% from its high back in February of last year. This has created a unique opportunity for us to invest in public companies. Oftentimes, a number of these we had seen on the private side, and at valuations that are very, very attractive. Some of these are nearly half of the valuation of when we saw them on the private side, but now fully funded and oftentimes with clinical data showing that the drug is both safe, very important, as well as efficacious. We will deploy somewhere between 5%-10% of our NAV into these small positions. You know, again, these are very agile positions where we can move quickly in and out of them, but importantly, really taking advantage of our competitive advantage, both on the fact that we had seen a number of these companies in the private side, the arbitrage opportunity that's occurring today because of the, you know, unprecedented decline in the biotech market. Importantly, we've seen from a lot of these companies that have, you know, $200 million-$300 million, even $400 million of cash, but are trading at a negative enterprise value. So even valuing the cash alone, these are really great investment opportunities. Great. I'm gonna talk a little bit about the portfolio, in detail. I'm not gonna get into too much detail here on the slide, but just wanted to sort of highlight how we are thinking about the what we call the core portfolio to date. As Rob mentioned, we have been going through a little bit of portfolio rationalization and really focusing on the companies that we believe are high performers. First company I'd like to highlight is a company called Artios, which many know is in the DNA damage repair space, has two assets in the clinic currently, fully funded through 2024, and really one of our, you know, real stars in the portfolio. Next company is a company called Aura, which I think Rob mentioned. This company went public recently and I think we've been very excited about the prospects for performance. The company's been named as one of the top IPO performers of 2021. In fact, actually, it's one of the very few IPOs, there's only two or three, that are still trading above its IPO price. It's actually about 25% up. In addition to that, we've already talked a little bit about Disc and Sorriso, but we wanted to highlight one company, Harpoon, which we still, despite having a downturn in share performance, we still have a lot of confidence in the programs. They have two programs that have demonstrated early clinical activity, both safety as well as efficacy. You know, as many public biotech companies are navigating tough waters today, you know, we still believe strongly that the clinical data and management team will execute. There's probably a lot of detail here on this slide, but I'm just gonna kinda hit the highlights of each company. Rob already mentioned Amplyx, which we were very pleased about. You know, the overall cash-on-cash upfront return was only a 1.1x return, but with the future milestones, this company could be worth a 3x in terms of cash-on-cash. Importantly, the company was acquired by Pfizer, who were already an investor in the company and had very close connections to what we were doing. Importantly, Pfizer is a world leader in the development of antifungal drugs. They have two of the largest selling drugs in the business and have a real commitment here to develop this drug to become a third product in their pipeline. You know, we were excited obviously in this marketplace to, number one, get a return of capital, but number two, to actually have meaningful milestones in the future that could make this a nice cash-on-cash return going forward. I think I've already talked about Harpoon and Artios. I think I just wanted to lastly leave it on Aura. Again, a company with very meaningful clinical milestones back half of 2022. The company one really interesting sort of parallel to draw here. I know, again, we had mentioned at the outset, one of our important tenets of investment is finding or investing in folks that have either done it before or more importantly, have done it before for us. I think Aura is a perfect example of that. VelosBio CEO, David Johnson, took the chairmanship of Aura about a few years ago. After that, the company's been on just a rocket ship trajectory. As I mentioned, you know, top performing IPO of 2021, still trading well above its IPO price today. Two meaningful clinical readouts in the back half of the year. And, you know, I think in a lot of ways a real path towards potentially being, you know, an acquisition target for pharma. Okay, great. I think I touched on a little bit of this before, but we'll kind of get into some more detail. Artios, we touched on the previous slide, has meaningful readouts at the back half of the year. Artios is continuing to do dose escalation on its two clinical stage programs. You know, we should have more information on what that looks like at a medical conference either later this year or early next year. As I mentioned, Disc will have its two, phase II programs read out at the end of the year. You know, we have a lot of high degree of excitement there. Very similarly, Harpoon is planning a data release in the first quarter of next year. Again, going kind of consistent with the theme of near-term clinical milestones that have meaningful impact on the programs. These four have you know, readouts that could significantly change the trajectory of these companies. That's great. Thanks very much, Mark. Hopefully, that gives a good flavor as to how we're managing the existing portfolio, but also making new investments in line with that refocused strategy on those points that we've discussed today. Look, in summary, as part of the refocus in the business, we've also reprioritized our corporate goals. We now have a central corporate goal of the generation of double-digit NAV per share growth measured over a 36-month period. I'm pleased to report that despite the challenges of 2021, the strength of past performance means that we're still recording 15% annualized NAV per share growth over the last 3 years. This central goal is supported by two subsidiary goals, being at least two IPOs and two successful exits over the same rolling 36-month period. While IPOs are not an exit in themselves, they are a validation of the quality of businesses which we invest in and do provide us with valuable liquidity opportunities. As Mark noted, successful M&A exits, however, are what we target wherever possible, and this is what we see as primarily driving our NAV growth and cash realizations, generating returns for our shareholders. Despite the headwinds of 2021, we've entered the year with a strengthened board and management team who are focused on delivery for shareholders. We are confident with the potential within the portfolio and the new investments we're making, and that this can again deliver the exceptional returns that we've seen before. Many thanks for your time. We will now turn to the Q&A section. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, to ask a question today, please signal by pressing star one on your telephone. Please ensure that the mute function on your telephone is switched off to allow your signal to reach our equipment. Again, to ask a question, please signal by pressing star one on your telephone keypad. We will pause for just a moment to allow everyone an opportunity to signal for questions. Our first question comes from Miles Dixon from Peel Hunt. Please go ahead. Your line is open. Hi there, Rob. Hi, Mark. Just a few from me, if I can. Firstly, forgive me if I missed it, have you given any guidance on capital deployment in FY 2022, aside from the proportion of NAV that might go into listed portfolios? Secondly, you described a slight change in focus in terms of nearer term investments. Has this changed the whether it be the indication areas or the therapeutic modalities that you're looking at now versus before? Then maybe I'll ask another question afterwards. Thank you. Thanks for that, Miles. No, you're quite correct. We've deliberately not given fixed guidance in terms of capital deployment for this year, and that has reflected the market conditions we're seeing. As you well know, the public valuations have been really quite extraordinary in their volatility, and unfortunately negative volatility over the last 12 months. What we've seen is that that has started to filter through into private valuations, but not as quickly as we would like. Because of that disconnect, because of that challenge of getting a good valuation on new investments at this stage, we've deliberately wanted to be cautious around committing to capital deployment. Throughout our history, we've always focused on the quality of the opportunity rather than an arbitrary figure of capital to be deployed. For us, we are still seeing very, very strong opportunities coming through, and so I'm confident that we will have meaningful capital deployment this year. We haven't wanted, as I say, to tie ourselves to an arbitrary target in a world in which valuations have been so volatile. Hopefully, that helps, Miles. I think your second question was in terms of the focus on nearer term clinical milestones and whether this has affected the therapeutic areas and modalities that we're looking at. I mean, the short answer is it hasn't directly. We still look at therapeutic areas and modalities where we have a strong domain expertise, where we understand the mechanism and the action, where we can get a high degree of confidence as to whether there's gonna be a safe and hopefully effective drug there, and crucially, whether we think there's gonna be M&A interest to then take that company out at a significant uplift to where we've invested. Those key criteria, they've remained constant. What we've done is within that domain world of those companies that we target, we've then looked at rather than going earlier in the life cycle as we did before, where we had drug development and very early-stage company building activities which have very long lead times to a value inflection point. Instead, we've looked within our sweet spot at remaining focused on these companies that are already in the clinic or are gonna move into the clinic in the very near term, and where we then have confidence that they're gonna have meaningful clinical data that's gonna hopefully drive value inflection for us, but also really we hope is gonna drive M&A activity as well. Great. Thanks, Rob. I mean, it sounds like you're extending that strategy as well into this listed portfolio of opportunities and market. It was interesting to hear you talking about the companies that you've met previously and perhaps did or didn't back. Can you give us an example of what type of flavor of companies there are in that existing portfolio that sits at about 5%? Is it very heavily skewed towards oncology or immunology, for instance? Can you give me an idea? Thank you. Yeah. Good question. Excellent question. The portfolio has three main buckets, I would say. The first is oncology, not surprising. And that has composed a majority of it. We also have taken selective bets in the immunology space, which we think autoimmune, as you may know, is one of the hotter areas in biotech today. And certainly acquisitive, as I like to use, but basically an area where strategics have made a lot of acquisitions in the past. Lastly, the other bucket that we do a lot of investing is in rare diseases. Those three compose the lion's share of what's in the portfolio. Again, adding a few more tenets around it. All the companies are clinical-stage. They've all demonstrated some degree of both safety, importantly, but also efficacy. There's a reason to believe or a path forward for the drug to get approved. The path for all of these drugs has been well-trodden with the FDA. All the companies have large commercial markets. Most importantly, are in spaces where there are very few or no existing therapies. That, you know, these are areas where, you know, you could very easily see pharma acquire the companies. We hold anywhere from 1%, you know, less than 5%, but typically anywhere between 1%-3% of the total register of that company. As I think we mentioned before, these are highly dynamic positions. We are, you know, ensuring that we're getting in at a good cost base, and also taking advantage of near-term fluctuations in value as these companies continue to read out clinical milestones. Just to add to that, Miles. Thank you, Rob. Very Rob. Very helpful. Oh, sorry. I was just gonna add, Miles. It's very helpful you're highlighting the public opportunities portfolio because, you know, one thing, as we said in the presentation is on a strategic level, we see that as a real advantage of the Arix model. It's inevitable that this year, with what's happened in the public markets, that our NAV has been hit. Because of the agility we have within our model, we can pivot. This is what we've done so far this year, is we're using the same skills and networks and, benefits that we have as a business, but refocusing them on this incredible value opportunity that we currently see in the public markets. While that dynamic has clearly hit our NAV this year and that has had a negative impact on us, it has also provided us with this fantastic opportunity which we've been able to refocus on at this time using the same skills and advantages to hopefully try and generate a return from a market that in other circumstances has hit us negatively. Yeah, thanks. Thanks, Rob. Yeah, I thought it was a really, really positive development. Just lastly, before I get back in the queue, if I may. You successfully managed again to hit the 2% of NAV in terms of operating costs. You talked a great deal about the quality of the team being so important when you're collecting investments. Have you got it to where you need it to be now, Rob or is that something that will grow as the NAV expands? Thank you. Look, we don't have any immediate plans to expand it further. We've deliberately refocused the business in such a way that we have a very lean and focused team, and that's in line with the slightly narrower strategy than we've had in the past where we see us focusing the business on the most valuable opportunities. We don't have any near-term plans for significant expansion. However, it is something that we're keeping under constant review. Because people, as you say, are so important to us, any additions that we do make are gonna be very much on an opportunistic basis where we see the right fit for the business with the right person. Okay, thanks. Thank you. As a reminder, ladies and gentlemen, to ask a question today, please signal by pressing star one on your telephone. That's star one on your telephone to ask a question. It appears we have no further questions at this time. I'd like to hand the conference back to your speakers today for any additional or closing remarks. Thank you very much, everybody, for joining today. It's been a pleasure to speak to you. I know there'll be many of you that we'll be speaking to, face-to-face and on Zoom in the coming days and weeks. Thank you very much for your time this afternoon.
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