Published at SeekingAlpha.com
Mydecine Innovations Group Inc. (OTCPK:MYCOF) Q4 2020 Earnings Conference Call May 3, 2021 10:30 AM ET
Company Participants
Allison Soss – Investor Relations
Josh Bartch – Co-founder, Chairman and CEO
Dean Ditto – Chief Financial Officer
Operator
Greetings, and welcome to the Mydecine Innovations Group Inc. Full Year 2020 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. A question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation [Operator Instructions]. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce Allison Soss of Investor Relations. Thank you. You may begin.
Allison Soss
Thank you, operator. Good morning, everyone and welcome to Mydecine’s Full Year 2020 Financial Results Conference Call. Before we begin, I would like to remind you that the comments on today’s call will include forward-looking statements, which by their nature involve estimates, projections, goals, forecast and assumptions, and they’re subject to risks and uncertainties, that could cause actual results or outcomes to differ materially from those expressed in the forward-looking statements and certain material factors or assumptions that were applied in drawing a conclusion or making a forecast in such statements. These forward-looking statements speak only as of the date of this conference call and should not be relied upon as projections of future events. Additional information about the material factors and assumptions forming the basis of the forward-looking statements and risk factors can be found in the company’s filings and press releases on SEDAR.
With that, I would like to turn the call over to Josh Bartch, Co-founder, Chairman and CEO of Mydecine.
Josh Bartch
Thanks, Allison and thank you, everyone for joining us today on our earnings call. I’m joined by Dean Ditto, Chief Financial Officer. As this is our first earnings conference call as a publicly traded company, I want to use today’s call as an opportunity to provide everyone with background on Mydecine, including our building leadership position in the biotech and life sciences industry, growth strategy and vision for the many future applications of psychedelic assisted therapies. We founded Mydecine with the goal of revolutionizing the way people live and experience life through innovative solutions for treating mental health problems and enhancing wellbeing. As an emerging biotech and life sciences company, we set out to accomplish this goal through three main verticals: first, research and development of major source psychedelic assisted therapeutics, novel compounds, therapy protocols and unique delivery systems through global clinical trials; second, a robust IP portfolio; third, development of an advanced HIPAA compliant telehealth platform.
To efficiently and quickly establish the foundation for Mydecine, we completed two significant acquisitions in 2020. In June of 2020, we completed the acquisition of Mindleap, a company known for its digital health platform centered around psychedelics. Mindleap’s product design was worked on by a team of neuroscientists, psychotherapists, clinical psychologists, software developers, designers and iOS and Android experts. The Mindleap app tapped into an international network of health specialists to provide customized emotional and wellbeing tracking tools for patients. Since the acquisition, the team has worked diligently to launch Mindleap version 2 with an enhanced experience in remote telemedicine services, which we anticipate this spring. Then, in September of 2020, we completed the acquisition of NeuroPharm Inc., a developer of natural health psychedelic based treatments for PTSD and other serious mental health disorders in veterans and frontline workers. This strategic acquisition not only expanded the company’s research capacity but has helped to advance both site scientific understanding and the availability of naturally sourced psilocybin to research institutions around the globe.
Additionally, we entered into a strategic partnership with Applied Pharmaceutical Innovations, a translational commercial drug development institute, hosted at the University of Alberta’s faculty of pharmacy and pharmaceutical science to further enhance our research capabilities. In June of 2020, we expanded our relationship by entering into an exclusive partnership and research division agreement. Our partnership with API enables Mydecine to field unparalleled studies with precise control and ownership over study design and drug format. We can support multiple drug development and clinical trial programs simultaneously. The end goal is developing products with significantly improved clinical applications over a period of three years. Our research and development capabilities also include Mydecine sponsored studies with several universities, including the first lab based study of established microdosing at Macquarie University in Australia and neuron level response of psilocybin at the University of Maryland.
Lastly, Mydecine completed its own specialized state of the art mycology lab, the first of its type in the country, located at the Mydecine Center of Mycology, MYCOM, in Denver, Colorado. MYCOM was developed not only for the mycology lab but with full cultivation, genetic research, IP, product development, production of all fungi medicinal compound, analytical chemistry, genomics tissue culture and a GMP compliant SOP production processes. With our R&D facilities in place and world class team established, we’ve launched clinical trials in three continents for the Phase 2a study of psychedelic treatments for PTSD in veterans, EMF and first responders with aims to achieve safer and more accurate psychedelic led psychotherapy results in a supervised setting. Most recently, we announced our four lead novel drug candidates: MYCO-001 a pure psilocybin from natural fungal sources; MYCO-002, an entactogenic compound that has been created with the goal of reducing harm and improving the safety profile versus traditional MDMA; MYCO-003, a psilocybin based formula with reduced anxiety potential with the aim of removing the possibility of “bad trip,” even with severely ill patients; and MYCO-004, a patch delivered tryptamine compound with properties that include short duration, transdermal application, precision dosing and long term compound stability.
These drug candidates were developed with the research team at Mydecine along with collaboration from Dr. Denton Hoyer, drug discovery expert and scientific advisory board member. We believe that these identified compounds will provide excellent improvements for additional new compounds, which further meets the demands of the clinic and have improved safety, efficacy and formulation properties. With these four newly introduced drug candidates, we have reached a critical milestone in our company’s development as well as achieving major advancements for the psychedelic therapeutics industry at large. We have successfully identified the compounds that can significantly enhance therapy, reduce anxiety and maximize delivery mechanisms. At Mydecine, we’re using complex compounds to increase the value of these cannabis and also allow us to develop unique patent pending applications in the US and Canada. As we continue to build upon a robust R&D pipeline, we remain focused on building a robust IP portfolio to lead the advancement of psychedelic assisted psychotherapy.
At this time, we have seven patent applications that represent thousands of inventions with multiple layers of protection on the company’s proprietary drug development pipeline. A key driver of our first mover status in the research and development of psilocybin mushrooms is our unique opportunity to source these mushrooms. During the fourth quarter of 2020, we achieved another significant milestone, completing the first ever international commercial harvest and export of legal psilocybin mushrooms for our research and cultivation facility in Jamaica to Canada in completing our first harvest of 20 kilograms of psilocybin mushrooms. This is one of the first steps in sourcing quality products for our research and development at scale. Our ability to access increasing quantities of these valuable molecules will be paramount to our company’s growth and we are excited to be the first to advance this movement at scale.
It is our expert team that has been quickly and quietly building one of the most innovative companies in the psychedelic spaces. We brought together a collection of passionate business leaders, scientists, mental health professionals and technology visionaries. Along the way, we have added some key members who I’d like to highlight next. First, Dr. Denton Hoyer, a drug discovery expert, joined our scientific advisory board in June of 2020. Dr. Hoyer has been involved in drug discovery at leading pharmaceutical companies, such as Pfizer and Novartis, and research institutions such as Yale for the last 30 years. He holds numerous patents and has been published extensively in the field of medicinal chemistry and drug research. Dr. Hoyer has unparalleled expertise in computational chemistry enabled probe molecule design, drug design, and optimization, synthetic planning and execution, evaluation of chemical novelty and intellectual property assessment strategies. As noted earlier, he played a critical role in identifying our four lead novel drug candidates with the Mydecine research team.
Then in November 2020, we welcome Dr. Rakesh Jetly to the team as Chief Medical Officer. Dr. Rakesh has over 30 years of experience in health and medicine for the Canadian Armed Forces. He’s seen firsthand the traumatic stress and conditions that soldiers and veterans regularly experience and where our current PTSD treatments fall short. In March of 2021, Michel Rudolphie joined the company as President of European Pperations. Mr. Rudolphie, a Dutch citizen, with a Master’s and MBA in healthcare management and policy from Erasmus University in Rotterdam, has an impressive career record in the healthcare industry with succession of leadership positions at Novartis for 14 years, including four years serving as CEO of Novartis, Norway. Later in his career, he joined Make-A-Wish International as CEO and President and was responsible for moving the international headquarters from Phoenix, Arizona, to the Netherlands in addition to assembling a new team and developing foundation internal and external strategy.
Lastly just today, we announced that William Cook will join the team as interim CEO of Mindleap. At different point in juncture of our company’s development, as a west point graduate and a US army veteran, Mr. Cook’s extensive experience, intelligence and compassion have all been key factors to his success. As Manager at Raytheon, Mr. Cook was crucial to the Patriot missile defense capability youth and that desert storm. At Litton Industries, he led hundreds of engineers to develop artificial intelligence software for battle. Thereafter, he founded a software firm and an engineering firm, demonstrating his critical role and leadership in driving growth. Mr. Cook received his Master’s degree in marriage and family and child therapy and had performed countless hours of deep trauma healing work with clients in group and private psychotherapy, placing mental healthcare at the center of his passions. His technical expertise, in conjunction with his personal interest in healing, makes Mr. Cook a trusted leader as we focus on launching Mindleap version 2 in the spring of 2021.
With that, I would like to turn it over to Dean, our Chief Financial Officer, to review our financial highlights before I discuss our vision and outlook.
Dean Ditto
Thank you, Josh. I will speak about the financial results in terms of Canadian dollar. The company’s net loss attributable to common stockholders was $26.9 million for the year ended December 31, 2020, which equates to a basic and diluted loss per share attributable to common stockholders of $0.24. This is compared to a net loss attributable to common stockholders of $21.5 million for the year ended December 31, 2019, or a basic and diluted loss per share attributable to common shareholders of $0.96 cents. Turning to the balance sheet. As of December 31, 2020, the company had cash and cash equivalents of $2.2 million. Subsequent to the year end, Mydecine successfully raised approximately $30 million in the first month of 2021. The company believes at this time there’s sufficient liquidity to execute on its 2021 planned business activities and to satisfy the commitments made to date.
At this time, I would like to turn the call back over to Josh.
Josh Bartch
Thanks, Dean. Today, we provided a detailed overview of Mydecine and the strategy we employed to build one of the most innovative companies in the psychedelic spaces. Recently, we migrated our common shares and warrants to the New York Exchange and March of 2021, enabling us to reach a broader institutional and retail investor audience. While we diligently worked on our drug development, we also remain committed to providing greater visibility within the investment community. In this spirit, we’ve submitted a formal application to list on the NASDAQ stock exchange, as well as have taken the necessary steps to qualify, including adding an independent board, engaged a Tier 1 audit firm MNP, engaged EGS, Ellenoff Grossman & Schole as US council and announced a spin out of the company’s cannabis assets, a prerequisite to the listing.
At Mydecine, we focused on closing strategic acquisition and partnerships, advancing our clinical trials and building our IP portfolio to position us as a key player in the advancement of psychedelic assisted psychotherapy. Now as we move ahead with a vertically integrated business model in place, supported by a strengthened balance sheet and expanded team of world class executives, we are strongly positioned to enter the next chapter of Mydecine’s journey to lead the future of psychedelic therapeutics industry. We look forward to keeping the investment committee apprised of upcoming milestones, including data from our Phase 2a study as well as our drug development initiatives. We’re extremely excited as we approach the launch of Mindleap version 2 following today’s announcements of William Cook taking the helm as Interim CEO. Our passion sends us on a mission to develop high quality products and disruptive new technologies so we can contribute to making the world a better place.
I’d like to thank everybody for joining. This is Josh Bartch, CEO. Thank you to all our trusted shareholders. 2021, we look forward to continued updates, continued progress and a continued enhanced journey. Thank you again for your support.
Operator
Thank you for your participation. This does conclude today’s teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Have a great day.