Cogstate Limited (OTCQX:COGZF) Q4 2022 Earnings Conference Call August 29, 2021 9:00 PM ET
Company Participants
Brad O’Connor – Chief Executive Officer
Darren Watson – Chief Financial Officer
Ruth Ray – Senior Marketing Manager
Conference Call Participants
Brad O’Connor
Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the Presentation of Cogstate’s Financial Results for the Year Ended 30 June 2022. My name is Brad O’Connor. I’m joined on this call by Darren Watson, who’s our CFO. Thank you for your attendance.
Just a quick note that all the information presented today should be read in conjunction with the annual report, which was lodged with the Australian Stock Exchange earlier today, along with other documents that have been launched.
We will take questions at the end of this presentation. [Operator Instructions] So, we encourage you to do that.
And with that, I’ll get into the get into the presentation. So, — and there’s some standard materials here that we’ve presented before and many of you will have seen this, but I think it’s important to just remember that we — Cogstate’s mission is to improve and make in the assessment of cognition much easier than it has been traditionally. We’re combining our science and disruptive digital innovation, to make it as simple as measuring blood pressure or taking a temperature.
The company is growing and has grown over the last 20 years and we’re really proud of the growth that we’ve achieved and the financial results that we’re going to present today.
Just as a reminder, Cogstate was founded in Melbourne, Australia, but most of our workforce is located in the United States, 74% of our workforce located in the United States, we have small teams in the U.K. and Japan. We’re around 200 employees — full-time employees now, but a global team of coming up on 400 team members, including our consulting neuropsychologist who work with us around the world.
We sell our technology and our services into two different markets, our largest customer bases, pharma or biotech companies who are developing new drugs. And in that context of those customers, we provide them with our technology to help them measure cognition as well as our services associated with that.
The other markets what we call the healthcare market, where we’re seeking to have our technology used by consumers as well as primary care physicians. In that market, we’ve licensed our technology to Japanese pharmaceutical company, Eisai, on a 10-year global license agreement.
Our technology is — we’ve spent more than 20 years developing it and scientifically and commercially validating that, with support all of the top 10 pharma companies around the world, we’ve run more than 2,000 academic and clinical research trials. Our tests have been administered more than 2 million times. Our technologies, as I said, really well-validated.
The computerized assessments themselves work on standard construct of neuropsychological assessment, but they’ve been designed with computerized assessment in mind. And it provides a range of advantages above standardized assessment stuff, such as automated scoring, they’re really brief assessments. They have high usability and acceptability by our patients. They’re designed to impact the impact of practice or continued serial assessment. They minimize the impact of language and culture.
And strong scientific validation of these tests through hundreds of peer reviewed journals. So, across more than 65 indications, our technology has been validated. And we work across all of these indications with a particular focus in terms of our financial results, at least in Alzheimer’s disease.
When we’re talking about clinical trials business, it’s important to remember that we’re talking about a software and services business. So, not only do we provide our own proprietary assessments of cognition, but we support the use of other assessments of cognition in those clinical trials.
We’ll do that in conjunction with technology partners, what we refer to as e-colo [PH], who are providing the digitization of those standard neuropsychological assessments will provide work around the end licensing of those assessments, that training of site staff to use those assessments will audit the findings of those site staff and essentially monitor that. We will provide statistical analysis and scientific consulting. So, a full range of services in our clinical trials business. The healthcare business is much more just a software sale.
Having looked at the financial year 2022, some, I think, really important developments that we’ve highlighted here across the FY 2022 year. We’ve formed a Scientific Advisory Board of world-class neuroscientists, who are helping us as we continue to push our science forward and also helping us as we think about expanding our customer base. And these scientists are routinely called upon to act as Scientific Advisors for the development of new protocols for clinical trials. And so they also form part of an important outreach program for us.
We announced during the year the expansion of our partnership with a company called Clario, who are provider of technology solutions into clinical trials. That partnership is going very well and really just reflects a broader goal that we have of using similar companies as channel partners as we seek to expand our market share in that clinical trial space.
We’ve highlighted here, one Phase II study in dementia with Lewy bodies. We’ve highlighted that because of the use of our digital assessments as a primary endpoint, in that Phase II study.
Obviously, over time as we seek to scientifically and commercially validate our technology, the increased use of that technology as one of the key endpoints to determine the success of that study is really relevant and really important to us. And just, again, displays that growth of acceptance of our technology in Alzheimer’s disease, but also in other forms of dementia, such as Lewy bodies dementia.
We’ve continued to expand the launch of our technology to consumers across the Asian region in conjunction with Eisai. We launched our products in Taiwan and Hong Kong during the financial year 2022 and those launches have gone very well.
We’ve expanded our involvement in major industry initiatives, we’ve continued with the Davos Alzheimer’s Collaborative, and that’s been really important as we’ve partnered with them to launch the trial of our primary care physician tool, which is called Cognigram.
In a healthcare — or a health network in Florida in the United States, we’ve joined the Digital Medicine Society for Alzheimer’s disease and Related Dementias. We’ve joined the Decentralized Trials & Research Alliance. So, just other industry associations that just reflect the growing understanding of Cogstate’s offering in the industry.
And we’ve increased the adoption of decentralized clinical trials and I want to spend a little bit of time talking about that. Cogstate is working across — when I talk about decentralized clinical trials, what I’m talking about is some aspect of home-based assessment or assessment that’s occurring outside of the central clinical trial site or research hospital.
We’re supporting the remote cognitive assessment in a range of different diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease, mild cognitive impairment, frontal temporal dementia, Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis, post-traumatic stress disorder, oncology, cardiovascular disorders, and a range of different neurodevelopment disorders and rare diseases. So, a huge range of different areas that we’re working with.
In doing that we’re providing not only the Cogstate computerized assessments, that we’re also supporting via telehealth assessments, a range of other standardized measures that are listed there on the screen.
We’re doing this around the world in North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia. And we see this as a really important way in which we grow market share and we grow our offering.
In that clinical trial space, we see this as an area which is going to continue to grow the use of this remote assessment of cognition and we think that’s a really important factor in how we continue to grow our business over the next few years.
To touch briefly on the financial results and I’ll hand over to Darren in a minute to dig into these financial results in a bit more detail. And again, most of these pretty well flagged in our most recent quarterly update. $82.5 million of clinical trial sales contracts executed during the year, which is up 74% on the prior year. That means that the end of June 2022, we have over $139 million of contracted future revenue that will roll off in future periods — that pipeline of future revenue up 37% on the prior year. We recorded $45 million of revenue for the year, that’s up 38% on the prior year; clinical trials revenue up 41% to just over $40 million.
Our profit before tax was a record $10.7 million profit before tax that was at the upper end of the range that we provided just a month ago and the result was up 84% on the prior year. Really strong operating cash flow, $9 million of cash inflow from operations during the year. You can see that’s down on the prior year, but important to note, the prior year included $13.8 million of proceeds or net proceeds from the upfront Eisai payments on a like-for-like or continuing business basis. Really strong growth in operating cash flows, leaving us with just over $30 million of total cash flow or $28.7 million of net cash at the end of June, a really strong cash position with no debt.
We have a look at how that contracted sales growth has delivered revenue growth over the last couple of years. We can see that with revenue growth, we’ve been able to show profit growth EBIT or earnings before interest in tax, here really is equivalent to profit before tax in our business with — given that there’s no real interest expense. And so we’re seeing that financial leverage. We’re committed long-term to a financial model that provides EBIT in the range of 20% to 24% of revenue.
So, what are the factors that impact that range? Really, with — what we’re talking about, there is the mix of revenue, so the license fee revenue mix versus services fee revenue mix, and obviously, to the extent that license fee revenue is higher, we see much greater margins with that.
And then although that just allowing for the fact that we may invest in different technology, advancements through a year, which may push us towards the low end of margin range. So, that 20% to 24%, though, as we look forward, really committed to that financial model and as a general statement as revenue increase margin should increase as we get further leverage from those from those operating costs in the business.
We have a look at sales contracts in terms of value, but also, where are we generating that value, we see that $82.5 million of sales contracts, again, up substantially on the prior years, 84% of that was in related to Alzheimer’s disease clinical trials, which was up from 65% in the prior year. 73% of the value of those sales contracts in Phase III studies, again, compared to 20% in the prior year. So, we’re seeing that increase in value of sales contracts that we’re pushing into more and more Phase III clinical trials.
When we look at our contracted revenue backlog at 30 June and compare that to the prior years, what we can see is that though that backlog is increasing, particularly as we look out to years two and three, we see really substantial growth in that revenue backlog, which gives us great confidence about revenue growth in future periods.
Looking at the ongoing trials at 30 June, 2022, we have 123 ongoing trials and I think it’s really important to note that 80 of those are in Phase I and II trials. So, that’s where we see a lot of our growth coming from as those trials push, when they’re successful, that is of course, when they push from Phase I and II into later stage trials and obviously understand the value of particularly those Phase III studies have and the impact that has on our contracted revenue and therefore, our revenue pipeline.
Looking at Cogstate’s share of the Alzheimer’s trials market, we’ve updated the slide that we provided at the half year. You can see there that for ongoing trials that have been initiated since the 1st of July 2019, Cogstate now accounting for 17% market share, that’s up from 13.3% as at the data we presented at the half year. So, we’re growing that market share. I think what’s important to focus on now as you have a look at that Phase II market share at 20%, we haven’t seen the same level growth in Phase III, because obviously that will take time as we need Phase II studies to push into Phase III. But we’re seeing that substantial growth in those sort of Phase I and Phase II studies, which is really encouraging and points to strong performance in the future.
With that, I’m going to pause. I’m going to hand over to Darren to dig into the financial results in a little bit more detail.
Darren Watson
Great, thanks Brad. So, as Brad broadly outlined, financial year 2022 is a very strong year for Cogstate, several new records. Revenue came in at $45 million, which was a record high for Cogstate, up over $70 million from financial year 2021, year-over-year growth of almost 38%.
Strong growth in clinical trials revenue and a full year of — from our Eisai global licensing agreement in our healthcare business contributed to the strong revenue performance.
Our contribution margin for the year came in at a record 59.3%, up more than four percentage points from FY 2022. Our clinical trials business was the primary driver to our margin growth, as revenue mix and improved productivity in that business, continue to take it to record margin levels and I’ll cover that in more detail in just a minute.
The record revenue and strong margin performance has resulted in an EBITDA of $13 million, again, a record for the company, more than double what we achieved in FY 2021. And importantly gets to an EBITDA margin of almost 29%.
That result illustrates the operating leverage in the business that we’ve talked about that Brad covered just a short while ago, where the growth in the clinical trials margins and the leverage at the higher revenue creates against our operating expense yields to higher margins at both EBITDA and EBIT level as the business grows. So, really illustrating that leverage across the business.
The record EBITDA performance has also meant a record profit before tax, which is coming to $10.7, which as Brad mentioned before is at the upper end of the guidance we provided back in July, and is growing at 4% year-over-year. This record result is a result of the record levels of revenue, but also a continued focus on productivity, particularly within our clinical trials business and careful cost management across all parts of the business.
As I move to the clinical trials business, so with more detail on page 19. You can see in more detail the strong performance of the business. Revenue at $40.3 million for the year, coming from the strong opening backup position we add that was about $24 million at the start of the year. So, we’ve added almost $16 million during the year from the new sales performance of $82.5 million that Brad touched on earlier.
That’s despite the fact that we have seen a delay to some revenue into future periods with one of our largest studies continuing to experience some enrollment challenges and a couple of studies put on hold pending FDA reviews as they tried to clarify some aspects of the protocol.
From a margin perspective, the business brought-in [PH] from highest software licensing mix and improved productivity. The software license mix was almost 22% of full year revenue as opposed to historical levels of around 18%, 19% and really reflects our success in having Cogstate technology included as part of protocols across the portfolio of studies that we do.
The improved productivity results comes from the continuing shift to agile practices across our clinical trials business and also we continue to invest in tools and processes that drive efficiency in the way we deliver our services.
If I go to the next chart, it will detail for you our future contract and revenue position and backlog coverage. The chart on the left details that backlog run-off and shows that for FY 2023, we start with a solid foundation of $30 million of revenue under contract. Though that is a lower — that is a little lower than what we had expected, given the delays I mentioned earlier where one of our largest studies as moved out with the delays in patient enrollment and those couple of studies that have gone on hold, as I mentioned, which are pending FDA reviews.
In addition, we got $4.2 million of healthcare revenue, which is the amortization of the Eisai global licensing agreement. So, we start the FY 2023 year with almost $34 million of revenue under contract.
Importantly, what this does show — what this graph does show is that both FY 2024 and FY 2025 are growing, with almost $33 million of revenue under contract for FY 2024, with a further 12 months of signings or sales to go to build that backlog. So, really positioning ourselves for growth beyond FY 2023, but also FY 2024, and 2025.
To the right hand side, the table shows the beginning a year backlog as a percentage of full year revenue. So, for FY 2023, you can see that backlog coverage lifted to 61%. So, when we first shared it a year ago that as the business grows, we expect to see that backlog as a percentage of revenue become larger just simply through the scale of the business.
If I now move to healthcare, you can see the revenue for the full year was $4.5 million, which reflects the fact that we had a full year of the Eisai global licensing revenue and therefore growth in the year of almost 19%, up from $3.8 million a year ago.
The margin for the year of 72.8% was aligned with the guidance that we gave, the increasing costs, reflecting the fact that we’ve brought on additional skills and capability to make sure that we’re well-positioned to support Cogstate as they look to roll our technology under the licensing agreement into the additional territories that we discussed earlier.
Finally, if I just go to cash flow, pleased to record a particularly strong second half and fourth quarter, in particular, exceeded the guidance we had put back in the half year. With a net operating cash flow of $9 million compared to the prior year of $16.8 million, but remembering, as Brad said just a little earlier, within that $16.8 million, $13.8 million of that came from the upfront payment from the Eisai licensing agreement. So, the $9 million represents a really strong growth from the core business activities on a year-to-year basis. The focus on our payment terms and collections across the business really resulted in that strong operating cash flow performance, particularly in the second half.
As you can see, our investment cash flow was higher year-to-year, but largely result of the benefit we got in the prior year from a grant, a government grants. We had no such grant this year. But you will see we have a slightly higher capitalized software development costs with considerable work undertaken over the past year on the underlying infrastructure that supports our Cognigram platform, which we’ve undertaken to ensure that that technology is in a robust mode to support the rollout of Cognigram under the Eisai arrangement into those additional markets.
That leaves us with a strong net cash flow. Net cash increase of $7 million for the year takes us to a really strong net cash position at the end of the year of $28.7 million, just in for past three payments or a gross balance of $30.6 million. So, in a really strong cash position.
With that, I’ll hand back to Brad.
Brad O’Connor
Thanks, Darren. What we wanted to do to close out was to really just take you through the financial year 2023 outlook and what we’re seeing at the moment. There’s some continuing really important factors that are impacting our business, we’re continuing to see Alzheimer’s R&D spend increase, and that’s positively impacting our clinical trial sales, indeed through financial year 2022 and our expectation is that that will continue through financial year 2023.
I touched on previously that the decentralized trial design and that virtual assessment with an in-home assessment of cognition really complements our offering both from our digital proprietary assessments, but also our ability to deliver those telehealth style assessment through our consulting neuropsychologist, we’ve got a really good offering now and we’re seeing substantial growth in that part of the business or that offering. And that’s a trend we expect to continue for a number of years.
And in fact, we really don’t see the industry going back to how it has operated with all of those assessments, traditionally, OptaCore [PH] happening at site. We’re seeing growing success of our ability to sell through our channel partners such as Clario, we think that’s a really good long-term trend and we’re very focused on that as a means by which we can increase our customer base and increase market share.
There’s obviously also some external data released that could impact our business over the course of the next year. Eisai in their most recent earnings call, announced that their topline data from their Phase III Clarity AD study of lecanemab in early Alzheimer’s disease is now scheduled for the end of September 2022, so approximately one month from now. So, we eagerly anticipate that data. Roche’s Gantenerumab data expected, again in the December quarter, but probably less expectations in relation to that Roche, Darren noted that that data was — they weren’t expecting that data necessarily to be positive, but they expected to learn a lot from that.
Lilly’s data from their Phase III Alzheimer’s — early Alzheimer’s disease trial called TRAILBLAZER for their drug donanemab expected to read out in mid-2023. So, there’s a lot of data that’s expected over the course of the next 12 months, there’s no doubt that if one or more of those Phase III studies are successful, it will positively impact our business, both the clinical trials business, as well as the healthcare business. There’s also the risk that all of those data — or those — the data from those Phase III trials is negative, that we could see some short-term downtime in terms of new contract sales, in our — particularly in our clinical trials business. So, we wait like everybody else for the for the release of those data over the course of the next 12 months.
When we look at the business, our business in a bit more detail, having looked at sales contracts executed through the start of the September quarter, just over $16.5 million of sales contracts already executed through July and August. So, obviously, that’s up substantially from the $9 million we’ve executed in — through the whole of the June — the most recent June quarter. So, that’s really encouraging. Again, we’re seeing a lot of work there in Alzheimer’s disease.
In terms of our revenue expectations, a little muted at this stage — at this very early stage of the year, I should add. Just based on what we’re seeing currently, Darren mentioned that the revenue that is pushed into future periods, approximately $4 million revenue pushing out from our estimated financial year 2023 revenue into future periods. So, with that — with — we’re expecting our first half revenue to be consistent with that June 2022 half year result, that’s slightly less than the first half of 2022 result.
As we look forward to the second half of 2023, we’re not providing guidance for revenue at this stage in relation to but that, that revenue for the second half is going to vary considerably with the level of sales contracts we execute, particularly over the first half of the financial year, as well as what will happen in terms of the recognition of revenue from those trials that have either been delayed or that — where the revenue has been delayed. There is a possibility we’ll see some of that revenue pulled back into financial year 2023 and so we’re just going to wait and see how those trials play out before providing more detailed guidance in relation to the full year revenue expectations.
In terms of healthcare revenue and the second contribution from that part of the business for financial year 2023, we expect that to be consistent with financial year 2022. At this stage, that’s just based on the minimum revenues under the Eisai agreement. We’re targeting EBITDA in the range of 27% to 29% of revenue and targeting EBIT at 20% to 24% of revenue, but based on those revenue expectations at the moment we’re sort of guiding towards the bottom end of that 20% to 24% range.
Again, if we see revenue increase through the year, which is a distinct possibility, then we would expect for that EBIT range to move up — our expectations to move up within that range.
We’re guiding for operating cash flow at 75% of EBITDA, really what that represents is the fact that we’re rolling off revenue under the Eisai agreement, which includes the amortization of the upfront payment that was received in December of 2020. So, a little bit of a mismatch there between revenue recognition and cash flow that — so as we say, cash flow approximately 75% of EBITDA.
With that, I’m going to open up the lines to questions. [Operator Instructions]
Question-and-Answer Session
A – Ruth Ray
Thanks so much, Brad and Darren. We do have several questions here. I’ll go ahead and dive in. So, as you were describing the upcoming readout of lecanemab, has Eisai started exploring more imminent options for Alzheimer’s screening, giving this read through coming out?
Brad O’Connor
Yes, looks so the ongoing discussion — obviously, the timeline around the readout has been well flagged. So, it’s coming in a little bit. The timeline from that previously said the fall of 2022; they’ve got a little bit more specific and said the end of September 2022.
But largely speaking, it’s been tracking along with their expectations for some time and have been publicly expressed for some time. So, I would suggest that conversations and the discussions around product launch and product advancement are continuing in line with our previous discussions, but obviously there’s a huge amount of excitement about this impending data read-out and like everybody, we just wait for the opening of that package.
Ruth Ray
We do. So, in the same line of thought, so I a large percentage of the contracts for Cogstate are in Alzheimer’s disease. So, what other indications offer opportunities for Cogstate and are being pursued?
Brad O’Connor
Yes, it’s a good question. So, through financial 2023, we’ve highlighted three different disease areas that we’re really going to focus on. So, one, obviously, is Alzheimer’s disease. The second is in Parkinson’s disease, where we see a pickup in R&D activity and we think we’ve got a really compelling offering in that disease area.
And the third is a broad category; I suppose that called rare diseases, where we’re seeing a lot of increase in R&D spend around those rare diseases. And again, we think we have a particularly good offering our group there led by Dr. Pam Ventola, who joined us a number of years ago out of the Child Study Center at Yale University, really well renowned scientist in the field of rare disease, particularly in pediatric indications. And you’ll appreciate that in a lot of these rare diseases, life expectancy is impacted and so a lot of these studies are conducted in child populations. And so we have a really strong offering there and are expecting to see good growth again, as we’ve seen over a number of years, in those rare diseases as well.
Ruth Ray
Thanks Brad. We have a raised hand from Dennis Hume [PH]. Dennis, I’m going to go ahead and unmute you at this time. All right, Dennis, you should be unmuted. Do you want to go ahead and ask your question?
It might have been an accidental on raised hand. We’ll go ahead and Dennis if you have — I think we’ve got you, one second, let me unmute you one more time. There we go. Hi Dennis.
Unidentified Analyst
Okay. Is that better? Can you hear me now?
Ruth Ray
Yes.
Brad O’Connor
We can.
Unidentified Analyst
Okay. Thanks very much. So, in regards to the guidance for the revenue backlog run-off for FY 2023, that’s $29.7 million. The $4 million of revenue that we’ve talked about that’s been pushed back has that already taken into account in that $29.7 million have guidance or was that an additional change?
Brad O’Connor
No, no, that’s taken into account in respect of that guidance.
Unidentified Analyst
Okay, thank you very much. That’s all from me.
Brad O’Connor
Thanks Dennis.
Ruth Ray
Thanks Dennis. All right, next question that we have — a couple of questions around channel partnerships. I’ll group these together. So, the first is, are there — can you provide any timing on new channel partner announcements? And then also, what comes next with our current partnership with Clario?
Brad O’Connor
So, look, I think, perhaps in context in relation to those channel partners before answering those specific questions. So, companies like Clario and other companies where we’re working with which are broader technology providers into the clinical trial space, are really looking to expand their offering into central nervous system diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease or Parkinson’s disease, and other associated central nervous system illnesses.
In order for them to do that they need access to both digital cognitive assessments, but also access to scientific support to be able to deliver the appropriate assessments in those trials. And so that’s where Cogstate sits as a really important strategic provider to these companies. So, there’s a number of companies that fall into this category, I’m not at this stage going to go into naming those, but if you want, do your research around different, what we call, e-colo [PH] providers, you’d be able to work that out.
And we’re in discussions with a number of those companies. In fact, we’re bidding in conjunction with a number of those companies for additional work. So, we see that as a really important growth channel for us.
In terms of announcing those partnerships, it’ll really depend on the marketing teams within those companies. The announcement we put out in conjunction with Clario a few months ago was really at the instigation of their marketing team. And we were happy to support their messaging in respect of that, as they sought to, I suppose make the industry aware of their improved offering in that space.
In terms of how their relationship with Clario is going, it’s going very well. We’re continuing to bid on new work included in the $16.5 million of contracts signed and July and August include a couple of contracts in conjunction with Clario. We have a number of — I think there’s another four clinical trials that have been awarded, but not yet contracted, in conjunction with Clario. So, the relationship is going and going really well. And we’re seeing good adoption of that partnership.
Ruth Ray
Wonderful. Thanks Brad. Moving into a different subject matter, can you give some color around competitive dynamics? On what basis do you compete? And have you needed to change your approach?
Brad O’Connor
Yes, look in the clinical trials space, major competitors there include Cygnet Health, as well as the MedAvante-ProPhase offering that falls under the broader company, banner WCG, which is a group that provides a range of services into clinical trials. They are the major competitors we see in the clinical trial space.
We — the competitive environment there has remained reasonably constant over recent years, and where we continue to compete with them as we have over prior years. We — I think we differentiate ourselves from those competitors in respect of our digital offering, with those competitors really offering more of the support of traditional neuropsych assessments.
If we look more at the digital providers, people like Cambridge Cognition or some of those other digital providers of cognitive assessments, really we’re seeing those as competitors more in the healthcare space than in the clinical trials space. We’re not seeing those types of companies when we’re bidding on Phase II and III Alzheimer’s disease studies.
Ruth Ray
Thanks for that perspective, Brad. Moving into more of the financial realm, so two questions here in this realm, not entirely related, but — and financial. So, how much of the $16 million of sales contracts do you expect to recognize in financial year 2023? And then in a different area of this, so Cogstate started invoicing Eisai for minimum quarterly royalty payment in December of 2021. Could you please remind how that feeds through cash flow and healthcare segment revenue?
Brad O’Connor
Yes. So if you have a look at the appendices, I’ll deal with the second question first. We included this graph in the appendices to our — to our investor deck, which shows how the cash is received versus the revenue recognized. So you’re looking at the bar, there is the purple bars are the revenue recognizing and see that straight line $4.2 million per annum over the coming years. And if you look at the blue bars, you can see the cash that is expected to be received over the course of that 10 year period, you can see that by financial year 2031, that accelerates and exceeds the amortize revenue. But, in terms of fiscal 2023, you’re talking about $1.75 million there of cash receipts, versus $4.2 million with the revenue recognition.
Darren, I’m just going to hand to you in terms of whether you know, off the top of your head the — the expected FY 2023 revenue from the $6.5 million worth of contracts executed in the period to-date.
Darren Watson
Yeah, Brad. So look — what I would say is it would yield consistent with what we see historically. But I would qualify that with the fact that, there are many variables that determine how the yield of individual contracts flow, including things such as the term of the contract, the software license, mix, the phase that it’s in various factors like that. So typically, what we see from, what we saw in the first quarter is roughly between high-teens and mid-20s, in terms of percentage yield in that year.
So if the 16 million signed to-date, you would expect somewhere between 3 million to 5 million of that to yield within FY 2023 based on historical average yields.
Brad O’Connor
Thanks, Darren.
Ruth Ray
Thanks Brad and Darren. A couple more questions here from our audience, and then we’ll wrap-up. So this next question is, delays and studies and FDA reviews are part and parcel of your business? Have you noticed a change in their approach that makes this year particularly difficult?
Brad O’Connor
Yeah, look, I think the thing to call out here is, if there’s one study that’s particularly impacted comes down to the design and recruitment of that study. So in this particular study, recruiting an early Alzheimer’s disease, and looking at not just cognitive assessment as an inclusion criteria but also amyloid and tau assessment.
The issue with respect to this one study has been the production of the tau biomarker. So there’s a number of patients ready to enroll in that study, in fact, hundreds of patients ready to enroll in that study. But the recruitment rate is limited by how many patients can undergo that tau assessment. So that’s really holding up that study. So there’s just some particular and peculiar instances, as Darren mentioned, we’ve got — so that’s a big factor. There’s another couple of studies around the whole, just pending FDA review of drug production and, and also protocol amendment. So they’re more standard things that you would expect to see and as suggested in the question are part and parcel of our business, that, the big one that’s really having an impact is more unique. And yeah, and as I said it — related to the production of this tau biomarkers.
So we — we’ve taken a fairly conservative assessment of how revenue will roll under that there is the possibility that, that backlog does break up a bit that it does, it does come forward if they can solve that biomarker reduction problem and sort of increase the rate of production of that. But we don’t have any particular insight into that and no ability to impact it anyway. So what we’re projecting at the moment is based on what we’re seeing on a weekly and monthly basis.
Ruth Ray
And diving back into the Eisai relationship, which had another question coming around that. Is the year 6 to 10 as global royalty in any way dependent on the Lecanemab study results?
Brad O’Connor
No, it’s not. So then minimum royalties under the agreement and not in any way dependent on the on the trial data.
Ruth Ray
Perfect. And with that, we’re going to go ahead and take our last question here. Just a congrats on the great results for the company. Where does the company need to grow to keep up with the current trends?
Brad O’Connor
So I think — I think we’re really well positioned in terms of growth, I think the, what we’re seeking to do is, obviously, we’re seeing this huge trend around decentralized trial. And the fact that, we have digital assessments really positions us really well there. We’d like to continue to grow that consulting neuroscientists pool of people that we can draw from around the world to enhance our offering in terms of Decentralized Trials that will seek to do that. That’s high margin work for us in that it’s — there’s no fixed costs associated those people, we essentially pay them as we’re generating revenue. So it’s a purely flexible cost base that works really well with our business.
So, we’ll continue to grow, seek to grow in those areas, I think the other thing that will seek to do is to become easier to partner with so better API’s, linking our technology into other channel partners, is an important way that we will continue to expand our offering and utilize the sales resources of our partners.
Acknowledging that what we have is a fairly small direct sales team. And the companies that we’re looking to partner with are substantially larger than Cogstate and have a substantial, broader reach in terms of both existing customers and their — the view they have of ongoing and prospective studies. So we really, really seek to leverage off those. And that means being easier to partner with and having better technology integration with those people. I think those are the main two areas.
Ruth Ray
Excellent. Thank you so much for that perspectives Brad and Darren as well. And with that, we’d just love to hear, are there any final words you have for attendees that Darren, maybe we’ll start with you and then to Brad.
Darren Watson
Thanks, Ruth. Yeah. Look I think — I think we’re just excited about FY 2023 and beyond. Despite the challenges of couple of trials being delayed, I think we’re well positioned for growth into FY 2023 both revenue and profit. And we’ll continue to build on that and continue growth beyond this.
Brad O’Connor
Yeah. And I’ll just reiterate Darren’s comments. I think the business is really well positioned for revenue and profit growth through 2023, 2024 and 2025 that we have some the macro trends really supporting the business. The technology is well validated. We’ll continue to advance that, and we have these upcoming data readouts that could substantially impact our business in a positive way should that data go the way that we hope it will. So I think the business is really well situated and look forward to showing those results over the coming periods.
Ruth Ray
Thanks so much, Brad, and Darren, and thank you all for attending. And with that, we wish you all a good morning or good evening depending on where you’re at, and have a great rest of your day.
Brad O’Connor
Thank you, everyone.
Be the first to comment