Good morning, good afternoon, and welcome to our preliminary results for the financial year 2023. On behalf of BenevolentAI, I welcome you to this meeting. My name is Joerg Moeller, and I'm the newly appointed CEO of BenevolentAI. I will say a couple of words about myself. Before I do that, I want to direct your attention to the Safe Harbor statement you see on this slide. I will do the presentation today together with Catherine Isted, our CFO, and Anne Phelan, our Chief Scientific Officer, who will have a chance to briefly introduce themselves as well. I joined BenevolentAI six weeks ago as CEO. I have more than 30 years of experience in the pharmaceutical industry. I'm a medical doctor by training. I spent most of my career in R&D roles. Before I joined Benevolent, I led global R&D at Leo Pharma in Copenhagen, a privately owned pharma company focused on dermatological diseases. Prior to that, I spent more than 20 years at Bayer's Pharmaceuticals Division. In the last four years, I ran global R&D for Bayer's Pharma Division. The majority of my time, I spent in clinical development roles, led global clinical development at Bayer also for more than 12 years. I'm super excited to be at Benevolent. Before we start with the presentation, let me briefly hand it over to Catherine and Anne to introduce themselves very quickly. Good afternoon. I think many of you know me. So Catherine Isted, the CFO of BenevolentAI. I joined in September. I have over 25 years' experience in healthcare, most recently at two biotech companies that are platform companies that have the same model as BenevolentAI in terms of out-licensing programs as well as doing collaborations. Before that, I spent an extensive time in the city in healthcare, but previously was a medicinal chemist and then trained as a chartered accountant. Over to Anne. Thanks, Catherine. So my name is Anne Phelan. I'm the CSO at Benevolent. I've been with Benevolent now for just over five years. Prior to joining Benevolent, I was with Mission Therapeutics, which is a small biotech focusing on deubiquitinating enzymes. But before that, I was at Pfizer for about 16 years in the U.K., everything from early target identification all the way through to clinical development. And that kind of mirrors my role now at Benevolent. Thanks, Catherine. Thanks, Anne. So during my tenure at Bayer, I was intensely following the development of AI as an important new technology and ability to advance drug discovery and development. In fact, during my tenure there, the company did three deals in the field under my leadership. And obviously, I've been following Benevolent very closely over the years. And while I'm super excited to be here, I think it's also clearly able and visible to see that Benevolent, where we just celebrated our 10th anniversary, has been an early pioneer and leader in the field of applying advanced AI, accelerating pharmaceuticals' drug discovery. There is a clear and growing demand from biopharma to leverage AI in both drug discovery but also development, also with the goal to increase probability of technical success. What makes BenevolentAI stand out is not only its experience in the field but also its proven validation of its capabilities and also our business model, which offers multiple routes for revenue generation because we not only have leading end-to-end drug discovery offerings that are validated by companies like AstraZeneca and Merck choosing to do deals with us and expanding, in the case of AstraZeneca, our collaborations with them as well. But we also have a proprietary pipeline with our lead asset, BEN-8744, nearing realization of top-line data in phase 1a from ulcerative colitis. And last but not least, we are assessing the business opportunity in what we call knowledge exploration tools as an additional pillar based on our BenevolentAI proprietary platform. Our knowledge exploration tools leverage biospecific natural language processing and large language models. I want to go into a bit more detail on our business model that you can see depicted on this slide. Our end-to-end drug discovery means we start with a deepened understanding of human biology and human disease biology up to and including also applying AI when it comes to selection on patient identification in clinical trials. These are all capabilities we have. Our platform enables novel discoveries throughout the entire drug discovery process. This is clearly a focus of the work we do and will be a focus, as also validated by the collaborations we have with AstraZeneca and Merck. Now, what's interesting is that this is clearly a near-to-mid-term value generation possibility for the company. That nicely compares to our proprietary pipeline, where we are advancing five high-potential assets that all have first-in-class or best-in-class possibilities and opportunities. This is a business pillar that has a mid-to-longer-term value creation time horizon, but probably clearly is also the business pillar that has the strongest lever, biggest lever from a value creation perspective. Then, last but not least, as mentioned before, there is a potential new expansion opportunity with our knowledge exploration tools, where we are focusing on customizable software-as-a-service products and offering a suite of our AI products, where we can perform analysis and give scientific recommendations using, for example, products like BenAQ or our BenAI research assistant. Here, we are conducting an evaluation of the market and business opportunity. This third pillar has the charm of being a recurrent and scalable business opportunity, if confirmed, where we are looking at collecting fees for setup and running the platform. Now, I mentioned that one of the attractions for me in joining Benevolent was the validation of the Benevolent platform. While there are many companies that claim to be spearheading innovation using AI in drug discovery, I think Benevolent is second to none when it comes to what is the track record and what is the validation of our capabilities. Because clearly, companies like AstraZeneca and Merck have the opportunity to work with different partners, but they choose to work with Benevolent. In the case of AstraZeneca, they also choose to expand the ongoing collaboration in the year 2022 to cover additional disease areas. Now, in September last year, we entered a new collaboration with Merck KGaA in Germany, focusing on three indication areas, namely neurology, immunology, and oncology, with a focus on our chemistry tech and wet lab capabilities. Now, a fascinating story is the identification of baricitinib, a JAK inhibitor that has been developed by Lilly in rheumatoid arthritis. JAK inhibitors are known for their anti-inflammatory capabilities. But at the beginning of the pandemic, the Benevolent scientist made it a case to look at, were there any existing drugs that could be repurposed to fight COVID? And they came across a previously unknown off-target effect of baricitinib that made it suitable to be used against COVID. This was an exercise that took Benevolent just a couple of days to come up with this recommendation. The company contacted Lilly, who wasn't aware of that potential, conducted their own experiments, got our hypothesis and prediction confirmed, and then started developing baricitinib against COVID, which led to an emergency approval by FDA in November 2020 and a full approval in May 2022. I think this is not only a fascinating story from a technology perspective. I think it's also fascinating because clearly, this has been a very useful addition to the armamentarium of severely impacted COVID patients that didn't see significant disease improvement under dexamethasone treatment. Last but not least, we have a pipeline, and are progressing a pipeline with a clear focus on best-in-class and first-in-class mechanisms, where we also apply our unique AI capabilities to advance unique and differentiated molecules. Now, before we get into the financial numbers, let me point out a number of operational and corporate highlights from 2023, some of which also happened post the period ending 2023. As mentioned, one highlight clearly was the new strategic collaboration signed with Merck in September to deliver up to three novel drug candidates to the Merck pipeline, where the agreement has a value of up to $594 million. We also made progress in our collaboration with AstraZeneca towards target selection in heart failure and systemic lupus by AstraZeneca. We started moving on to the pipeline, our phase 1a clinical study with our lead compound BEN-8744 in healthy volunteers in August 2023. I'm happy to be able to say that we are fully on track to deliver top-line data by the end of the first quarter, so very imminently, and fully in line with our planning and expectation. For BEN-28010 in glioblastoma, we have completed IND-enabling studies towards the end of 2023. As we announced already in May last year, BEN-2293, which we had developed in atopic dermatitis, which led to disappointing efficacy data readouts, we have stopped further investment and further work on the compound after the phase 2 readout. On knowledge exploration tools, in addition to the ongoing market assessment, where we expect to see the data come in at the beginning of the second quarter this year, we have completed the initial product development with substantial completion of that development step, including user testing towards the second half of last year. On the platform, we also continued to further invest and enhance our platform capabilities, namely in the area of improving our capabilities and tools in the chemistry field, which improves our prediction methodology for the platform. We also, of course, are doing these enhancements in our platform not only to improve predictability for our ongoing collaborations, but these enhancements also benefit, of course, our own pipeline and our capabilities that support our in-house pipeline. Lastly, as mentioned, I joined when we now move to corporate and organizational highlights for last year. I was hired by the end of January 2024, just six weeks ago, to be leading BenevolentAI as CEO. But also, Catherine Isted joined the company as its new CFO in September last year. And we also appointed Christina Busmalis as our Chief Revenue Officer around the same time period when Catherine joined. Importantly, the company, after the pan-Trk BEN-2293 readout last year, conducted a strategic review of its business, which led, due to significant cost reductions, to an extension of the financial runway until middle of 2025. Now, I want to use this slide to go a bit more into detail on our platform. What you see on the left-hand side of this slide is a selection of our, meanwhile, more than 85 different data sources that we take into our model, which consist of structured data and ontologies, unstructured data. We have data in the omics and genetics field. We ingest clinical data. We have data coming out of scientific experiments, assay results. We have chemistry data. We have data on protein structure that all feed into our data integration and inference, where we build what we call knowledge graphs. And we use these in a proprietary technology way to apply this capability to specific drug discovery problems, where we can address questions on mechanisms. We can address questions on target identification and prediction. We are capable to answer questions when it comes to in silico-led hit identification or in silico-led lead optimization. So this platform has a variety of capabilities, all augmenting the drug discovery process. And it's a proprietary capability where we continue to enhance our ability and capabilities. Given that we signed the deal with Merck just very recently, I want to give a bit more color on our strategic collaboration that we signed with Merck KGaA in last September. The focus is on leveraging end-to-end drug discovery capabilities, including also our wet lab capabilities that we have in our facility in Cambridge in the UK. Focus here clearly is on identification and development of innovative small molecules, starting from hit identification through the preclinical stage, with the goal of delivering three novel small molecule drug candidates into the Merck pipeline in the fields of neurology, immunology, and oncology. In financial terms, the deal has a value of up to $594 million, including a low double-digit million-dollar upfront payment, and then the respective discovery, development, and commercial milestones, including then later on tiered royalties on net sales of any commercialized product. Our collaboration with AstraZeneca started in 2019, initially focused on chronic kidney disease and idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. That collaboration was, in 2022, extended by three years. We added heart failure and systemic lupus erythematosus into the collaboration, where the focus of AstraZeneca is now on CKD, heart failure, and SLE. AstraZeneca has been progressing one target in CKD, with progress being made toward further target selection. Before I hand over to Anne Phelan, I want to start depicting and describing our pipeline progression over the last year. The company decided post its strategic review to focus on five high-potential pipeline programs, which all have the potential to be first-in-class and best-in-class assets. They all were generated from the Benevolent Platform and are clearly differentiated molecules. At the same time, the company has also paused more than 10 programs that have the potential to be re-entering the pipeline. We are conducting constant re-evaluations in line with upcoming new information, new data that we generate, but also closely watching the competitive environment. Our lead compound BEN-8744 that we put forward and are developing in ulcerative colitis, which is a phosphodiesterase 10 inhibitor, is nearing readout of our top-line data from the ongoing Phase 1a trial. We are fully on track to get this data in-house by the end of the first quarter. As I mentioned, our CHK1 inhibitor that we are developing in glioblastoma has completed IND-enabling studies by the end of last year. We plan to move forward with BEN-34712 in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis as a retinoic acid receptor agonist, alpha beta, and bring that to IND readiness by around middle of this year, second quarter in 2024. In addition, we have at an earlier stage differentiated molecules that we see as having potential in Parkinson's disease as well as in fibrosis. With that, I'd like to hand over and welcome Anne Phelan, our Chief Scientific Officer, here on stage. Thanks, Jörg. I'm just going to give you a little bit more color now onto our pipeline of products. I'll start with our most advanced asset. As Jörg said, BEN-8744, it's a PDE10 inhibitor for the treatment of moderate to severe ulcerative colitis. The potential differentiator for this asset, from our perspective, it's a novel therapeutic approach. It's a first-in-class, peripherally restricted small molecule PDE10 inhibitor for the treatment of UC. We believe it has the potential for really meaningful differentiation from the current standard of care agents, which are typically immunosuppressive by mode of action. We also believe this asset, in addition to having an anti-inflammatory effect, will also have the potential to be disease-modifying, which, again, is a differentiator for this asset. Behind that, we have BEN-28010, which is a CHK1 inhibitor for the treatment of naive and recurrent GBM. That's across the board, kind of irrespective of the MGMT methylation status of those patients. Again, we think this is a potential first-in-class CNS-penetrant drug for GBM. But in addition to GBM, it also has potential utility in metastatic brain tumors originating in other parts of the body. We also believe that this has potential efficacy in patients who are resistant to chemotherapeutic standard of care agents. And there's also a very strong rationale for combination therapies, particularly in non-CNS cancers, for this asset. Behind that, we have 34712, which is an RAR alpha/beta selective agonist for the treatment of sporadic and familial forms of ALS. Again, potential best-in-class CNS-penetrant subtype selective approach. So this is subtype selective as in it hits specifically the alpha and beta forms of RAR, which we believe is going to minimize the side effect profile associated with this drug class. In terms of mode of action, we believe it is going to be neuroprotective. We have some early positive data in a SOD1 mouse model in support of this program. Behind that, we have a Parkinson's disease asset. This is an undisclosed novel target, but we believe it has potential utility in Parkinson's and related synucleinopathies. Again, potential first-in-class CNS-penetrant drug with a neuroprotective activity. And then behind that, finally, fibrosis, again, another undisclosed novel target. But this is a target that we believe has potentially broad utility in fibrotic diseases. We're focusing on NASH just now. But on the basis of the underlying mechanism of this undisclosed target, we do think it has applicability beyond just NASH. So, focusing in a little bit more on our lead asset, 8744, it's an oral, peripherally restricted PDE10 inhibitor. As I've said, it's under development as a first-in-class treatment for refractory UC. As you probably know, ulcerative colitis affects in the region of 2 million patients in the eight major markets, of which around 31% have a moderate to severe disease classification. Associated with ulcerative colitis is Crohn's disease. It's a distinct disease, but it falls under the IBD banner. And similarly, it affects in the region of 1.6 million patients in the eight major markets, again, with around 40% of those patients having moderate disease. Ulcerative colitis, it's a chronic, lifelong inflammatory disease. It manifests as ulceration of the inner lining of the colon and rectum. And in terms of efficacy, there are a number of, obviously, launched products for the treatment of ulcerative colitis. But around 20%-40% of the moderate to severe patients do not respond to the standard of care agents. And really, the main treatment paradigm in this space are the anti-TNFs. Of those patients that do respond, around 50% of them become refractory to treatment within the first two years of treatment. There's plenty of scope for opportunity to differentiate in terms of efficacy. In terms of safety, the current treatments have a range of different side effects, including the steroids, anti-TNFs, and particularly the JAKs that currently have a black box warning. So, again, we're looking to differentiate in terms of our safety profile. There remains a high unmet need in ulcerative colitis for an alternative oral small molecule treatment, with options available to us to improve both the safety and efficacy profile. In terms of BEN-8744 itself, PDE10 as a target was identified using our target identification platform as an entirely novel target for the treatment of UC. At the time that we discovered PDE10, there was no direct association in the literature linking PDE10 with ulcerative colitis. Then, once we'd entered into our portfolio using our molecular design expertise, in the space of about two years, we were able to design a best-in-class, peripherally restricted PDE10 inhibitor, our candidate molecule 8744. And, as I've said, we think it has potential to be efficacious both in terms of the anti-inflammatory, but also as in a disease-modifying oral treatment for ulcerative colitis. But we also have preclinical data in support of the utility of this asset in Crohn's. 8744 will target moderate and severe UC and Crohn's disease patients, addressing the unmet need left by the existing therapies. And we're looking at patients refractory to anti-TNFs and other biologics. And, as I've said, an improved safety and tolerability profile compared to the competitors is our aim. As Jörg said, our phase 1a healthy volunteer study is nearing completion. We are on track for top-line data to be published later this month. The study objective, it's a healthy volunteer study. So we're looking at the safety and tolerability profile of the drug in a single and multiple oral dose setting. We also have a food effect study to look at the PK profile of 8744. So the study enrolled healthy volunteers aged 18 to 65 years in a single center. So this has been done at HMR in London. And the study is in three parts. We've got part A, which is our single ascending dose component. Part B is the food effect. And part C is the multiple ascending dose components of the study. In each case, the cohorts are enrolled in groups of eight. Six subjects are given active drug. 2 are given placebo, because it's a placebo-controlled study. We completed 6 SAD cohorts and 2 MAD cohorts. It's worth noting that the MAD cohorts are dosed BID for 14 consecutive days. So, in terms of the importance of these Phase 1a results, obviously, PDE10s, you may well know, have been studied previously for CNS indications, such as schizophrenia. But they failed to progress due to dose-limiting CNS-mediated side effects. Hence, the significance of the peripheral restriction of our PDE10 inhibitor. They should be devoid of these CNS-mediated side effects. So, a clean safety profile through the SAD and MAD studies will be a big step forward for the use of PDE10 inhibitors and can be exploring their therapeutic potential. This is a healthy volunteer study, as I said. But the results from this study will inform us on our preferred dose for the next stages of development of this asset once it starts moving to patient studies. And with that, I'll hand over to Catherine. Thank you, Anne. Obviously, financial results. We better talk through some numbers. The revenue decreased year-over-year to $7.3 million from $10.6 million last year. The revenues were basically around the AstraZeneca collaboration, but also the Merck collaboration. I would, however, point to the balance sheet and the deferred income, which currently sits at $11.6 million, because you might remember from our press release that we had a double-digit upfront from the Merck collaboration in September. The R&D decreased 13% year-over-year to $56.5 million. This really reflects the strategic review that happened in the summer and the optimization of the portfolio. The R&D, sorry, the R&D, the G&A, on the face of it, looked like it has increased a lot by 36%. However, there was a significant FX component to that. So, excluding that, there was an increase of 11%. That's really reflecting the fact that for 2023, there was a full year worth of costs relating to be a public company, as opposed to seven months in the prior year. The cash figure, which I know most people are interested in, we had cash at December 31st of $72.9 million. I think it's worth pointing out, just as a reminder, that at June it was $84.3 million. Just the drop of $12.4 million in the second half of the year. That's really reflective of the fact that we received that Merck upfront payment, but also our R&D tax credit was in the second half of the year. Operating cash flow before changes in working capital was $54.6 million. Then, finally, in terms of the outlook, following the strategic review last year, we did reduce headcount by about 30%. In terms of the costs, by about 40% compared to the pre-restructuring numbers. This is really going to be seen in the 2024 and 2025 figures. This led to the cash runway being extended to mid-2025, highlighting here that this is before any unsigned revenue or other out-licensing income. With that, I'll hand back to Jörg for the outlook and conclusion. Yes, thank you, Catherine and Anne. Before we open it up for questions, let me cover the outlook and focus for the company for 2024 across our three pillars, as well as the financial outlook. For end-to-end drug discovery, we, of course, will continue to progress our existing collaborations with AstraZeneca and Merck. But our goal is to sign one additional collaboration in 2024. On the pipeline, you heard that we are imminently awaiting top-line data for our lead compound in ulcerative colitis. We also plan to complete IND-enabling studies for our ALS asset in the second quarter this year. And in the pipeline, we also aim to out-license at least one of our proprietary pipeline assets during 2024. For knowledge exploration, we have our market and business assessment underway, where we expect to see results in early second quarter of this year, which will then determine our strategic priority for this pillar. Financially, our cash burn in 2024 will benefit from the cost reduction achieved post the strategic review that the company conducted in 2023. We will continue to look for opportunities to further reduce our costs and also to reallocate resources to where we feel the investment will generate significant additional shareholder value. We are looking clearly to extend our cash runway past the current guidance of mid-2025. Now, having joined the company just six weeks ago, I can share with you that one clear take-home message for me is this is a company with very competent and committed talents. What drives us is our focus on value creation for shareholders. But above all, it is our drive to deliver a benefit for patients. I think it makes me really proud to think about that the company focuses on super high medical need indications, where there are no or very limited therapeutic options in very different disease spaces, which is a benefit of the technology platform that we have, that we can work across different therapeutic areas to come up with life-changing medicines for patients affected by serious medical conditions. I would like to thank you for your kind attention. Before we go to Q&A, I also want to introduce Ivan Griffin, one of the co-founders of the company, who will join us on stage for the Q&A. Thanks so much. Yes, Max. Great, thank you. So, it's Max Herrmann from Stifel. Just a couple of questions. One just on the finance, so one for Catherine. I mean, in terms of the cost base, and you've obviously alluded to potentially evaluating opportunities for further cost savings, I wondered, in terms of, one, maintaining the AI capabilities, what's the sort of cost that incurs for the business annually, or how many people are involved in that? And then, just thinking about from a clinical perspective, your R&D spend is pretty high. Your G&A is pretty high, given the scale of your clinical pipeline. So I'm trying to understand where you think there are opportunities for further cost savings. And second question on your lead program, I mean, it's a classic SAD/MAD study. So assume you're obviously talking about final data. But what elements are you expecting in the final data? Assume it's an open-label study. So you have a pretty good idea of having gone through the SAD aspects of the study, for sure. Have you seen anything that you can report at this moment, I guess? Thanks. I think I have Catherine take a shot at the first question. Then, Anne will cover the second one. So, in terms of sort of cost savings, so I'll give you an example. In the last quarter of 2023, we actually increased our BD team quite substantially. Jörg talked about Christina Busmalis joining the team. But also, we have bulked out that team. All of those extra costs were actually found through other areas within the business that we thought were of lower priority. So we have squeezed some of the costs already. But that's more about cost reallocation to the highest priority. Going into 2024, we'll continue to do that. So, looking at the various areas that we potentially can, as we say, look to benefit, I suppose, shareholders in terms of the maximum output for the value that we're actually spending. So I've only been in the role, I suppose, it's six months now. We are still evaluating the knowledge exploration tools, as we mentioned before. So I think it's basically, it's an ongoing process, as you would expect from any CFO. In terms of number of costs or heads, so we actually break it down by what we call the Product and Tech Division and the Drug Discovery Division. Product and Tech Division is about 100 people of our 250. But that covers right across from the platform, as well as, obviously, working with Anne on the end-to-end drug discovery and the knowledge exploration pillars. So I think, as our biggest cost outside of the clinical trials are those heads. That maybe gives a bit of an idea. But it is spread across the platform, as well as knowledge exploration and end-to-end. Thanks. Yeah, and I'm happy to pick up the second question. So, yes, this is a healthy volunteer SAD/MAD food effect study. As you said, it's a standard study. Success for us from this study is that we have a safe and well-tolerated drug that we can escalate to pharmacologically relevant doses and exposures, so that we can have a no-regrets clinical study when we get into a proof-of-concept study. I'm not in a position to disclose just now, because that will emerge very soon, but not today. But enough to say that we have been able to successfully complete the study that we designed. And it is completed on time. I think, just to maybe add some additional background, Anne mentioned in her presentation that previous PDE10 inhibitors that have been developed for CNS disorders also suffered from CNS side effects. Our goal clearly was to come up with a compound that is peripherally restricted and ideally doesn't have that liability. Obviously, that is something where you can read through already, to some extent, from a healthy volunteer exposure. Yes, thank you. Robin Davison. I'm going to be difficult. I'm trying to understand the big picture here. If we start, first of all, I'm assuming you didn't say this, but you don't intend to do any further studies with any of the pipeline clinical trials once you've got the data from the PDE10? I mean, you don't intend to spend money. So it's effectively a licensing candidate as of April. We are looking to, as we said, partner at least one of our assets from our pipeline in 2024. But clearly, our goal is not to slow down any development efforts while we are underway with partnering activities. In my experience, stopping development while you look for a partner is not necessarily a recipe for success. Well, I know. I mean, I suppose I'm just, well, I think there's obviously, in the world out there, there's a lot of compounds in development that are available for licensing in these indications. That's the trouble. It's very competitive. I suppose the other thing I'm trying to think through, really, is can you continue to be at the forefront in this AI business? I mean, it's a difficult business. It's moving very fast and requires a high amount of investment. And the company must have put hundreds of millions GBP into this whole platform. And it's yet to really deliver much revenue. I mean, that seems to be one way of looking at it. And if you have to spend, I don't know, $25 million a year just to stay in the game, is that a decision? Is that something you consider? Do we need to be in this, or do we try and do something else here, try and realize value some other way? Well, I'll start and then ask Catherine to chime in. I think, first of all, it's not unusual when you have innovative technologies that you have an initial investment period, obviously. I think, as we showed in our presentation, Benevolent has, I think, a differentiated profile to some of the competitors in the field, as we have a proven track record that we can actually point to. Now, the notion of showing that actually AI in drug discovery and development improves technical rates of success, I think, is the big hairy goal that everyone has. But I would agree with you that we, the industry, are still at a too early stage to can put a checkmark behind that. I think the jury is still out. I'm personally convinced that that will be the case, as we see the development of this capability. Clearly, our focus is, in a rapidly changing environment, to continue to be among the leaders. That is what also guides, as I showed in the last slide, in terms of what is our focus and outlook. Our focus is to reallocate and allocate resources to where we believe the highest value generation potential is. We have upcoming inflection points. We have an upcoming assessment of the commercial opportunity with knowledge exploration tools. These inflection points will also inform our decision in terms of where to focus our resource allocation on. Catherine? Yeah, I think that the whole, you're right. There has been a lot of investment in the platform. But that's really what makes us one of the leaders in the space. There are many people that are flying that AI badge, saying, "Yes, we can do AI." But actually, to have that 10 years' worth of investment means that we can do so many things across the board in terms of multiple therapeutic areas, which many of our competitors can't. The example of the Merck deal and the Astra deal is, again, a really good example. The Astra deal is in the target identification. And the Merck deal is in the chemistry space. So taking it all the way through from the various early stages right through to the end of preclinical. Our platform can do that. So that gives us the opportunity to have multiple types of collaborations, in addition to the products that Anne is working on in terms of outlicensing. Now, do we need to increase the cadence of collaborations? Absolutely, which is why, in September last year, in the fourth quarter last year, we've increased our BD size of the team. But what I take comfort from is the fact that this is a growing space. So we're not chasing the same size pool. More and more companies are being involved in AI. Actually, it's now rare for companies not to, right down to the mid-tier companies, which, going back a few years, they probably wouldn't have been the companies that you'd even try and get partnerships with. So you've got a growing space. We've got that capability, thanks to all of that input. With increased BD effort, then I think that is how you make that model not only sustainable, but actually a growing company as well. So, finally, I was wondering if you could expand a little bit on this strategic thought on this knowledge exploration area. This seems to be quite a crucial decision that's going to be coming quite soon. Q2, you say. I mean, is that an area that you will potentially, you could decide to invest in that area, change? Does that change the direction of the company in some respects? Or is it just a sort of allocation of resources internally? No, I don't think. Look, in my own due diligence before I joined the company, I think the company has a very well-established and thought-through strategy. So I didn't come here to change the strategy. I came to Benevolent to execute on the strategy. Knowledge exploration tools, I think, is exactly, to Catherine's point, an opportunity that we see leveraging existing capabilities that we have, basically building on the platform that is there. The benefit it has is, as a third pillar, from a value timeline perspective, it has the potential to build an additional, sustainable, and potentially scalable revenue stream. That's why it's interesting, from a strategic perspective, for us to have a further evaluation of that, because that is different from what we see with a pipeline, which is more like a mid to longer-term value play, but, of course, with a bigger lever, and also compared to our end-to-end drug discovery services, which have more like a near to mid-term value generation potential. Thank you. Charles Weston from RBC. One main question, but it's got a few different elements, really, just around the cash runway and what it includes, because you've got the underlying cost base, which you said you can nudge around the edges. You can reallocate. But then you've got some really big potential incomes and expenses. So on the income side, you've got all the milestones from Merck and AstraZeneca. You've got potential in-licensing. You've got potential partnerships. And then on the outgoing, you've potentially got more clinical trials that you want to start, maybe on the lead asset, maybe on the other assets. So what is included in that cash runway first? And then what visibility do you have in terms of those other income lines, in terms of the timing of any sort of major announcements or kind of visibility now that it will happen, for example, the outlicensing and the partnerships in 2024? Catherine, you wanted to step? Yeah. What's included? It's our cost base, as we stand today. It includes milestones from Merck and AstraZeneca that fall in that time frame. It doesn't include any new collaborations at all, so any upfronts. It doesn't include any outlicensing upfronts. I think that's the key elements that are in there, in terms of what's included. Just in terms of the expense of clinical trials? Oh, clinical trials, yes. So we haven't included a, for example, a phase 1b PDE10 trial in there. That would need to be either funds raised either through, if we got revenue in from an outlicensing collaboration, or from a fundraise or other route. Can you just talk about the visibility or where you might be in the progression of those discussions on either a large partnership or an outlicensing? They can gestate for some time before you can actually sign the deal. So presumably, you have some sort of visibility on those now. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we are in discussions with potential partner companies when it comes to expanding on our collaborations. We have also a list of target companies when it comes to partnering discussions for our pipeline assets. But obviously, when you are literally 2-3 weeks away from top-line data, now is not the right time point to pick up the phone. But what I can tell you is, I obviously also came to Benevolent. And I might be giving away my age with my Rolodex, because clearly, I have a network of people I know in the scientific community. And I actually believe it's probably a more promising approach when it comes to collaborations, partnering discussions, to talk from science to science, as compared to having first BD talk to BD and then have the other parties' BD team convince their scientists. It's also a little bit about a slightly different approach. Rest assured, that is top of mind and a key priority that we have at Benevolent. Just one more, if I could add, please, just in terms of the potential new element to the strategy around the knowledge-based sort of SaaS model. This is, obviously, quite a competitive space and is probably, and I find it very confusing, in terms of the marketing claims that all these companies make. And presumably, that makes it even more complex to market. So would there be a lot of investment required to be able to kick that off? Would you have sort of an anchor customer to make a big splash upon some sort of launch? How would you deal with that? I guess these are all questions that exactly we are also having. That's why we are doing this assessment of the space from a business perspective, because clearly, what is also the duration of required investment? For how long does that have to occur? What would be acceptable price points for clients? Are there differences in price points between large pharma, mid-size pharma, small biotech? These are all questions that are of strategic relevance and importance. These are subject to what is ongoing in terms of our ongoing evaluation. Thank you. How many people have you got in BD, then? You've hired this woman. How many are you thinking of? I was going to say about six, seven? Seven? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I mean, 100 are doing product work. What have the other 150 done? So we've got Anne's organization. So the drug discovery, you're about 100 as well? Yeah, we're about 101. I know. We are 101 FTEs in the drug discovery side of the organization. That's in support of our internal pipeline, but also in support of those Merck KGaA chemistry programs hit identification through to candidate nomination. I suppose we're grappling to understand how much of your cost is supported by your partners on a probable basis, the ones you've got already, and how much is speculative spending? I can't get that picture. I think if you look at the AstraZeneca and Merck, we actually get the milestones in as we move along. So some of those payments, I mean, they're literally either annually in a regular basis to actually pay for them. So we are not out of pocket in the near term with either of those collaborations. And actually, in the not too distant future, you start to get to some milestones that are quite meaningful in terms of inflows. But they do happen to be just past our mid-2025 period that we're talking about. So I think that's maybe how to look at it. At the moment, they are, I was going to say, not to say break even, but all slightly positive. But then in the near term, so that's like a 2-3-year period, they can be a lot more sort of cash flow positive. Maybe to build on that, from a cash runway perspective, I think it's important to understand that our current cash runway leads us to the middle of 2025. But the bridge we need to build is not a bridge into infinity. It is a bridge between middle of 2025 until we get additional milestone payments from the existing collaborations and partnerships. Thanks. Thanks. Another one if I don't mind. I thought you might have mentioned the word repurposed somewhere. I don't know. Maybe I missed that. I know over the years, there was the sort of initially, there was an attempt to repurpose known molecules using the AI. And then you moved as a company. The company moved before your time, obviously, moved into sort of de novo research. And Benevolent has had sort of basically two Phase 2, unsuccessful Phase 2 trials with one of each type, as I understand it, over the last three or four years. I wonder whether you sort of look back and reflect, did we do something wrong? Have we learned anything from those experiences? Maybe the model doesn't predict efficacy as well as we thought. Or maybe with the science as it is now, we would have made a different decision, chosen a different molecule, or not chosen that molecule, done something else. I don't know. What are your observations on those points? Maybe let me start, and then I ask Anne to chime in, because it obviously covers a time period when I wasn't at the company. Maybe let me start on repurposing. I think baricitinib, of course, is the prime example of repurposing of a drug. The challenge, of course, from a Benevolent perspective, is the IP situation. I mean, when you make that a focus of your activity, you are basically looking at compounds that are existing, typically either developed, approved, and getting IP protection. And you're dealing with originator companies, obviously, is just very challenging. The pandemic was, of course, a special situation where the world was fighting a pandemic. And the work that was done was to help in an acute situation fighting the pandemic. But from a business model perspective, it's challenging to focus just on repurposing of existing drugs because of the IP situation. I'll let Anne speak about learnings from the previous development efforts. Yeah, so the two studies you're referring to, one was BEN-2293, which was a drug that we licensed in from J&J. It also predates me, actually. But that was a failed study. At the time, it was not a Benevolent drug. It was a licensed-in asset. The other clinical trial we undertook that read out last year was in pan-Trk for the treatment of atopic dermatitis. Now, that was never a tech platform-derived hypothesis or drug. We started that program. It predates the platform as we know it today. In terms of the choice of that target, there are well-known targets for the treatment of chronic pain and the pruritic signaling of itch and atopic dermatitis. So the logic behind the targets is still sound. We failed to see efficacy in our study. We had a lot of variability in our placebo, which confounded our capacity to see a signal. We believe it was a well-conducted study. I have no regrets on the choice of the target. We have looked very, very carefully at the drug. And whilst we didn't see efficacy, the drug in and of itself was a good, high-quality molecule. All that said, we didn't have success in the clinic. But it was almost a kind of capability build for us to build the teams to be able to go through the drug discovery process. We now have those teams. And we're now prosecuting our platform now. Our portfolio now is entirely platform-derived. So we're in a different situation now where the targets that we're working on are platform-derived, novel, and of high differentiation, we believe. I suppose another one that just occurred to me is, I mean, do you really foresee any likelihood that you may generate value from the sort of paused pipeline, as it's described here? I guess the projects which work has been done on in the past, they're 10+ programs, according to this slide I'm looking at. Is that unrealistic to look at that as any sorts of value, really, from an investment point of view? I wouldn't call it unrealistic. I think what we do is, in this rapidly changing environment where we have our own data readouts, where we see changes in the competitive environment, our focus is more OK right now on the five molecules that we advance in our pipeline. But if any one of these should either fail or we partner it, then, of course, we go back and look at the 10-plus molecules that we last year decided not to prosecute. At any moment in time, we, of course, have always to think about, for the ones we have put on pause right now, whether anything has changed. And if that would have changed, meaning we no longer see a differentiating competitive profile for these assets, then, of course, they would no longer be paused, but basically taken off. But as long as we see the potential for them to make meaningful additions in a differentiated fashion and in a competitive environment, that, of course, remains a source to replenish the pipeline. I suppose I was going to another one occurred to me. Let's say that you do a partnership. And you can see some greater visibility on income coming in or income increasing. Would you you had money to spend on the pipeline at this point? You have the money. I mean, you could spend it. You just don't choose to, I guess. Would you choose would it be obvious that it goes into 8744? Or would you look at the other doing some clinical studies with the ALS one, which seems more exciting to me? I guess that's pretty speculative. Maybe I can tell you, based on my past experience, in such situations, I think you always need to analyze the situation in that moment. It would be misleading, premature to speculate how the company situation will look like, how the competitive environment will look like if such a situation occurs. Any other questions? That doesn't seem to be the case. I think just checking on the lines if there's any question. OK. If you would like to ask a question, please press star followed by 1. We have our first question from Swayampakula Ramakanth from H.C. Wainwright. Thank you. Good afternoon, folks. I have two quick questions, one for Jörg, and the other for Dr. Anne Phelan. You just came from a large-cap pharma company, Bayer. And as you said, when you were at Bayer, there were multiple, at least a couple of deals done last year. Certainly, Benevolent was not part of it. How do you see Benevolent from the eyes of a large-cap pharma in terms of differentiation? And what attracted you here versus looking at your other partners, whether it is Recursion or somebody else that you had worked with in the past? Yeah, thanks for the question. To be honest, so these were deals in the time frame 2018 to 2020 that I did in a prior life. And I think, without disclosing too much detail, for me, there were like two learnings. One was, actually, we had looked at Benevolent but hadn't realized at the time that part of the data ingestion at Benevolent is also clinical data, which set Benevolent a little bit apart from the others. But that wasn't identified at the time when we looked at the competitive environment. I still remember when the Nature publication of Benevolent came out, I went back to the team and said, have we maybe teamed up with the wrong guys here? That's one. And the flip side of that is, of course, and that is why clearly a focus of myself arriving at Benevolent is to put the company stronger on the map, meaning do more scientific presentations, focus on publications. Catherine and I are working to also increase our visibility towards the investor community and finance community, participation in investor conferences, also having a stronger focus on the U.S. capital market. So the flip side of that would have been that maybe Benevolent could have been also a bit more forthcoming about capabilities that the company has. And it's, I think, super important in a highly competitive environment to not shy away in playing the drums around your capabilities and show a stronger presence, which, by the way, is also important from a talent attraction and talent retention perspective. In my experience, scientists like to also present at scientific meetings, get the results of their work out. All of these will help putting on a stronger presence and, I think, recognition of the company's capabilities. Thank you for that. The second question for Dr. Phelan. Looking at your GBM molecule, which is a CHK1 inhibitor, there have been multiple CHK1 inhibitors in preclinical stages for GBM. But none of them have actually come into clinic, I believe. So how do you differentiate or how differentiated is this molecule that you have right now in the preclinical pipeline? And how much more work do you need to do on that before you can get it into the clinic? Yeah, so the key differentiator for our CHK1 inhibitor is that it's CNS-penetrant. And we believe we have the only CNS-penetrant CHK1 inhibitor. So while CHK1 inhibitors have been used widely in peripheral cancers, they have not been widely used in, well, certainly not successfully used in CNS cancers, because most of the drugs available don't get into the brain to sufficiently high concentrations. So that's our key differentiator. We've generated preclinical animal model data showing efficacy of this drug both in peripheral flank models of cancer but also into orthotopic models, where we've had cancer cells stereotactically injected into the brain. And we've been able to see a reduction in tumor growth in those animal models. So we have confidence that this CNS-penetrant CHK1 inhibitor has high potential for efficacy in the clinic. When do you plan to get this into the clinic? This is a study that's just completed its IND-enabling studies to the tail end of last year. We're looking to partner this asset. OK, perfect. Thank you. Thanks for taking my questions. Thank you. As a reminder, it is STAR followed by 1 to ask any questions today. I can confirm we have no further questions. I'd like to hand it back to the CEO, Dr. Joerg Moeller, for some closing remarks. Thanks so much. Thanks for your kind attention and your questions and the good discussion. I look forward to being in a continued dialogue with you. The team is committed to execute on our plans for 2024. It's a pleasure to see you. Thanks so much. Have a good day.