Q2 2023 VolitionRx Limited Earnings Call
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Speaker 1: I'd now like to turn the call over to Scott Powell, Executive Vice President of Invest Relations.
Speaker 2: Thank you and welcome everyone to today's earnings conference call for VolitionRx Limited.
Speaker 2: This call will cover Volitions financial and operating results for the second quarter of 2023 along with a discussion of our recent activities and key upcoming milestones.
Speaker 2: Following our prepared remarks, we will open the conference call to a question and answer session.
Speaker 2: Also on our call today are Mr. Cameron Reynolds, President and Group Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Terry Hughes, Group Chief Financial Officer, and Dr. Tom DeTerra, Chief Executive Officer of our Volition Veterinary Subsidiary.
Speaker 2: And I'm pleased to report that in the first half of 2023 we achieved $366,000 in revenue, which exceeds the $306,000 in revenue reported for the entire year of 2022. So, great progress. Year-on-year revenue growth was driven by sales of the new Q Vet cancer test, which grew fivefold over the prior year, reflecting sales of the reference kits through our agreements with both IDEX and HESCA. Revenue for new Q Discover for the first half of 2023 was $73,000. Looking ahead, as we've previously stated, it is difficult in these early stages of commercialisation to provide meaningful revenue guidance. But as both Tom and Cameron will cover in their updates, we are pleased with the progress we are making across a number of the product pillars. And with that, I will pass over to Dr. Tom Botera, CEO of our Volition Veterinary subsidiary. Tom? Thanks very much, Tereg, and good morning, everybody. The second quarter of 2023 was another busy period, not only for the Volition Veterinary team, but for our licensing and distribution colleagues as well. Following the launch of our new Q Vet cancer test through IDEX's Reference Lab network in the US in January , we were able to
Speaker 2: From a publications and product development perspective, I am happy to report this quarter that Professor Wilson Robles' peer-reviewed paper on the use of new Q Vet cancer tests for monitoring the disease was published in the journal PLOS One. The publishing of this monitoring paper achieves another very important milestone for us and we believe has the potential to open up a considerable new market for our existing new Q Vet cancer test. As discussed in the paper, findings from the study show that nucleosome concentrations can be a useful tool for treatment monitoring and disease progression in dogs with hemopoietic cancers such as lymphoma. While veterinarians can already use our new Q Vet cancer test as a reliable and affordable screening tool for dogs with increased risk of developing cancer, this new research demonstrates another potentially significant utility of the test. As an innovative monitoring tool for canine lymphoma management, providing actionable information and helping guide treatment decisions to potentially not only aid early detection but also improve outcomes. It is a huge step forward and fantastic news for veterinarians, pet owners and their pets. Subsequent to quarter end in July , we were delighted to welcome Dr. Rebecca Timmons to the Valessian Veterinary Team as our research director.
Speaker 2: Dr. Timmons brings some broad ranging experience to the team. Rebecca started her career at Colorado State University Veterinary School and held several positions from undergraduate researcher in our microbiology lab to lab manager and technician in the clinical science department at CSU's Veterinary Teaching Hospital. In veterinary school, she was actively involved as the vice president of her class and was a DVM ambassador guiding new students. Most recently in her research career, she worked for a nanotechnology company but is also a practicing general practitioner relief veterinarian here in the United States. Dr. Timmons has great experience and is a great fit with our team. From a research and development perspective, we are continuing to develop our feline product and extend our NuQ platform into emergency medicine, specifically looking at netosis and I certainly look forward to bringing you more detailed updates on these exciting topics in the future. In the second half of the year, we will continue to drive awareness of NuQ VET amongst veterinarians through conferences, sponsored webinars, digital marketing and press engagement. Pet Cancer Awareness Month is November and so we expect to provide more details on these and other activities on our next earnings call. And with that, I'll pass back to Cameron Reynolds, our group CEO . Cameron? Thanks Tom and thank you Tereg for those updates. The first half of 2023 has certainly been transformational for Volition. Through IDEX, a global leader in pet healthcare innovation.
Speaker 3: Our NuQ Vet Cancer Test is now available throughout the US, with coverage expanding around the world in sight. This was an incredible step forward for us as we commercialise our transformational NuQ technology within the companion animal healthcare sector. More recently I'm delighted to report that as planned we submitted our Breakthrough Device Designation Request or BDDR with the US FDA in June . This was a real milestone moment in our company's history. For the first time we are in very active discussions with the FDA. Exciting times indeed. As a reminder the BDDR submission is seeking feedback from the FDA on two basic questions. Does the FDA agree that we meet the definition of a breakthrough device and does the FDA agree with the proposed path of a 510K? We believe our case is strong and are delighted to be in active discussions with the FDA now and look forward to agreeing upon a clear regulatory pathway to approval for what we hope to be significant products. We are also making considerable progress with our centres of excellence in Europe .
Speaker 3: for NQQNet with the first clinical paper resulting from one centre already submitted for peer review and abstracts from several centres accepted for the European Society of Intensive Care Medicine Congress in October . Remi Rabouf and Dr Andy Retter, both of whom presented at our Capital Markets Day in May, together with Dr Jake McAlliffe, our Chief Scientific Officer who is well known to many of you, have excelled in developing a strong network of some of the world's leading experts in sepsis. I am excited to announce today we are hosting our first sepsis focused key opinion leader workshop in September . This event provides an opportunity for these experts and centres of excellence to share their challenges in diagnosing and managing sepsis, their findings from working with NQQNet and their hopes for the future. Professor Dudili Anand will be chairing the session and plans to publish a position paper following the event. September is also Sepsis Awareness Month so we hope to raise awareness about this devastating condition. There are between 47 to 50 million sepsis cases reported each year.
Speaker 3: resulting in 11 million deaths. This is a shocking one in five deaths worldwide associated with sepsis. It is the number one cause of death in hospitals, the number one cause for hospital readmissions and the number one condition in terms of overall health care cost to treat, costing a staggering 62 billion annually in the US alone. Lots of numbers I know, but this is just to exemplify how significant and important this potential market opportunity is for volition. We believe that the NuQ NETs test is a groundbreaking diagnostic aid that clinicians will be able to use to detect the disease associated with the ptosis. So please watch out in September , we hope to be able to provide further insight into sepsis and NuQ NETs then. Turning briefly to our other product pillars. First up, NuQ cancer. In the interest of time I'm going to focus on lung cancer, the second most common and deadly cancer in the world. Early in the second quarter Professor Léa Payan, a collaborator from Lyon University Hospital in France, France's second largest hospital, presented two posters at the American Association of Cancer Research Congress. These two posters demonstrated that NuQ assays in combination with circulating DNA molecular profiling at both diagnosis and during treatment progression, improve the level of detection.
Speaker 3: within the field of neuroblastoma. And whilst this rare disease is not necessarily a large commercial opportunity, providing proof of concept in a rare disease may help improve their future treatments. All in all, a very positive first half of 2023. The level of interest in our technology is truly fantastic and we're excited to continue expanding its reach and potential. And so to sum up, I'm very proud of the progress we are making as a team at Volition After many years of developing and optimising UQ, which we believe is a ground-breaking nuclear system quantification technology, we are now commercially helping the platform and generating revenue. It is a hugely exciting time for us as a company and powered by UQ, we look forward to sharing further updates and milestones with you over the coming quarters. In drawing this earnings call to a close, I'd like to thank you all for joining the call today. As before, we very much appreciate it during this busy earnings call season. I'm very happy to take your questions now. Operator? Thank you. At this time, we'll now be conducting a question and answer session.
If you'd like to ask a question, please press star one from your telephone keypad. The confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star two if you're late to remove your question from the queue. For participants that are using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. One moment please. Thank you. Thank you, and our first question is from the line of Bruce Jackson with Benchmark Company. Please assist with your question. Hi, good morning. Morning. Hi, Bruce. A follow-up question on the study in Lyon. If I recall correctly, it was originally put together to help develop a protocol for lung cancer screening in France. So was the data presented part of that study? And if it's not part of that study, can you maybe give us an update on how that study's going? Yes, thanks, Bruce. There's a lot going on in lung cancer and a couple of things just in France alone and of course in Taiwan. And I can give you more details, I guess, after the call, but it's a lot to go through. So
well into the millions and not only does it provide early revenue and you can see from the accounts it's actually a considerable part of what we do now. The number of leads has gone up a lot. We've got some team members out there working with a lot of different pharma companies some of which are very big and well known but obviously we can't use their names on the call but we could not be happy with the level of interest and moving through the phases but as I said it's that comes from each contract would be something in the second or third phase of what happened but it's also a matter of getting our technology out there. You know we we see how valuable what we do is and we can show now that there's eight people eight groups now paying for the right to use our technology and I expect that to grow through the years. Okay great and then last question on the feline program for VET. You're originally thinking that first quarter of 2024 what's your current thinking on the timeline for that program? Terry or Tom? Yeah I think they yeah thanks Bruce we are should be completing the pre analytics for feline by the end of this year. Anticipation probably be more leaking into this first half of 2024 rather than the first quarter. Okay all right thank you very much. Thank you we're really emphasizing research in the VET space as well both on feline other animals in the ptosis so and we're making good progress on that front as Tom has outlined. Thanks Bruce. Thank you our