Absci Corp at Morgan Stanley Global Healthcare Conference Transcript

The following is excerpted from the question-and-answer section of the transcript.

Question: Vikram Purohit - Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC - Analyst : <_ALACRA_META_ABSTRACT>A lot of interest recently on AI tech-enabled drug development. Maybe the best place to start is just walk us through the pieces driving the formation of Absci and kind of a description of the key problem that you're looking to solve.

Question: Vikram Purohit - Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC - Analyst : Great. That's a good segue actually to my next question. So with all of the AI-enabled, tech-enabled drug development firms, I think people try to always see how they're fitting into three broad use cases, which you just alluded to. One is, how can you cut early-stage development costs? Two is, how can you find novel targets or better drug known targets? And then three is, how do you increase POS? So you touched on this. But to put a fine point on it, is there a good example that you can provide on how Absci's been able to tick through those steps?

Question: Vikram Purohit - Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC - Analyst : Got it. Got it. Maybe then, let's talk about your business model. You just mentioned partnerships, proprietary pipeline. Let's talk about partnerships first. How are those set up and how do the economics from partnerships that you currently have in place float Absci?

Question: Vikram Purohit - Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC - Analyst : Got it. Okay. And I think one natural question that comes up for broad-based platforms like yours is, is there a specific therapeutic area or is there a specific molecule type that the platform is best suited for? Or have you not run into those kinds of limitations at this point?

Question: Vikram Purohit - Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC - Analyst : Sure. And maybe walk us through the cadence of interaction in a typical partnership between yourself and your partner. How does the collaboration work, maybe from start to finish, on a specific project? And in addition to what you're providing to them, is there a knowledge exchange? And is there -- or even like a data exchange? And are there capabilities, do you think, you've had the chance to develop through your partnership that you wouldn't have been able to do otherwise?

Question: Vikram Purohit - Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC - Analyst : Got it. And that was actually going to be my next question for you, which you, I think, just semi answered. But is it challenging -- given it's a partnership-based model, is it challenging to be able to socialize progress for future business development? Because I'm assuming a lot of the progress you make with partners, they're on programs that are of high priority to those partners. So they don't want to externally disclose the work you've done with them, especially if you've gotten them to a certain point. So then how do you make the case to other partners that we're highly value add and that we can get you from A to B if you can't explain to them what B was?

Question: Vikram Purohit - Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC - Analyst : Got it. So you may not want to talk about this in a great level of detail now, but at a high level, when you think about your internal pipeline, which areas of work are exciting? Which are the specific therapeutic areas that you feel like you're just more inclined towards? Are there specific kinds of, I guess, constructs of biologics antibody that you think are just well suited to your platform.

Question: Vikram Purohit - Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC - Analyst : How do you narrow down the world of what you could work on to actually what you will prioritize for the next -- for the first couple of programs?

Question: Vikram Purohit - Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC - Analyst : Got it. Got it. And is there any limitation on your freedom to operate? Are there specific therapeutic areas or specific areas of work that you've evolved off from just because of the work you do on partnerships?

Question: Vikram Purohit - Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC - Analyst : Okay. So it's typically target-specific work. So it's never for a whole category of indications when you work with the partner. REFINITIV STREETEVENTS | www.refinitiv.com | Contact Us consent of Refinitiv. 'Refinitiv' and the Refinitiv logo are registered trademarks of Refinitiv and its affiliated companies. SEPTEMBER 13, 2023 / 11:30AM, ABSI.OQ - Absci Corp at Morgan Stanley Global Healthcare Conference

Question: Vikram Purohit - Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC - Analyst : Sure. Okay. Understood. I guess taking a step back, one broader investor debate, as the focus has grown on AI-enabled biotech over the last several months, is how do these platforms stay proprietary, how do they stay guarded. So my first question for you on that topic is, if someone was to try to recreate what you've built for your platform to date, what would they need to be able to do that? And how long do you think it would take them to be able to catch up to where you are now?

Question: Vikram Purohit - Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC - Analyst : Got it. And are there novel capabilities you're developing as you just fundamentally get more data to be able to train your models on? And looking five years forward from now, when you've presumably amassed a much larger data set, I guess what kinds of capability do you think that unlocks? What kinds of -- I guess I'm asking you a little bit about the unknown here. But where do you think this could take your models as you develop more data to train those models on?

Question: Vikram Purohit - Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC - Analyst : Got it. And since you touched on the longer-term vision, three to five years out, from like a business model standpoint, where do you ideally hope to be in terms of how much of the firm's economics are coming from partnerships versus proprietary programs? And on the proprietary side, do you imagine that being solely proprietary to the point where you enable -- where you envision yourself building out a full drug development portion of your business? Or do you think you're going to be leveraging partnerships to progress those beyond a certain value creation point?

Question: Vikram Purohit - Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC - Analyst : Got it, got it.

Question: Vikram Purohit - Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC - Analyst : Got it. And I guess going from long-term vision to focus on very much on the now, are there specific use cases for your offerings that you think would provide and present like a low-hanging fruit to additional potential partners where biopharmas is not there yet and they're just not seeing the value yet? And if so, how do you drive that awareness? And I guess what role can a firm like Absci play in fleshing out those use cases to potential partners?

Question: Vikram Purohit - Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC - Analyst : Great, great. Before we close out, could we quickly touch on just your capital position, cash, your expected runway? What's contemplated in that runway? What level of platform pipeline development is all baked in there?

Question: Vikram Purohit - Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC - Analyst : Got it. And the final question for you, then. As people think about the next 6 to 12 months, are there partnership-related milestones or proprietary pipeline news? So I know you mentioned an event coming up. But outside of that, anything people should just keep on their radars?

Question: Vikram Purohit - Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC - Analyst : Great, great. Okay. I think with that, we're out of time. So we'll go ahead and close out. Thank you both for your time. I appreciate it. Thanks for the discussion. (multiple speakers) thank you.