Earnings call transcript: Alligator Bioscience’s strategic advancements in Q1 2026

Alligator Bioscience AB (ATORX) reported its Q1 2026 financial performance, highlighting significant cost reductions and strategic developments in its clinical pipeline. The company’s stock saw a 4.69% increase, reflecting positive investor sentiment towards its operational efficiency and promising clinical data. The modest gain comes after a challenging period, with the stock down roughly 95% over the past year and trading at a market capitalization of just $15 million. Despite a limited cash runway extending only to mid-Q3 2026, Alligator is actively exploring financing options to support its ongoing and future endeavors. An InvestingPro tip highlights that the company is "quickly burning through cash," underscoring the urgency of securing additional funding. The current ratio of 0.88 indicates that short-term obligations slightly exceed liquid assets, though the company maintains more cash than debt on its balance sheet.

Alligator Bioscience demonstrated strong operational performance by significantly reducing its operating costs and maintaining a disciplined financial structure. The company is strategically positioned to advance its lead asset, Mitazalimab, through the clinical trial phases, supported by promising clinical data. InvestingPro analysis indicates the stock is fairly valued at current levels, with analysts forecasting 17% revenue growth for fiscal year 2026. Investors can access detailed Fair Value analysis and 14 additional ProTips for ATORX, plus comprehensive Pro Research Reports covering over 1,400 US equities. The focus on operational efficiency and strategic planning has positioned Alligator favorably within the competitive landscape of cancer therapeutics.

Alligator Bioscience is preparing for the initiation of a Phase III trial for Mitazalimab in Q4 2026, with regulatory submissions expected in Q2 2026. The company is also exploring additional indications beyond pancreatic cancer, including biliary tract cancer. Future financial projections indicate potential revenues from HLX22, a licensed HER2 monoclonal antibody, starting from 2030.

Executives emphasized the importance of the company’s strategic partnerships and cost management. The CEO highlighted, "Our focus on operational efficiency and strategic partnerships is crucial as we advance our clinical pipeline." The CFO added, "We are exploring financing options to ensure the continuation of our development programs."

Alligator Bioscience’s strategic focus on cost management and clinical advancement positions it well for future growth, despite the challenges of a competitive and evolving therapeutic landscape.

Greta Höög, IR and Communications Manager, Alligator Bioscience: Hello, and welcome to Alligator Bioscience’s interim report call for the first quarter of 2026. With me today are our CEO, Søren Bregenholt, and our CFO, Johan Giléus. My name is Greta Höög, and I’m the IR and Communications Manager at Alligator, and I’m introducing this call. Today, Søren and Johan will walk you through the latest events from the quarter, after which they will be happy to answer any questions that you may have. You can either submit these via the Q&A functions of this chat, or you can email them to ir@alligatorbioscience.com. As you know, Alligator is a publicly listed company, and I would like to note that today’s presentation may include forward-looking statements. Please refer to the disclaimer on this slide, which applies to the full presentation. With that, over to you, Søren.

Søren Bregenholt, Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Alligator Bioscience: Thank you, Greta. Once again, welcome to this quarterly call from Alligator Bioscience. It’s a pleasure seeing so many participants. Let’s go to the next slide. What we will focus on today is some of the key updates. If we look at our lead asset, mitazalimab, we presented and discussed the final data from the phase II study at ASCO GI in San Francisco in January, which was immediately followed by JP Morgan, where we had a number of partnering discussions. Recently at the annual AACR meeting in 2026, we presented data from one of the IIT studies that we’ve been doing together with a Dutch group, data further underpinning and strengthening the mechanism of action of mitazalimab.

As we’re also going to discuss later today, we announced that we have signed a so-called letter of intent with a French organization called Unicancer to explore the continued development of mitazalimab in an investigator-sponsored phase III study. On the business side of Alligator, the TO 14 warrants matured, and there was an exercise rate or subscription rate of 38%, which led to a gross proceed of SEK 90 million. The nomination committee submitted its proposal ahead of tomorrow’s AGM in nominating two new board members, adding significant skill and breadth to the Alligator board.

We also got a new patent granted by the U.S. PTO on our proprietary bispecific antibody technology, which we call RUBY. A technology that we have been using in a number of internal programs and also earlier signed a evaluation and option agreement with a company in the antiviral space. Finally, on our partner program, HLX22, the first patient was dosed in a phase II/III trial in recurrent HER2 positive breast cancer, again adding to the breadth and the commitment of Henlius advancement of HLX22. Now, let’s have the next slide and focus on some of the recent development in the world around us.

I think anybody that follows me, follows mitazalimab, Alligator and pancreatic cancer is aware that Revolution Medicines announced data or at least announced a couple of numbers in a press release on their KRAS inhibitor, daraxonrasib, in second-line metastatic pancreatic cancer. These data showed significant improvement for these patients, and it’s clear that this molecule will be used in second-line therapy in pancreatic cancer very, very soon. Together with other molecules in this drug class, the KRAS inhibitors will most likely be introduced in first-line therapy within the next two, three, four years.

A lot of things happening in the indication and first and foremost, this is really, really good news for pancreatic cancer patients who have progressed on chemotherapy and now have an option in second-line therapy. What it also does for companies like Alligator and others developing drugs in the, in the, in the indication is of course, that it opens up the indication. It shows that drugs can be developed after many decades of very few success stories.

It will most likely drive the maturation of both the second- and first-line therapy to today, from today being a chemo-only or chemo-almost-only landscape to a landscape that will initially be dominated by doublets, and eventually also by more combinations such as triplet therapies as we see in many other indications, where the treatment landscape has matured. Right now, all we know on these molecules is the top line phase III data. Some data was recently released at AACR, both in second and first line. We will have to see at ASCO in a month’s time on how the data look in detail.

Before we know that, it’s difficult to say how will the second and first line landscape develop over the years to come. It will be probably characterized by several different KRAS inhibitors. There’s a couple of other, both pan-KRAS and mutation-specific KRAS inhibitors in development. We believe that one or more of these will make it to the first line. We also believe that mitazalimab has a role to play in this maturing treatment landscape, something that we will discuss in just a second. First of all, good news for the patients. Really something that can contribute to a better prognosis for those patients that have progressed on chemotherapy.

If we take the next slide, I just wanted to remind you that mitazalimab in its way of working is complementary both to chemotherapy and also to KRAS inhibitors. You’ve already seen the data on the left-hand side here of the graph with a lot of very deep responses and across the 2 doses tested in phase II, actually 5 complete responders, which as far as we have seen data, is not something you see neither with chemo or with KRAS inhibitors. If you tap a couple of times, Greta, on Yeah, one more. Basically, yeah, you can just click forward and so we’ll have all of them there.

Basically, what is characteristic by mitazalimab and its ability to activate the immune system is that in addition to these treatment responses and patient progressing after 6, 9 months, we have a significant amount of patients that are seeing sustained clinical responses, sustained survival benefit with mitazalimab. As you recall, the survival rate at 30 months was one in five patients, something you don’t see with chemotherapy alone. Why is this? On the next slide, and just to repeat what we have discussed at these meetings before. Mita has several ways of activating the immune system.

Primarily and the hallmark of what we see linked between the mechanism of action and the long-term survival benefit is the ability of mitazalimab to activate tumors, tumor-infiltrating T-cells, and thereby mounting the body’s own defense against the pancreatic tumor in this case. How will this play out when you combine KRAS and mitazalimab? Do we have any evidence? To get a little bit of that, we can look to the literature if we take the next piece of evidence here, which is 2 graphs, not from Alligator, but from other researchers, from a set of publications that came out in Cancer Discovery last year.

What these data show if we focus on the left-hand side here, is that when you take a KRAS inhibitor that is in the orange, you get a certain number of responses in this model. You can see one mouse sort of have a complete reduction in its tumor. At this dose, there is a few other small responses. If you, in the same experiment, add a CD40 molecule, a surrogate of mitazalimab, you can immediately see that the majority of mice, all