Good morning, everybody. This is Elazar Rabbani. I am the CEO and Chairman of the Board of Enzo Biochem. I want to wish everybody a good year and a healthy year. I am hereby opening the annual meeting of the shareholders of Enzo Biochem for 2020. Due to the current circumstances, as you are aware of it now, the meeting is being held virtually, so allow maximal participation by everybody, given the circumstances. I am going to transfer the formal part of the meeting to Mr. Barry Weiner, the President of the company, that will continue the process. Good morning. We will conduct the business portion of our meeting first, followed by question and answer segment and some small comments. Though we may not be able to answer every question, we will do our best to provide a response to as many as possible. In keeping with the digital approach to this meeting, it is now 9:02 A.M. Eastern Standard Time on Monday, January fourth, 2021, and this meeting is officially called to order. I would like to introduce the other members of the board that are present online today. Dr. Ian Walters, he has served as one of our directors since November 2020. Dr. Mary Tagliaferri has served as one of our directors since November 2020. Rebecca Fischer has served as one of our directors since 2019, and Dov Perlysky, who has served as one of our directors since 2012. It is also my pleasure to introduce Robert Cohn of McDermott Will & Emery, our corporate counsel. Mr. Cohn will act as Secretary of the meeting. I will turn to him with any procedural issues that may arise. We are also joined here today by our independent auditors from EisnerAmper LLP. They will be available during the question and answer session after the meeting to respond to appropriate questions. Finally, the company has appointed American Election Services to act as Inspector of Election. Chris Woods from American Election Services is with us today and has taken the oath of Inspector of Election earlier today. As I commented after the formal meeting has been concluded, we will provide time for general questions. Only validated shareholders may ask questions in the designated field on the web portal. Out of consideration for others, please limit yourself to one question. Please note that this meeting is being recorded. However, no one attending via the webcast or telephone is permitted to use any audio recording device. The board of directors fixed November 23, 2020, as the record date for determining shareholders entitled to vote at this meeting. An affidavit has been delivered attesting to the fact that the notice of meeting, the proxy statement, the proxy card, and the 2020 annual report to shareholders were mailed on or about November 27th, 2020 to all shareholders as of the record date and will be incorporated into the minutes of this meeting. The shareholder list shows that as of the record date, there were 47,895,050 shares of common stock outstanding and entitled to vote at this meeting. The Inspector of Election is polling the shareholders present and examining the proxies and will issue a report of shareholders represented at the meeting starting whether holders of shares of common stock in excess of the number necessary to constitute a quorum are either present or represented by proxy. The meeting is proceeding under the assumption that a quorum is present or represented by proxy pending final certification. The Inspector of Election's report will be appended to the minutes of the meeting. I now would like to present the matters to be voted upon. Please note that we will give shareholders an opportunity to comment on the proposals themselves after all proposals have been presented. Proposal one is the election of directors. Two directors for election as Class 3 directors, Dr. Elazar Rabbani and Dr. Ian Walters, are put forward to hold office until the 2023 annual meeting of shareholders or until their successors are duly elected and qualified. One director, Dr. Mary Tagliaferri, is being put forward for election as a Class 2 director to hold office until 2022 annual meeting of shareholders or until her successor is duly elected and qualified. Proposal two is the advisory vote to approve the compensation of our named executive officers as described in the proxy statement. Proposal number three is the ratification of the company's appointment of EisnerAmper LLP to serve as the company's independent registered public accounting firm for the company's fiscal year ending July 31, 2021. Proposal four is the Amendment and Restatement of the Enzo Biochem, Inc.'s Amended and Restated 2011 Incentive Plan. If any shareholder would like to make a comment regarding proposals, please submit your comments through the web portal. It is now 9:06 A.M. Eastern Time on Monday, January fourth, 2021, and the polls are open. Any shareholder who hasn't yet voted or wishes to change their vote may do so by following the instructions on the web portal. Shareholders who have sent in proxies or voted via telephone or internet and do not want to change their vote do not need to take any further action. Please note that the company will not accept the purported nominations of Matthew M. Loar and Edward Terino, the Roumell nominees, under proposal number one, and will not accept any proposals not properly presented for business before the 2020 annual meeting. As a result, your vote will not be counted with respect to the election of either of the Roumell nominees or any proposal that is not presented at the meeting. Your vote will only be counted with respect to the election of nominees for director and for or against proposals number two, number three, and number four, all of which are listed on the company's ballot. Now that everyone has had the opportunity to vote, I now declare the polls for the 2020 annual shareholder meeting closed. As this is an electronic and virtual meeting, we will await any announcement regarding the vote report for when the results are tabulated by the Inspector of Election. We will be reporting the final vote results in a Form 8-K to be filed within four business days. There being no further business to come before the meeting, the formal portion of the annual meeting of shareholders of Enzo Biochem Inc. is now concluded. I would like to bring forward again to Dr. Rabbani, who has a few brief comments. Then we will open the floor for questions. Again, good morning, everybody. I would like to share certain thoughts. The annual meeting of Enzo Biochem, and I feel responsible and compelled to make some talk and some reflection on the year that passed. Last year, by any measure, cannot be considered as a challenging year. That would be grossly underestimation. In fact, it was a very difficult year, both on a personal level and professional level, for a lot of us. Last year, before the annual meeting, Enzo proposed three very ambitious goal and objective, not knowing what is ahead of us, which was to achieve growth, both strategically and with the legacy business. To continue to develop a strategic business plan in developing key platforms in diagnostic space of product and automated system. Number three, to achieve, through efficiency measure and growth, profitability within a year. Under normal circumstances, this goal and objective would have been grandeur, ambitious, and difficult to achieve given where we were about a year ago. Little we knew that the pandemic immediately hit us. I don't have to elaborate on the crisis and the challenges that the pandemic produced for everybody, particularly the industry sector in the healthcare industry. I have to tell you, if it wasn't because of the hard work, heroic work, selfless, dedicated work of Enzo men and women that worked day and night, we probably would not be sitting here and having the annual meeting, let alone to achieve the goal and objective that we presented to achieve. The fact of the matter is that in fact, we did achieve our goal and objective in all three area. Because of the hard work, dedication of Enzo men and women that came to work every day knowing that they are putting at risk their own safety and putting at risk the safety of their family. They were not paid more. They did not promise more. Even with the doubling of workload, we could not employ resources to do the job, and they have to double their work effort. They did it because they thought that they are doing the right thing and a good thing. A call of duty, a call of devotion and dedication, not only for our own company, but for everybody. For that, I think on behalf of the shareholders, on behalf of the board of directors, and personally, I would like to express my greatest gratitude and thank to Enzo men and women that selflessly, through hard work, through the risk to themselves and to their family, not only made Enzo a stronger company, they made us all stronger. I would like, on this occasion, to thank those colleagues and the shareholders that during the last year period, called Enzo to express their concern about the well-being of their staff, of people of Enzo, how many of them got sick, how many of them contracted the virus, how many of them have anxiety every day, how many of them have close relatives that end up in a hospital or die. I would like to thank those shareholders and those colleagues again, thanking them sincerely, thanking them for their concern and connection with people of Enzo. There were other distinguished shareholders that did not bother even once to call to say what happens to people of their company. How many of them contracted the disease? How many of them were told by their spouses not to go to work because it's dangerous for everyone? I was really tell you that personally surprised at the disconnect and lack of expression of any caring for the company that they are part of. I wish them a good health. It's very easy with disconnection to look at distance and disregard the sacrifices that is being made. I wonder, really, whether these people would be able to, if God tests them, whether they can put their own safety and safety of their family for doing the right thing. Are they capable of rising to that occasion? I have my doubts. I hope that I'm wrong, and I pray that I'm wrong. With that, I want to wish everybody a good year, a healthy year, and we hope to be able, at some point, to see each other in person. Have a good day. We will take shareholder questions that are being entered into the web portal. Please note, as I said earlier, we will attempt to answer as many questions that are put forward. Again, we request only questions that are germane to the meeting. Thank you. First question that's come in. What does the press release mean for Enzo's capabilities and capacity from today? For those of you that may not have seen it, we released this morning, the approval that we received actually just on December 30th, extending our EUA authorization for the three platforms that we have EUA approval for on the molecular front to do pooling of clinical specimens. This release relates to the ability to extend our testing capacity. Pooling, for those that may not understand it, allows the ability to test multiple samples. In this case, it's five samples in one specific run. If you pick up a positive within the batch, you then rerun it on the individual level. It's a methodology that is being utilized to address supply chain shortfalls, capacity shortfalls on the machine. It will, under certain circumstances, allow us to increase our capacity of testing for COVID testing on the molecular platforms by approximately 3- 5 times. It's very good for us. It's very necessary to address what we think is the emerging surge post the holiday period in our testing capacity. We're very pleased about it. Again, it was a process and a tool that was developed and put into place over the last few months, and we were very pleased to receive the EUA to move forward with it. Next question: How does the multiple vaccines being offered today affect Enzo in terms of its testing future? We are aware that the vaccine program in the U.S. is just getting going. It appears that it's a bit slower than I think we all would like it to be, but it is in process. We see the timeframe of the vaccine effort carrying forward well over into the next year. It's interesting, some commentators, medical commentators, have commented that they are looking even to approximately 2023 before we will see possibly the impact of vaccine herd immunity. That being said, we see the need and the necessity for molecular testing, since it is the gold standard to continue forward, to keep both schools and the workforce and the population safe. We also see the necessity and the growth emerging from serology testing, antibody testing, because even those who receive the vaccine will need to validate and verify the sustainability of their antibody immunity through testing. Because of the rapid development time of the vaccines, there isn't a clear understanding of the durability of the immunity. The only way we can be sure of that is through continuous serology testing, making sure antibody levels are adequate for protection. We see a very strong runway in terms of the opportunity and the continued growth of testing in the COVID segment. Next question that is coming forward: The stock price has underperformed this past year. What steps are you taking to address this? We, within the company, believe our stock price is significantly undervalued. We have looked at this issue extensively. The best way to be able to get recognition and value appreciation is through performance. I believe the last quarter demonstrated the turn of that performance being within the revenue growth, and importantly, the turn to profitability. Secondly, we believe the execution of our technologies and our platforms and our products that has been demonstrated during this period has shown a pathway and a showcase for the value of the investment made over the past three to four years in the development of novel platforms that can address the needs of the market. The utility and performance of the GenFlex platform has been excellent. It has demonstrated the ability to provide an open system platform that has cost efficiencies for clinical services operations. We believe the extension of that into other areas beyond COVID, in the area of women's health, in the areas of upper respiratory diseases, GI diseases, will carry this platform forward in a very, very opportunistic way. We've also looked at the other aspects of driving, understanding, and increasing value through our IR, our PR efforts. We have mobilized to reevaluate and to put forward a more comprehensive messaging program. As you noticed this past month, we started what was one of the first key opinion leader events to demonstrate the value proposition not only of our own technologies, but the better understanding of our shareholder base and others to the value of the opportunities that are being presented by Enzo. It is something we are keenly aware of and focusing on very immediately. Next question actually dovetails into the question I just responded to. What strategy approaches is Enzo taking to build value in the future? Dr. Rabbani commented in his earlier statement that the company put forward a year ago specific targeted goals. One of the goals was revenue growth, but within that, one of the key goals was to integrate the company into a full service, highly performing diagnostic company that would be vertically integrated, producing products that will be directed at solutions for the clinical services market that would provide lower cost optionality, thus driving margin improvement at clinical labs. Remember, prior to COVID, reimbursement was being slashed in the diagnostics sector. Margins were disappearing in the clinical labs. In many ways, our approach was directed to deal specifically with the needs of those trends impacting the market. COVID emerged, and in a sense, provided a showcase for Enzo Biochem. A showcase that we believe will carry into the future with the commercialization of not only our GenFlex and other molecular platforms, not only for COVID, but for other infectious diseases and molecular diagnostic capabilities that are needed in other disease areas. There are other platforms in the area of cytology, in the area of immunoassay, in the area of pathology that we have designed and are commercializing that will also add value in terms of providing low-cost optionality and driving margin improvement for clinical services. Next question. "You've nominated two new board members. Why, in particular, did you feel these two were qualified?" We're very pleased and proud to have been able to attract two uniquely qualified individuals to our board of directors. Dr. Mary Tagliaferri, a very prominent scientist and woman leader in the biotech area, brings to us qualifications in the development of products that will address not only therapeutic need for diagnostics, but also our own therapeutic directions. She's had extremely valuable experience in partnering with large pharma, in understanding and developing the processes and protocols to bring value into therapeutic and diagnostic product development. Dr. Ian Walters also brings to us skills and capabilities, not only in science, but in entrepreneurship, in business development. His experience at Bristol Myers Squibb in terms of developing a number of very key oncology products, his expertise in building companies, in the connectivity, in having access in the connectivity of the biotech and biomedical world is extensive, and we are thrilled to have them join our board and bring the capabilities and assets that they have and their skill sets to developing and producing a better outcome for Enzo Biochem. Question put forward: "What is the status of the therapeutics?" We've spoken about our therapeutic activity now for the last few years. The programs are directed in a number of different areas. We have always taken a conservative approach to the development cycle and the investment behind those programs. The COVID period certainly has, in the interim, forced us, as well as many companies in the industry, to direct its resources immediately towards the challenges that were presented that hit us in early March. With the uncertainties of the future in terms of where COVID would move, how it would impact our financial status, what it will do to the capital markets, which were presented in the early March period when COVID was just being developed, made everyone pause and take a deep breath. Within that, though, we have looked at and we are exploring unique opportunities of our portfolio, and it is an area that we believe can create value for us. Part of the reason of bringing forward Dr. Walters and Dr. Tagliaferri is their capability to help us to form and drive value behind that program. Question: "Two board members resigned. Can you give some color as to what took place?" Two of our board members resigned about a month ago. They gave no specific reason for their resignation. There is a complaint that was filed against Harbert that delineates potentially some of the issues behind their activity on the board. We can't comment on why they did what they did. We accept that for what it was on face value. There was no negative disclosure against the company in their resignation, which would have predicated to be put forward if such were present. We cannot give any specific reason for that. It was their own independent choice, we move forward. Any other questions? Okay, it appears that there are no more questions. This will conclude our meeting. We thank you for your attendance today and continued support. Be safe and have a good day. Thank you.
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