Twist Bioscience Conference Call to Discuss Bispecific Licensing Agreement

Good day. Thank you for standing by. Welcome to Twist Biosciences Conference Call to discuss the license agreement for the vBody bispecific technology platform. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After this biggest presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 11 on your telephone. You will then hear automated message advising your hand is raised. Please note that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the call over to Angela Bidding, SVP of Corporate Affairs. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Operator. Good morning, everyone. I would like to thank you for joining us for Twist Bioscience's conference call to discuss our license of the B-Body bispecific technology. We issued a press release early this morning, and it's available at our website at www.twistbioscience.com. With me on the call today is Dr. Emily Leproos, CEO and co-founder of TWIST. Adam Lepona, CFO, Dr. Patrick Finn, President and COO, and Dr. Colby Souders, CSO, will be available in the Q&A session after our prepared remarks. We ask that during the Q&A, you limit your questions to only one and then re-queue as a courtesy to others on the call. The call is being recorded and the audio portion will be archived in the investor section of our website for two weeks. During today's presentation, we will make forward-looking statements within the meaning of the U.S. federal securities laws. Forward-looking statements generally relate to future events or future financial or operating performance. Our expectations and beliefs regarding these matters may not materialize, and actual results in financial periods are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected. These risks include those set forth in the press release we issued earlier today, as well as those more fully described in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The forward-looking statements in this presentation are based on information available to us as of the date hereof, and we disclaim any obligation to update any forward-looking statements, except as required by law. We'll also discuss adjusted EBITDA, a financial measure that does not conform with generally accepted accounting principles. Information may be calculated differently than similar non-GAAP data presented by other companies. If available, a reconciliation between GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures will be included in our earnings documents, which can be found on the investor section of our website with that i will now turn the call over to our ceo and co-founder dr emily the proof thank you angela and good morning everyone this

morning we announced that twist will be the co-exclusive provider of the bbody by specific technology platform together with invenra this license builds upon our momentum in ai enabled drug discovery to serve the rapidly growing market opportunity as it fits very well with our high-throughput automated platform and drives more volume to our proprietary silicon chip. Through the license to this innovative technology, we complement and extend our DNA synthesis and protein solutions group with a patent-protected clinically validated technology. Taking a step back, a biophysic antibiotic combines the binding arms of two unique antibody proteins, each with independent mechanisms of actions, into one molecule, potentially enabling a single therapy to engage two disease targets at the same time. This dual action has the possibility of improving effectiveness by, for example, directing immune cells more precisely, blocking multiple disease pathways at once, or enhancing drug delivery to disease-affected tissues. Of the hundreds of commercially available antibodies therapies today, bispecifics represent a small but rapidly growing and very promising drug class. However, bispecifics have been famously difficult to develop as they have two different binding domains bound by an engineer linker that is, by definition, unnatural. This creates challenges in automating discovery, producing many high purity variants, testing those variants, and scaling up manufacturing for clinical and commercial use to treat patients. On Slide 4, we have detailed the differences between monospecific antibodies and the challenges by specifics present. First, They are more complex than standard antibodies. A conventional antibody is built from two identical halves. These halves naturally find each other and assemble efficiently within a cell, like two pieces of a puzzle, and are then expressed as a single molecule. Biospecific antibodies contain two different binding arms connected by unnatural protein engineering, which increases the chances of mispairing during assembly. Cells may put the wrong pieces together, creating in-balanced production and an overall reduction in yields, or unusable product. Second, the protein must fold correctly. Proteins are like origami at the molecular scale. Bispecific antibodies contain more moving parts and unnaturally engineered geometries, making correct folding harder. The The cell, which is used to express a bispecific protein, often degrades incorrectly folded antibody proteins, resulting in a significant decrease in the amount of antibodies to characterize and validate phosphorous development. Third, building on the first two points, folding and assembly challenges create stress within a cell used for expression. Stressed, unhealthy cell slow down growth, production, and robustness, resulting in significant manufacturing changes. Fourth, once a potential therapeutic antibody completes discovery and preclinical studies, human clinical development presents an additional challenge. Once that lands into humans, for a bispecific antibody to work safely and effectively, the molecule must closely resemble antibody structures that the body already recognizes itself. By their very nature, bispecific antibodies include man-made engineered changes. If any portion of a bispecific antibody, including the engineered portion that links the two domains together, appears as artificial or foreign, the immune system may treat the antibody as a threat, reducing its effectiveness or causing safety issues. Because of this, the link here must be carefully designed and tested to ensure minimal or no activation of the human immune system to the engineered bispecific antibody. Finally, standard manufacturing platforms experience repeated changes as many bi-specific formats require multiple purification steps to yield high-quality material, and also require specialized production systems that are not widely used. Further, some require complex processing conditions to make a bi-specific out of two different monospecific antibodies, and then they will fraught with risk and increased cost. Turning to slide 5, at Whist, we build a semiconductor-based platform to write DNA sequences at scale. The DNA powers the creation of antibody proteins with unparalleled speed, throughput, quality, and cost advantages. As a reminder, when developing therapeutics, our customers are engaged in a design-build-test-learn cycle, as shown on the slide. The customer designs the sequences, we build the proteins, and we then conduct a series of analytical measurements to test the proteins. Once we deliver the data or product, the customer learns from the information and optimizes the cycle for the next iteration. To date, when we worked on bispecific antibody discovery, we will work on each individual arm separately. Most customers will then take the individual optimized antibodies and conduct bispecific reformatting and optimization in their labs, or with a specialized provider with expertise in bispecific expression and purification. Moving to slide 7, today we had the patent-protected clinically validated platforms to support automated bispecific discovery, reformatting, expression, and analysis, significantly expanded our expertise and meaningfully enhancing our ability to compete and capture value in this high-growth area, transforming market access into competitive participation. Essentially, it gives us more short-term goals to expand our wallet share within existing accounts and access to new customers who are solely focused on bispecific therapeutic discovery. We reviewed a number of bispecific platforms and selected the B-body technology as it fits very well with our robust semi-connector-based synthesis, high-through platform, and extreme automation for speed, scale, and throughput. In addition, the B-Body platform solves the manufacturing challenges to enable safety and stability, reducing chemistry manufacturing and control, also known as CMC risk. On slide 8, you will see the B-Body specific platform is a plug-and-play system designed so that the two binding functions are connected using antibody structures the body already recognizes as non-invasive. Rather than using unknown artificial connectors, the b-body format uses native human antibody building blocks with very minor changes to the linker itself, making them easier to express, purify, and characterize. On slide 9, you'll see data showing that b-bodies have high purity and homogeneity that makes them compatible with our for existing high-throughput automation technology. Critically, the b-bodied by specifics are not recognized as foreign by the human immune system. Moving to slide 10, while b-specific antibodies were previously within our capability and part of our serviceable market, we now have the technology to allow us to successfully navigate the challenges, automate them to our platform, and scale b-specific discovery in a way that has not been previously possible. To give you a sense of the opportunity, Antibody campaigns today may typically result in approximately 12 antibody variants generated as leads for each arm to test further. Ideally, to pursue bispecific antibody discovery, these variants will then be combined in all variations on configuration, resulting in 12 by 12 by 2 or 288 different bispecific antibodies with legacy bispecific technology, Expressing, purifying, and characterizing 288 bispecific antibodies is impractical and is not done routinely. With the plug and playability of the B-Body technology, together with the TWIST platform, we will be able to conduct such testing in high throughput easily and cost-effectively. We know that bispecific makes up an increasing portion of clinically approved antibodies. And further, as of December 2025, There were more than 180 biospecific antibodies in clinical studies for a wide range of applications. The number of biospecifics entering clinical trials has doubled since 2019, confirming the opportunity and acceleration of interest in this area of therapeutics. Importantly, this meaningfully enhances our ability to compete and capture value in this high growth area, accelerating market participation through execution and commercial violence. On slide 11, you will see overarching product groups of TWIST, DNA synthesis, and protein solutions, including several of our applications, and now Bispecific fits directly within our robust and expanding portfolio of products and services. With Bispecific representing a growing therapeutic modality, building Bispecific large language models has been exceptionally difficult as the generation of robust data sets at scale has been impossible to date. Specifically, it has been impossible to produce, purify, and test in an automated fashion. We believe that combining the b-body technology with a high-throughput production and characterization platform opens up AI-enabled discovery to bispecific. Large technology customers may build new LLM models, pharma customers may augment existing models, and importantly, it expands AI-enabled bispecific discovery capabilities to small organizations that can benefit from our platform turning to the financials on site 12 in venera will receive five million dollars in cash and approximately 15 million dollars in twist common stock for the seven-year co-exclusive license concurrently in a secondary transaction with in venera stockholders twist also acquired preferred shares representing approximately six percent ownership in in venera along with rise to one seat of the in venera board of directors for $13.8 million in TWIST common search.

We also expect Invenra to transfer technology to us

to enable future success. TWIST will receive all revenue generated from bispecific antibody discovery programs we conduct. In addition, customers developing B-body bispecifics need a commercial license at the time they enter a human clinical trial. Whether this license is generated through customers working within Invenra or TWIST, TWIST will receive all of that revenue and subsequently pay in Venera a 20% royalty. To summarize, we believe this is a compelling strategic and financial opportunity. We are gaining access to an innovative, patent-protected, clinically-validated technology at an attractive valuation relative to its long-term potential. We expect this capability to benefit significantly from automation and optimization with our proprietary platform and NPI engine, further strengthening our competitive position and expanding our revenue base. We expect the agreement to be accretive to revenue and electricity beta in fiscal 2027 and beyond. This is part of the turbo engine we discussed on our earnings call. We are layering capabilities on top of our platform this year to expand our funnel and top line rules next year. We expect to transfer and automate this capability within our existing operating expense structure. Importantly, we remain committed to achieving adjusted EBITDA break-even for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2026. At this time, we will open the call

for questions. Operator? Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, as a reminder, to ask a question, you will need to press star 11 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, simply press star 11 again. And as a reminder, in order to accommodate all participants in the queue please limit yourself to only one question per person please stand by while we compile the qna roster now first question coming from the line of subun

nambi with guggenheim milan is now open hey guys thank you for uh taking my question you'll be paying in vendra uh 20 royalty on all license revenue is that an impact on the 2026 margin expectations and break even in F4Q, Fiscal 4Q26, and thank you so much for the presentation today.

Thank you, Subu. Your line was a bit muffled for me, but I think you were asking about our gross margin in Q4 and our HSC beta break even in Q4. There is no change. change we are very very committed to the guidance we we've provided at the last learning school and we're excited about this deal but it's it's not changing our commitment to agency beta break-even in Q4 of this fiscal year thank you and our

next question coming from the lineup who needs Sona with Leering Partners

still on us now open yeah hi guys Emily thanks for taking my question so um really by specifics have been around for some time and you have had the biopharma antibody discovery program as well and and if we recall some of those programs have started and and also shut down again this is a you you know, antibody discovery is a multi-year endeavor, seven or more years to really see the results and see if the products can actually get into clinic and eventually to market. Maybe could you talk about what agreements InVendra has and what are those royalties are at today and the number of those agreements and how should we think about this more near term, what it could do for TWIST beyond bringing the bi-specific platform technology and adding to your already existing MAP technologies that were part of your biopharma program?

Yeah, thank you, Puneet, and you touched a very, very important question, and you're asking what value vectors are we going to see at TWIST? And first and foremost, and most important, we think that it's going to increase the volume of discovery that happens at WIST. We report the numbers every quarter. We're doing really well. The revenue that we're getting from antibody discovery is ramping. It's one of our fastest product lines. At the same time, we also recognize that we can compete really, really effectively in monospecific. In bispecific, we can't leverage the full advantage of automation because the other bispecific technologies that are out there that we can use are very hard to automate for us and for everybody else. So we like the big body because now we can very easily automate the production, the verification, the characterization. And so we think that first and foremost is going to drive revenue through discovery. In addition, there is licensing opportunities as a secondary vector of value to us. Those will happen as customers want to go into the clinic. So it's not royalties in the sense of when the drug finally sells in the future, those licenses have to be taken before going to the clinic. So it will happen a bit sooner than seven years, but we anticipate that the main value creation for us will be the volume it's driving discovery. And then last but not least, we're also a small now and now a small investor in Venera. And so this will create some value in the future as well.

Thank you. And our next question coming from the lineup. Doug Schenkel with Wolf Research, your line is now open.

Good morning, guys. Thank you for taking my questions. A couple of questions really on the customer profile. So really what I'm trying to get at is when you think about what you were hearing from the customer base and when you looked at it, how much overlap is there with your existing customer base? So that's the first question and kind of building off of that, is this a capability or technology that those customers, you know, whether it was a Nerva's, whether it was your core customers, is this something that they were looking for? And, you know, kind of by extension, was this a hole you felt you had in your offerings? I guess what we're trying to get at is, you know, one, you know, how much synergistic fit is there with your customer base and what you're selling today as we try to really better understand the impetus for the deal? Thank you.

Thank you, Doug. That's a great question. So if you take AI out of the equation, the largest top 20 pharma type customers, frankly, they probably do not need this. Most of the big pharma have developed their own proprietary technologies for by specific. And so if you were to just take AI out, maybe it's not greatly appealing to large pharma. However, again, taking AI out, any new biotech that wants to go into by specific, they need access to a platform. And they need a platform that they can trust, a platform that is already clinically validated, because you don't want to take a risk on a new platform that once you go into the clinic a few years from down the line, you have a toxicity problem. And so for smaller and starting biotech and drug discovery companies, that this becomes really appealing, especially now that it will be on the Twitch platform, we'll be able to enable high throughput. And so it's a way for us to keep reaching the full market. Now going back to, and I'll say, actually, the same is true for kind of the Magnificent Seven that are going into AI. They all need a bi-specific platform they can get to. And now going back to the top 20 pharma, now adding AI in the equation. AI so far has been, Android Discovery, has been applied to monospecific. And to the extent that those big pharmas are going to want to go into AI-driven, bispecific discovery, now you need to be able to build a large language model. And to build a large language model, you need to build a lot of bispecific. And making those bispecific, if the technology is not intrinsically unable to high-throughput expression, purification, characterization becomes really hard. And so what we think is combining our high-throughput platform with AI could open by specific AI-driven drug discovery for top pharma. So very much appreciate the question, because that's how we think about market access as And so we think that for us, it has a broad access to smaller biotech companies, large pharmas, and the Magnificent 7th focused on drug discovery.

Thank you. Our next question in queue. Coming from the lineup, Mac Eatup with Stevens in Kielan is now open.

Hey, good morning. Thank you for taking my questions. Maybe just to follow up on the last point, how differentiated is B-Body in generating these high-throughput data sets versus existing bi-specific formats? And maybe just to follow up on Doug's question as well, does this open up the opportunity for new logos too?

Sorry, what was the last question? Does it open an opportunity for new ones?

New business partners, new logos?

No, absolutely. So our view is that it fits really well with our current customer base, and it expands it in two ways. One is we can upsell the current customer base where we were not doing a lot of specific business. Again, we didn't have a differentiated technology, and now we do because it's highly automatable. And then the second is it expands the customer base to new customers that now we can win because we have a bispecific. And so it's something that, again, we have been doing a little bit of bispecific, but now we can really lean into it because we have access to a best-in-class technology. In terms of your initial question of how differentiated it is, again, there are hundreds of technologies out there, but as far as what we could see that is clinically validated and available, we believe this is the absolute best in terms of being able to put it in high throughput, number one. And then number two, there's another aspect that we haven't really touched on quite yet on this call, on the Q&A, is the ability to plug and play. So if you have, let's say, a dozen antibodies for one arm and a dozen antibodies for the other arm, it's actually really hard to combine them with existing technology. Whereas with B-Buddies, that plug-in playability, it's very easy to combine, to make the combinations and test them. And so, again, this being so compatible with our platform that is highly automated, we believe it's going to give us a leg up and it's going to enable growth. again growth within existing accounts and growth with new accounts thank you our next question in

queue coming from the line of brendan smith with td cow and ilan is melfin great thanks for taking

the questions um congrats to you guys i wanted to actually ask a bit more about the technology itself and i appreciate this might be getting a bit ahead of where it is now but kind of piggyback in the last few questions i guess do you expect the bbody platform could over time allow design of other biologics, tri-specifics or even ADCs? Or is this really intended to kind of just maximize share within bi-specifics alone with maybe expansion into other modalities, something you might explore separately down the line? Just kind of trying to contextualize the land and expand

strategy here. Thanks. No, thank you Brian. Very, very great question. This is specifically for by specific it is not a tri-specific license and not another ADC license either so you're correct there are other modalities out there right now by specific they have a high high growth rate and And we think that some of our customers are going to be able to realize that the legacy bispecific format that they've been using will be able to be replaced with our new and improved format, like the B-Body. But right now, it is fully focused on bispecific.

Thank you. And our next question in queue coming from the line of Medleroo with William Blair, Yolanus Nelvin.

Good morning. I'm just following up on that point, Emily. You mentioned that many larger pharma customers may have in-house capabilities, but as you've spoken with other customers, just trying to get a sense for what those customers are doing today, if this is something that they've been coming to twist and asking about, so sort of getting a sense for the push first, the pull, and perhaps tied to that. You referenced it being a creative revenue and even done 2027. Could you just give us a sense for what that looks like today in terms of where the company's at?

Colby, do you want to take your first crack at the question, and I'll circle back with the financial comments?

Yes, absolutely. Thanks, Emily. Great question. And what we've seen shift in the landscape over the last two years or so has been companies that have been interested in replacing some of the legacy platforms. So like Emily was saying, in response to the last question, we've seen folks ask if we have a proprietary technology or buy-specific format that could be used. So this will directly address that market so that we can capture that market share and meet those customers. So that's been our goal there.

And in terms of financial, we don't think it's going to drive revenue in 2026. And at the same time, we're, again, very, very committed to Adjusted Vita Breachyphone in Q4 in 2026. And we believe that adding this capability will enable us to accelerate the growth as much as we can in 2027 and beyond. So we are adding this Bispyphic into our NPI engine. and we'll be able to provide a fully automated end-to-end solution to our customers that's going to drive revenue with existing customers and new customers.

Thank you. And I'm showing up for the questions in the queue at this time. I will now turn the call back over to Dr. Emily McGruse for any closing remarks.

Thank you for joining us today. Supported by growing clinical success, favorable regulatory pathways, and strong industry partnerships bi-specific antibodies are rapidly becoming a connoisseur of precision medicine and a key growth driver in biopharmaceutical innovation. We believe that incorporating the B-Body technology platform in our DNA synthesis and protein solution groups will position us to continue to lead at the forefront of next-generation antibody innovation and drive shareholder value. Thank you.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is going to go to today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect. Thank you.