Alright. Welcome, everybody, to another animal health insights webinar. Today, we have a treat. We have sort of a unique topic to discuss, a unique guest. Traditionally, we’ve had practitioners of clinical studies and other animal health studies on here to talk about sort of best practices in execution, best practices in, you know, thinking through the r and d pipeline. Well, I thought we’d switch it up today with our guests and go a little bit higher level. I thought it’d be interesting for, folks in r and d at these, at our partner organizations in in the industry to learn a little bit about sort of the investor mindset, what the leaders are thinking about, and, you know, what the work that you’re doing, kind of what the end result and how it compares to what others are doing. So today, we’re gonna talk about how startups and new entrants are reshaping the animal health landscape, and we have an awesome guest. Before I introduce this awesome guest, a few housekeeping items. Please post any questions in the q and a. As always, I’ll have a number of questions that we’ll start off with. There’s a quick survey at the end. You guys did awesome last time with the survey. I think we had more people fill it out than ever, so please fill it up before you leave. Check your email for more opportunities. And note this session is being recorded. So with that, let me introduce you to mister Joseph Harvey. Let me pull up my notes here because I need to do this properly because he has a long history. So Joseph and I met, probably seven, eight years ago at the very first conference I went to in animal health. Think it might have been Kisaco conference or the animal health corridor. But Joseph I consider Joseph sort of the watchman on the tower for the animal health industry. He’s the head of animal health at S and P Global, where he’s covered the animal health market since twenty twelve. He’s a journalist by training. He previously reported on the human med tech and diagnostic sector before pivoting to animal health. And his specialty areas include m and a analysis, startup ecosystems, industry rankings, IPOs, and r and d strategy across species and product categories. And he is one of the most connected analysts tracking where new entrants are emerging, who’s funding them, and how incumbents respond. So with that, please welcome Joseph Harvey. Thanks, Tommy. Glad to be part of this webinar. It’s the more information out there about animal health, the better the better it is for for the industry. So thanks thanks for inviting me. No problem. No problem. Well, Joseph, let’s get let’s help everyone get to know you. I know some probably know you. I know most c level folks, most VPs know who Joseph is, and he’s a a big resource to them. But many of the folks that are actually in the day to day helping bring these products to market probably don’t know who you are. So let’s go ahead and introduce them to you. Tell us a little bit about your background and what led you into your path into covering animal health. Yeah. Well, you’ll know from my accent, I I’m based here in London. I I never thought I’d be part of the animal health industry, obviously. I got a degree in journalism, and I and I think everyone that gets a a journalism degree thinks they’re gonna be a hard hitting newspaper journalist or they’re gonna write about music or sports or or something in entertainment. And I actually my first role, as you said, was, as a business journalist in the med tech diagnostics biotech world. And at that same publishing company, I I moved over to animal health fourteen years ago this week, actually, and I didn’t know anything about animal health. This was two thousand and twelve. But I had a four or five year background in writing about deals, interviewing CEOs in the health care, in the human health care, sector, and I sort of took that over to animal health. And if you can think back as far as two thousand and twelve, that was a time pre Zoetis and pre lots of startups in animal health, and the industry has changed so much since then. And for me, it’s also kind of hard because I didn’t know what the industry was like before two thousand and twelve. But, a lot of people have told me that after the Zoetis IPO, etcetera, it was kind of a domino effect and lots more interesting things, which I’m I’m sure we’ll get into, started happening in the industry. But my day to day role is, the basics are as a journalist in animal health, writing about the businesses and the people that make up in the industry, new products, deals, acquisitions, innovation, disease outbreaks, and sort of having a contact to every company and, interviewing the top CEOs, but also finding a start up with two people and asking them what their background is, what their future is, and what they’re doing in in the animal health industry. And if there’s a start up we don’t recognize, we we kind of pounce on them and try and work out what they’re up to. Yep. Awesome. And fourteen years is a long time. So, like, when you first joined from med med tech, and sort of diagnostics, was there something I mean, what what is it about the industry that’s kept you staying here? What is there something unique? Was there anything surprising? What what, what gets you so excited about this space? So firstly, it would be the growth of the industry that I mentioned. There there has been interesting things happening, and you can really see product launches or deals or things that are real firsts for the industry, which is always exciting. But, yeah, you’re right. Why why didn’t I just write about animal health for a few years and go off to another industry? I think it’s the the interconnectedness of the industry. Everyone knows everyone. Even a small article that I can write makes a big impact. And if you think about maybe in human health, one of my areas, it was called Outbeat, would be sort of bone anything to do with bone health, products, companies, any technologies. Even within that space, I wasn’t the only person in that area. You’d interview a company, and then you see five similar interviews online as well. And, also, I suppose in human health compared to animal health, it’s such a vast industry. In animal health, you feel I feel like I can really get my sort of mind around the industry. I can kind of picture all the companies and people involved and and the trends that are going on. I’m not just one of thousands of human health journalists. It’s a real specialized area. And it’s it for want of a better word, it is a really good, interesting area full of nice people that are engaging. And when you say I want to talk to you about your company, they do want to talk about their their innovation because at the end of everyone’s working day, the the focus is on making animals healthier. And maybe it’s a bit little bit less of a cynical industry than human health, and it’s it really is an industry that itself is quite quite young. Well, the modern sort of phase of the industry is quite young, and and I find it really engaging and interesting to be a part of. Me too. Me too, Joseph. I’ve I’ve mentioned this on previous webinars, but, you know, I I liken it to, like, a small town. And then every time you go to a conference or something, you go back to that small town, see all your high school friends, see all the neighbors. People are just very welcoming. Got just really good intentions. And I always tell my team, you know, life’s short. Let’s just have make sure whatever we’re doing, we’re having fun building. That’s sort of my personal motto. And I love building with with these partners and with this industry, the folks that they’re. They’re just they’re just great people. Yeah. I like that analogy. It’s a small town, but every time you go back to it, there’s there’s five new buildings or the Yeah. Five new start ups or something’s changed or improved. Or Yeah. Different class of alumni coming back. So you need to know you’re, you know, four years younger than me or whatever. Okay. Let’s see. So for people listening who might not follow the start up world closely, walk us through where these new companies are showing up. What are the main categories? And are there areas where you’re seeing start ups that generally surprise you and where you didn’t expect new entrants? Well, the initial surprise for me back in two thousand twelve was the lack of startups or young businesses targeting animal health. I I was primed to go out and interview, all these companies. I talked to the in animal health, there’s the big four, Zoetis, Boehringer, Merck, Elanco, and you could say, Depra and CEVA are also very big companies. I talked to all the CEOs and the the leading, c suite executives there, but you find the real kind of gems, the real good stories about the the small companies that, have unusual backgrounds or have interesting technologies. And at the beginning, there must have been one or two startups focused solely on animal health. And through all you mentioned the conferences that we go to. You you just have to go to some of them. There’s the Kisarco one in London, the the KC, Corridor one, and there’s, an event in Belgium, next week, next month, actually, in the middle of May that showcases a lot of these startups and and the the quality and the amount of them are growing. I think the it’s hard to put out an exact number on it, but there’s between five hundred and six hundred animal health focused startups now. Wow. And there used to be a handful, and it’s it’s risen really quickly. That that’s a combination that some of these are focused, focused solely on animal health. They’re, like, true animal health startups. Some of them will be human health companies that might have one product or one product candidate or asset in for companion animals. Are they a fully are they fully an animal health startup? Well, they’ve got one asset. Maybe maybe they shouldn’t be part of that list, but there is a whole lot of start ups, and it’s accelerated quickly. And, yes, maybe in the earlier days, the the not the quality, but the sort of likelihood of them succeeding was a lot lower. I feel like not only is there more companies now, more startups in animal health, there’s more variety in terms of technology and more variety in terms of geography. The main bulk that we see are in the US and Europe, but we are seeing a lot more coming from, Japan, Korea, China, and, Brazil and India in the last few years as well. I suppose the whole discussion around animal health startups, it’s still such a young industry going from having two or three startups in two thousand twelve to having over five hundred now. It’s still kind of in the early stages of working out what success means for a start up. And in the early stages, building all that kind of furniture around funding, strategic support, support from other services. And it’s a bit like the the bigger animal health industry. The the startup landscape has grown from a very tiny, tiny base, and is in still in the stages of working out, the relationship of startups and and the wider industry. Are is why why do you think the change is? Is it, funding? Is it, are there certain sort of demand drivers that you think? Is it just pet ownership growth? Is it, you know, protein growth, consumption? What what do you think’s the major changes, and are there certain categories or species that you’re seeing more than others, or is it pretty blended? The drivers between behind the startups are the drivers behind just the animal health industry in general. So, yeah, pet ownership, pet spending, need for sustainable protein, need for anti, alternatives to antimicrobials. They were all supporting the creation of startups. But the reason I think these startups know about this is the the public listing of Zoetis, the public listing of Elanco, and several major billion dollar deals in animal health. Elanco acquiring Bayer, and lots of, bigger businesses in animal health doing really well. IDEXX, a really good growth story. Fibro Animal Health has grown a lot and made an interesting acquisition in the last few years. Decra, Siva, a lot of these are US and European. But in general, the big businesses in animal health over the last decade have grown a lot. So, they’ve really been able to highlight how attractive the industry is. That’s not to say the the sort of funding trends have followed that. There’s been a there’s been creation of a lot of startups. So of those five hundred to six hundred, that doesn’t mean five hundred are gonna succeed. It’s and it depends what you look at for success. But how many of them are are going to exit and, be acquired or become a commercial prospect? Probably not many of them, but still a lot more than it was, ten years ago. And it’s quite uniform, I think, across companion animal and food animal. We do track a lot of the deals and and the startups that are being formed in animal health. And as with anything, it goes through lots of cycles. At the moment, we’re seeing lots and lots of well, a high amount of deals for animal health, but, a high amount of sort of small funding deals. And last year, a lot of that, was around food animals and around sustainability. Methane reduction is is is attracting money at the moment. But I must caveat all of this and sort of point out that when I’m talking to start ups, ninety percent of them say there’s not enough funding out there for animal health start ups. And this year so how we’re nearly five months in, but we’ve seen some huge deals for start ups in animal health this year, hundred million dollar plus deals. There’s pet longevity startup, Loyal, has raised a hundred million this year alone, hundreds of millions over the last few years. There’s Holter and Targan. They’re two sort of livestock technology, businesses that have raised, again, hundreds of millions. They’re at the sort of they they are in the commercialization stage. So there are examples of startups that can raise a lot of money in animal health. The key here is they’ve raised money from outside of the industry. Tends to be on the pet side. You can attract human health investors. And on the, livestock health side, you can, attract, more kind of agricultural or ag tech investors. And that’s kind of the key to succeeding on on the funding side of animal health. Interesting. Fun fact, IDEXX was, if I’m my memory serves, the second highest performing stock from two thousand to twenty twenty after monster. Like Index is an interesting super large growth. Maybe think that if they’d IPO ed more recently, that it would have had they would have been an even more well known story because I think a lot of investors or, when they think about animal health, they’ll think about Zoetis and and Elanco because they went public in the last decade, whereas IDEXX, I think, I might be wrong, but it was sort of mid or early to mid nineties. And they’ve they’ve been on a great success story in in companion animal diagnostics, which is only one portion of the animal health industry. Yeah. Okay. So you’ve profiled dozens of these startups through your disruptors and innovators report. When you look at the ones that have actually gained traction versus the ones that haven’t, is there a distinguishing characteristic there? Is it the technology, the team, the go to market, or something else? It it it’s not my job to rate startups, so I won’t be critical of any of them. Maybe I’m a little bit like an investor, and it’s the fact that I don’t have a veterinary background. The pitch is so important, and you’d I would think a bad pitch is possibly because of a bad leader or the it comes down to the ability to make people understand what you’re doing quickly. If I don’t understand what a start up’s doing within the first thirty seconds, minutes of of their presentation, then my interest wanes a lot. But then that shouldn’t be the the the only part of it. But I think team does come in come into it a lot. I think one of the one of the threads between all what I believe have been successful startups so far is a connection with the industry, is that, if if their advisory board has an animal health person on it. For me, if I see a start up I don’t recognize and I look at their advisory board and includes people on there with a background from Elanco, Boehringer, Merck, IDEXX, Zoetis, Mars, it’s almost a stamp of approval. And it’s not that that confirms that their product or their thesis works. It confirms that potentially there’s a viable market for their for their product. Now the one thing is that just because you have an interesting technology, it it doesn’t make it a viable product, if that makes sense. Fun piece of science doesn’t always mean that you have, a product or a big product. And I suppose at the moment in animal health, success for startups currently means being acquired by one of the big companies or having a commercial partnership with one of the companies. That’s pretty much it at the latter stage. And on on the early stage, it’s just being able to raise funds. But at the moment, I suppose that’s what success is. And to this date, yes, there’s examples of those acquisitions or those partnerships, but there’s not many. But I wouldn’t expect there to be many because we’re still at the early stages. Some some startups have been around for a long time. And I think over the next few years, we’re gonna see a few more startups being acquired and startups commercializing, their product or their technology themselves, which would kind of be a bit of a first in animal health. Whether that is success, we’ll see because it could all go wrong. We’re a start up trying to support, a US wide sales network. At the moment, most of, especially on the companion animal side, most of the startups that made their way along the investment, or the investment rounds and develop their products have been acquired by one of the big four or five or six. Yeah. We’ve seen that a couple of times in my time here. So going down that path, a lot of these startups, like you said, they get acquired, before they ever really prove they can stay on their own. Do you see that as a sign of a healthy ecosystem, or does that mean sort of the real motive is is in distribution and that regulatory expertise? And are there startups that you think can genuinely become the next stand alone animal health company, you know, at the size of the not even about the size, but, compete with the big five big four. Yeah. Big four, five, six, seven. Interesting question. Hard to know at this point. You’ve got companies at the moment like Loyal who say they’re gonna do all the the sales and marketing themselves. They’re they’re they’re not gonna sell to one of the big companies. You’ve got Exton. It’s another companion animal therapeutics firm, that has built a, a presence in Massachusetts. It’s got a a facility. It’s raised a lot of money. And as well, that that’s not just two or three people working at a university. This is a proper, established business. And I think the sort of size is in terms of the amount of people, the amount of candidates in a pipeline. The startups we’re seeing in animal health are a lot have learned a lot from their predecessors. So I think it makes it more likely that they will try to commercialize themselves. But, again, it’s this has never been done before. I think maybe companies such as Aratana and maybe Kindred Biosciences potentially started selling their products, before they were acquired, but not for very long. So we just haven’t seen it in animal health on the in animal side. The farm animal side is different because you’ve got these companies, like monitoring technology companies. They are selling their products, and they are growing and growing. This is very different on the technology side because there’s simply less companies to buy these startups. We’ve seen Merck has bought, a lot of farm animal technology companies. But, actually, what I see on that side is these companies are growing, but they’re maybe staying to the, they’re the biggest in Australia or Part of Europe and that they’re not globally global entities like maybe Merck would be. So it’s a different dynamic on on on the food animal side. For the time being, I just I I see these startups being acquired by the Yeah. The top business because it’s such a small industry at the moment that there’s only so many companies that can sell a product globally. And Yeah. That’s not As you’re talking as you’re talking, I’m starting to think, well, could AI, even the playing field in distribution, but then you realize it’s so much relationship driven. It’s who you know, the network that you have. Yeah. AI can help you reach them digitally, but can it replicate in a cost effective way sort of that broad human touch? Interesting. Possibly Size. Not now, but that will be something Covetrus, MWI, Patterson, all the big distributors will be looking at. But Yeah. We took for the next five years. I think at a point where a critical point where companies want to be in front of farmers and vets and vet clinics and and pet owners, maybe more on the the the vet and the farm side, I think that personal touch is really critical at the moment. Pet owners are demanding, I think, actually demanding that animal health companies or distributors use AI, which I I I kind of even a couple of years ago, I wouldn’t have ever asked. How so? Everyone everyone uses well, not everyone, but most people use Amazon. Most people use Netflix. Most people have have a phone, and Google. Everything’s using AI. Suddenly, everything you search for on Google has an AI function and is being found by AI, and it’s just becoming the norm. Maybe I’m thinking more about younger customers, but, I think they will look to veterinary clinics and animal health companies and distributors and say, why why aren’t you using AI to tell me which is the cheapest product I can get for my pet? Or what is the what is the not the cheapest, but what product will come to my doorstep Tomorrow, no matter the cost. Yeah. Think that sort of dynamic is changing. Interesting. Alright. Are there, you mentioned longevity. Are there other startup categories that you think, where the science is really you you also mentioned, the methane reduction. Yeah. Are there other big categories that you think are top of mind for the industry right now? And, yeah. What what would you say are some of the biggest theme categories for to look for startups right now? What tends to happen well, I say it tends to happen. We’ve not got a long history of it, but you’ll get a start up that will exit in a particular area. Take Aratana Therapeutics, pet therapeutics area. Aratana exited, then there were lots of other companion animal therapeutics firms, and that cycle has been set off. Inventing the trans setters. Yeah. So that gets set off. And so the startups at the moment are up generally across all areas because we’ve not really seen that many exits in other areas. So if Loyal gets acquired for billions or whatever, then there’ll be a load more longevity animal health longevity companies. Yeah. So it takes it takes the sort of blueprint to be there first. I said we’ve seen the methane reduction companies. So as far as I know, none of those currently have partnerships with the bigger companies yet, and it’d be interesting to see how they connect in with the animal health world. Some of them are feed additives. Some of them are, developing vaccines. It would take one of them to be acquired for that to be the real growth area, I think, in animal health. Actually, the the the opposite is also, applicable here because in the pet cancer diagnostics area, I feel like there used to be a lot of startups in that in that space. And then PetDx, they they got a lot of investment and failed and went bust, and that set that area back quite a lot. We’re seeing a few more companies now. Some of them are well, some of those companies have commercialized on their own, and maybe the sales definitely aren’t global, but that area has taken a hit. Whereas in human health, startups fail all the time. They fail after raising a lot of money. It hasn’t happened so much in animal health that you’ve had a startup raise loads and loads of money then fail. But the human health industry can take that. Maybe not met loads and loads of failures. But animal one client that’s ever not been able to pay, and it was a human health start up. Okay. And we work with predominantly Animal Health, so there you go. Good choice. But because animal health, everything’s interlinked, as soon as an animal health startup doesn’t do well, maybe within the animal health community, that doesn’t, impact the industry so much, but it sends a signal to maybe the outside investors. Oh, we’ll skip animal health when we we we think about investing the next couple of years. We’ll just wait and see now because we were burnt with that one company. Yeah. But I see it’s across most areas of the industry where, at the moment, the startups are there. They’re definitely the lifeblood of innovation, and I don’t think the top animal health businesses would disagree with that. They’re also bringing innovation to the market, but they need the startups to support them. So these these startups will keep appearing, and that generally across most areas of the industry aside from maybe, sort of the feed additives area, the food animal feed additives area, and companion animal, parasiticides, although there are a few, interesting startups in that area. But there’s parasiticides is the largest product category in animal health, yet it’s the area with probably the smallest amount of startups because those big companies have a load of big products already in that market. There’s potentially less unmet needs in that area that startups can easily, look at. Whereas in therapeutics, there’s a lot of technology you can bring over from human biopharma to to address product categories that have no products in them at the moment that will help. Well, we got a question from the from the audience. It’s a little off topic, they say, but do you think investors are interested in contract research organizations that are specific to providing animal health services, like monitoring, regulatory report writing, etcetera, for the pharmaceutical companies and startups to conduct their research. Well, we know KKR is interested. We’ve seen quite a lot of consolidation in that area. So, yes, they they maybe all of the consolidation has already happened in in that space. I I don’t know, Tommy. Have any investors come knocking at at your door? Oh, I mean, animal health investors know, but I get three to five emails a day from investors just about the software. But, yeah, I I mean, the answer is yes. KKR bought Argenta three or four years ago, and then they went on a buying spree. They bought MVS. They bought Cliffabet. They bought Patchy’s Group in Spain. Yeah. Yeah. Can’t remember. And I think Cling Global, has bought a few companies, if memory serves. But I don’t know. There aren’t a ton, at least on the on the large Body mold. On the large companion side. There’s there’s a million sites that that serve that serve CRO sites that serve the the food food animal space, little smaller CROs. And you can see private equity going through I mean, there’s been a lot of consolidation on the veterinary clinic side, but private equity went and bought one of the biggest contract, services company in in animal health and has consolidated there. It’s happened in distribution as well with Covetrus, which is now merging with MWI Animal Health. Private Equity has bought some of the biggest product manufacturers. And so there’s obvious interest in finding assets in animal health, which they probably deem as small but could be bigger. I see it happening well, I I should think it will happen with, generics, vet new generics companies merging together as well. In in contract area, I I I’m not sure if there’s any big enough plays for private equity or investors to really support at the moment that haven’t already been merged. Yeah. There’d be some small companies out there. Typically, and you know probably better than I do, that private equity looks for the platform first and then the tuck ins later. So the it’s gotta be good enough and healthy enough to sort of swallow whole these smaller start ups once you get the big one. But if you if you start with a small one, it’s much harder to then, scale through acquisition. That is not a question. Okay. I got another question for you. Interested to hear about some start ups going to commercial lives directly. Companion animal space may allow a different business model. Bit like the rare disease space in human pharma. Yeah. You you kind of answered the question there. Yeah. Yeah. It it it is an excite wow. Yeah. It is exciting time because the, I think over the last year and a half or so, we’ve not seen as many I’m trying to wrap my brain here. I don’t think we’ve seen many acquisitions of start ups by the big players. The most prominent one was the Irish startup TriviumBet, which was bought by PBI Gordon, which is, sort of a holding company for different assets, which also own Pegasus Laboratories. And that that even though PBI Gordon is not Zoetis or Elanco or even a a billion dollar company, that allowed Trivium Vet to become commercial. It it’s a kind of a different model, but it it just showed that you don’t have to exit to one of the big players to actually get your products on the market. They’re focused in the US, and they do have a product coming to market in Europe, but it’d be interesting to see if they can get that global scale. But I I think and and know because I’ve spoken to these startups on the companion animal side that they are looking at different sort of commercial strategies. In a lot of the time, to be honest, I talk to startups and some will immediately I’ll say, when do you start thinking about selling these products? And some companies will just say, oh, we’re never we’re never gonna bother because we’re just hoping we get bought. Yeah. I think it’s it’s risky depending on how long they’ve been on the market. If they’ve been on the market seven been around seven or eight years and they haven’t been bought, then that’s a bit of a worry, or if they haven’t commercialized. But Yeah. Some companies say they’ve been thinking since they they, they first started out, and they have an exact idea in mind of who they would exit to shows shows, good planning. And it might not be a big animal health company. It might be Mars. It might be a smaller business, but they’re really thinking about how they get on the market quickly and not just relying on well, let’s hope we we get acquired, or looking at, ecommerce and, different ways of not bringing the pet owner to your product instead of trying to go out there and just try and find your customers. Yeah. I have a question from the audience, but I but you mentioned something, and I had a question for you about this. This is something that’s been top of mind for me for a while. So vet schools and academics to me seem like plumbing for start up r and d. Right? You don’t have a lot of money. I can’t go to a CRO. I don’t know what I’m doing running a trial. I’m just an entrepreneur. Let me go to a vet school to run a small study for me. Do you get to that level of detail? Do you have a perspective on that? Have you seen some? Now there are a few that skip that stage that that sort of maybe don’t don’t believe in academic model that just jump to running their own study right away. So have you seen a lot of that? Do you have a perspective on vet school’s role in the startup ecosystem? Well, a lot the vet found. I’m catching you off guard here. This wasn’t on the plan one. So if you’re like, I don’t know, then don’t worry about it. Yeah. A few other ones waiting. Probably start ups are it’s interesting. I had a conversation about the role of vet schools and startups, recently connected to the conference I mentioned that I’m going to, next month in in, Bruges. What, Ghent University in Belgium are doing are trying to kind of wake up their p h PhD students to the possibility of their research being applicable to the animal health world. So maybe it comes from both ways. The start ups working with the vet schools, but, actually, the vet schools could be generating the start ups themselves. Yeah. That isn’t happening. I write so many articles about research from universities across the world, And it’ll be really interesting, but we’ll we’ll half of that, most of that, we’ll never hear of ever again because someone’s just generating that research because they want to become, I presume they want to become a vet, and that’s just part of their PhD. But, actually, a lot of these could be really interesting businesses. So I think there’s a connection that can be made. There’s connections everywhere between the startups, the big businesses, and the vet schools as well. Because some of these people in the vet schools and the startups themselves, could be the employees, could be the c suite level executives of big animal health companies in the next ten years. Yeah. Yeah. And that’s quite an interesting dynamic of, I think many startups look at the big companies and think, oh, how terrifying. I don’t know how to speak to them. And maybe some of the big companies look at academics and startups and think, oh, I don’t know what they’re they’re so scientific. I don’t know what they’re talking about. Maybe it’s quite siloed, and and there’s a lot of I found, I found, sort of trick of the trade is go find the leader in commercial at the big companies and put them as CEO. And then and then they got they they they immediately have the executive presence in front of investors. They could tell the story simply that’s what they’ve been doing. I’ve seen that a couple of times. In fact, we had one person on this webinar a couple months ago, Randolph Legg, that fits that mold. Okay. I got I got two questions for you. Okay. What should a start up this is from the audience. What should a start up focus on to be successful in oncology? Veterinary oncology seems to be lacking innovation. The oncology segment. No. It’s fine. A cure for cancer. A tough one. Okay. So I don’t know if I have specific answer, but my experience was in two thousand and twelve, I went to or or around then, I maybe when I I met you or I met a lot of people in, the Kansas City corridor event, and there were startups in the just not oncology, but pet health in general. And several people came to me laughing and said, this is ridiculous. Why are they even trying? They some of these startups have raised fifty, sixty, seventy million dollars. What a waste of money. No one no one is gonna buy therapeutics for pets. And I suppose that got those people weren’t wrong in a way. That was just the perception at the time, and that’s been proved wrong. It’s it’s a booming area. Those startups were acquired. You you can now see the pipeline of Zoetis, the pipeline of Elanco. They lay it out. They’re developing therapeutics in all of those areas. Oncology, it’s just not happened, has it? It’s it’s always there are several product areas in animal health that whenever I go to a conference or hear a company, they’d be, oh, that that that’s always coming in the next decade. In the next decade, you think, wow. It’s gonna be I think exactly. It’s Wow. Fifty years of the next decade. The one sign that I read into it is that Zoetis has the word oncology on on their sort of investor forward looking pipelines or whatever. They mention it now, which mean Yeah. That that may seem like a little thing, but that that’s quite a big thing, but to say they’re actually working in that area. I think half of human health clinical trials are dedicated to oncology. Some some big number like that. But It will come because there there’s not much on the market. So there’s a low base at the moment. I don’t know if it will ever be parasiticides in in in size or even dermatology. There there needs to be as with every segment in animal health, especially around therapeutics, there needs to be something that that that lights that touch paper. An oncology focused startup being acquired by a big company or bringing a product to market, that needs to happen, and then everyone will go with it. And then human oncology investors will will look at this space as well. Yeah. There just hasn’t been anything yet. Okay. Another one from the audience. Seeing increasing trend of dual development of one molecule for human and vet indications. Startups running into friction with investors from each industry with divergent views on valuation. Do you see investors getting more fluent in animal health and human biotech so we can bridge this gap? The answer to that, I do see improvement, but probably not to the level that’s gonna satisfy animal health companies. What tends to happen, I find, is a human health investor will every now and again invest in an animal health company as an alternative opportunity. And if that doesn’t work out for them, we tried, and maybe we don’t look at animal health again. It Loyal is a is a great example. They’ve got a lot of money from human health investors. Is it their play, though, to, find longevity in dogs because they should have shorter life spans and then find longevity in humans. Yes. But they cover no, as far as I know, no human candidates. So it would definitely only be in pets first. For the for the near term. Yeah. Yeah. The that company, whether you think it’s gonna succeed or not, whether you think longevity as a segment is gonna succeed or not or what it even really means, is critical, I think, for animal health at the moment. Because if loyal fails, that could really set back a lot of businesses, across companion animal therapeutics because they’ve just raised so much that it’s gonna turn off so many investors. And if they succeed, wow, that’d be great because it will make those investors I mentioned that think, oh, we’ll do an animal health deal every few years, or we’ll do one and see how that goes. They’ll think, well, we’ll do two. We’ll do one every year. But at the moment, I’m not seeing a lot of investors from outside animal health that repeatedly come back. Yeah. More on the sort of agricultural side, but that sort of meat you know, Australia and New Zealand. There there were repeat investors there, but that’s part of their remit to look at agriculture. I don’t know of many human health investors that have a remit saying they they they want to or have to invest in animal health. So yeah. Again, it comes down to those obvious successes and and the industry’s need for that. Okay. Couple few few more. I don’t, is there anybody else in the audience that have questions? I’ll pause a little bit. Just wanna make sure everybody’s covered. Okay. I I see you’ve got Ernst Heinen on your your your next webinar. He he’s he’s with Elanco but was with Aratana Therapeutics, And so that’s a really interesting, move from start up into, the, one of the big businesses in animal health. That’s a really interesting trend that we’ve been seeing. The movement of people working at start ups going to to one of the major animal health companies, but also the other way as well. Right. Start ups actually getting people from the industry, not just as advisers, but working in their teams and sort of the the is cross pollination the right word? Maybe not. But, the sort of people moving around the industry, I think, can only be a benefit, having people with different perspectives. Yeah. The startup mindset, you know, very distinct to a a larger organization, less resources, a little more scrap, a little bit more, you know, efficiency by design because you just don’t have the the funding to to last much longer. That can definitely help a larger organization. Okay. Yes. And I didn’t have a chance to announce that in the beginning, but, next month, we will have Ernst Heiden. Very exciting to have him on, part of that. Aratana mafia that I talked about in the last webinar. Okay. Okay. Fast forward three to five years, what does the animal health competitive landscape look like, and what will feel normal that feels hard or unusual today? And any predictions that you wanna put on the record? Oh, well, as, an analyst, I was always told, never make predictions because they will always be wrong. But, yeah, might I might as well. It’s what do I say that definitely won’t be incorrect? The amount of startups is rising. That’s inevitably, I think, going to rise and rise and rise, and it’s gonna globalize. We’re gonna see, hopefully, more startups from, Korea, Japan, China, and other parts of the world that currently don’t have as many animal health startups. Brazil, I’d is one of the biggest livestock markets in the world, but it hasn’t really translated to interesting or or any livestock health startups. I’d love to see a load more from there. And I’m seeing some coming through, but actually a lot of them are are pet diagnostics, pet diagnostics and therapeutics. Although Brazil, I think someone told me, has more pets than than children. I mean, it doesn’t surprise me. But globalization of startups, more startups should see the amount of deals rising. We we’ve tracked deals. They generally are rising, but the amount being spent on startups isn’t rising, but there are bigger deals happening as these companies get more late stage. I okay. I would like to see a major startup. We we have a a table of top fifty companies by, revenues. I’d love to see a start up get onto the bottom of that in the next few years. Before they get bought. Unaided. Yeah. Maybe they never get bought, and maybe they raise up there. I think it could be a livestock technology company, mainly because there are less potential buyers for those. Yeah. There’s no big four there to Yeah. I think companion animal side, we’re just going to see acquisition after acquisition. A lot of them will never know if they would have got to market. We’ll never know what happened to their candidates unless we see them on the market. I would love it if Loyal exits as the first billion dollar deal for for an animal health startup because if that happens, then I think a load more human human health investors will come flooding to animal health. That’s a good way to, make money. Yeah. Last one. I know we only have three minutes. Thanks for your help, everybody. So this one’s a little selfish. So Prelude, we we’ve made the decision this year. We’re going all in on animal health. We’re we’re no longer pursuing human health opportunities. We’re we’re looking at new creative ways to help the the animal health industry get products from lab to label. What do you think the startup ecosystem could use technology wise or to help them, overcome whatever hurdles they’re facing. Most people think of Prelude as sort of the big pivotal trial EDC system that you use when you have, you know, dozens of sites across the globe and you need a user friendly system that’s got all the bells and whistles and the price that comes with it. But it you know, we we’ve been scaling down and and trying to find offerings for sort of the the smaller lab studies, the earlier phase studies at a at a better price point and doing more regulatory type, solutions. Do you think there’s a need in the start up ecosystem that we can help them just get over whatever hurdles they’re facing or even any technology? Forget Prelude. Yeah. Definitely. The last few years, I’ve I’ve spoke to a lot of companies that have said it’s really difficult. I suppose on the one hand, you’ve got these companies that are raising loads and loads of money. But just because two or three companies have raised a ton of money, there’s hundreds of others that just aren’t raising money. So in that process, they are cutting down. A lot of these companies are virtual companies, and and they’ll they’ll need whatever help they can get. And that goes from from consultancy to CROs, CDMOs. Yeah. And I suppose as the industry is still growing up, the more animal health specific businesses there are to help that infrastructure, the the better. Yeah. I presume a lot of start ups will just use, CROs or or contractors or services that just happened to be if if they’re French, they use ones that are near them. If they’re Canadian, if they’re Australian, whatever, they are just using them, a human health CRO just because it’s local to them, but it might not be the best option. So to break down those borders, I think AI, digital technology, everything will break break those boundaries down and sort of there’s realization that startups are growing in animal health, and they do need sort of dedicated animal health services for themselves. Yeah. If you’re an animal health dedicated business, then I I think you’ve you’ve got to be even I mean, there’s certainly more startups than there are billion dollar companies in animal health, but then the startups are kind of the ones that need need to these services because they they’ve gotta make progress with their products. Yep. Alright. We’re right at the hour. Thanks, everybody. Don’t forget to fill out the survey. Joseph, is there any anything you want the people to know? How can they track you? If they wanna subscribe to you, how do they do that? Oh, too much information now. But you can contact me on LinkedIn. LinkedIn. I’m hopefully, I’m quite easy to find. I post things on there. If you’ve got any other questions, come to me. I have hopefully, I haven’t promoted or, said I liked any start ups today, but I’m also willing to give it my thoughts on anything offline. I’m constantly at animal health conferences trying to work out which which interesting start ups to talk to. Or if you’re on this call and you know a startup that you think is interesting and I might not know, let me know. Nothing’s nothing’s too small. If it’s animal health, it’s interesting. Joseph’s very, very responsive to anybody, so recommend reaching out. Alright. Thanks, everybody. Have a great Tuesday. Thank you, Joseph, so much for your time, and wish you the best of luck. Have a great week. You too. Thank you.
