Summit Therapeutics plc (NASDAQ:SMMT) Q2 2019 Earnings Conference Call - Final Transcript

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to the Summit Therapeutics reports financial results and operational progress for the second quarter and six months ended July 31, 2019 conference call. [Operator Instructions] I would like to advise you that this conference is being recorded today on Friday, October 11, 2019. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Richard Pye, Vice President of Investor Relations and Corporate Affairs. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you and welcome to everyone joining us on the call today to discuss our financial results for the second quarter and half-year ended July 31, 2019. Earlier today, we issued a press release summarizing these results. If you had -- not had a chance to review, it is available on our website at www.summitplc.com.

I'd like to remind listeners that we will be making forward-looking statements during this call. I refer you to our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission for a description of the risks and uncertainties associated with these forward-looking statements and an investment in Summit Therapeutics. While we may elect to update these forward-looking statements at some points in the future, we specifically disclaim any obligation to do so even if our views change.

These forward-looking statements should not be relied upon as representing our views as of any date subsequent to today. Joining me on the call today is our Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Glyn Edwards and following our prepared remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session.

I'd now like to turn the call over to Glyn for an overview of our activities during the first half of the year and expectations for the remainder, Glyn?

Great, thank you, Richard, and thank you all for joining us today. To be a leader in the fight against antimicrobial resistance. You have to think differently. It's about having the technologies to precisely address the patient's infection. It's about developing compounds to show that they're significantly better than that -- that's already out there. And it's about demonstrating real value, value to the payer, but really importantly value to that patients. And at Summit, we're doing all of these things, each point of differentiate -- differentiation is exemplified by our lead precision antibiotic ridinilazole.

In early antibiotic discovery, the focus used to be on drugs that could address the greatest number of infection, so called broad spectrum agents. Several things have changed in the field that now allow us to instead focus on developing very targeted antibiotics, getting the right drug for the right bug for the right patient.

Firstly, there's been a significant advance in diagnostics, which really continues at a pace, allowing physicians to know, not only what bacteria are causing the infection but also there is a susceptibility to marketed antibiotics. And we believe that as the field of targeted antibiotics advances, this will only become faster and more specific. And then secondly, is becoming clearer that the microbes that live on and within us