Hello sir, here you go. Doesn't say much new to be honest, but tells the story and is good exposure nonetheless:
Why private equity bet $245m on this CEO’s vision for wonder drug The Australian, 21 April 2023 From the day she started at Coomoora High School in Melbourne’s southeast, Megan Baldwin dreamed of being a scientist. “I was always a person that knew I was going to go down that path rather than the humanities side of things. I always enjoyed thinking about the universe and science and as I got further through my schooling, I very much had an interest in the biological sciences,” she says. Coomoora was a school that one of its most famous alumni – Carlton AFL club president and former PwC Australia chief executive Luke Sayers – once called the “College of Knowledge”, despite it long being one of the worst academically performing high schools in Victoria. It is now part of Keysborough College and Baldwin, today the chief executive of Nasdaq and ASX-listed eye disease specialist biotech firm Opthea, would not trade her education there for the world. “Going to a state school taught me to be self motivated and self driven. To this day, I find that is incredibly important. You’ve got to have the will. People can push you as much as they like, but you’ve got to want to get there yourself. My nature is not to necessarily think I’m smarter than anyone else, but to actually be prepared to work,” she says. Her passion for science led her to embark on a PhD in Medicine from the University of Melbourne in 1997, where she joined a group of researchers working on a newly discovered protein: the vascular endothelial growth factor or VEGF molecule, which causes blood vessels to grow and leak. She then became one of the rare doctoral students who took their university thesis and turned it into an enterprise worth hundreds of millions of dollars at Opthea. The biotech was floated as Circadian Technologies in 1985, and is now poised to launch late-stage clinical trials for a drug it hopes will treat a debilitating eye disease known as wet AMD, that causes blurred vision or a blind spot in the visual field. It is the biggest cause of vision loss in over-50s. With dual listings on the ASX and Nasdaq, the firm has been breaking fund raising records. Last August Opthea announced the biggest ever single capital raising for an ASX biotech, worth $370m. The turning point in Baldwin’s career came in 2005 when she accepted a position at global healthcare giant Genentech in San Francisco – which is now Roche – leaving behind her postdoctoral studies and her life as a bench-bound scientist. It put her on the path to being a CEO. “That takes a lot of courage because you are leaving everything that you’ve trained to do. Emotionally, that decision was a very big one. As it turns out, I use my scientific background every single day, I’m just not at the bench doing it now. I’m taking my career on a different pathway,” she says. “For me, it was about having a really clear understanding that what you are doing basic research on should lead to medicine. You can do a lot of work in research where that link is not always as clear. But for me, I was always much more motivated and interested when I knew that there was going to be an application that would directly impact people.”
Circadian Technologies, founded by Leon Serry, was the first ASX-listed biotech when it hit the boards in 1985.Circadian was an incubator for companies – one if its shareholders was once Alan Finkel, previously Australia’s chief scientist – and dabbled in a number of drugs for Alzheimer’s and cancer diagnostics before deciding to focus on eye ailments after Baldwin became CEO in February 2014.She immediately prioritised the treatment of preclinical wet-AMD when the market value of Circadian was just $8m. In December 2015, it changed its name to Opthea. She was heavily criticised during the first 18 months of her reign for dropping Circadian’s cancer program, despite promising clinical data and money already spent by the firm. But she doesn’t regret it. “I think that decision has resonated with the market. People can now see there’s a clear message and a clear progress to addressing a single question rather than spreading ourselves too thin,” she says. In November 2020 Opthea completed a $128.2m IPO on the Nasdaq to fund two phase III trials to bring the company’s flagship OPT-302 treatment, a biologic administered by IVT injection, to market. Then last August the firm secured a further $245m in funding from Launch Therapeutics, a clinical development company backed by the life sciences franchise of Carlyle Group, the $US12.7bn global private equity giant. It was the largest investment ever made by Carlyle in a biotech company and, importantly, the deal allowed Opthea to retain full worldwide commercial rights to OPT-302.The deal was also accompanied by a $128m equity raising from American and European institutional investors, who now account for 90 per cent of the Opthea share register. “Carlyle did a huge amount of diligence. We spoke to them for about 10 months where they dived into every aspect of our program and really ran the commercial assessment,” Baldwin says. “They’ve made that investment at risk so that they only get a return if we are successful and have a drug approved. That’s super important because they have obviously been prepared to put hundreds of millions of dollars into the company having faith that this is a drug that is going to be approved, commercialised and available to generate revenues. That is an incredible endorsement.” The raisings ensure Opthea will be fully funded through pivotal Phase 3 trials and pre-commercial activities, including an approval application to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA).Looking ahead, the firm’s revenue is forecast to grow – on average – 75 per cent per year during the next three years, compared to the 11 per cent forecast for the local biotech industry in Australia. That will be little solace to institutional investors who paid $1.15 a share in last year’s capital raising, priced at a 12.5 per cent discount. Since then the shares have fallen more than 30 per cent. They are also now worth five times less than when the Opthea share price reached a record high in 2019. But Baldwin is unperturbed. “This is a program where the next milestone for us is data that is used for commercialisation. Many of the biotechnology companies in Australia are working in that earlier phase of development where they are many years away from a drug approval,” she says. “That’s the fundamental difference for us. It is not a 10-year plan, it is a two to three-year plan to be on the market.” Most recently, finding a treatment for wet-AMD has also had a personal edge for Baldwin. “It was literally about a month ago that my husband’s aunt discovered she has it. The reason I found out is because she asked me about one of the new drugs that has just been approved and what I thought about it,” she says. “It did bring home, obviously, that what we are doing actually applies to real life.”
Baldwin has been described as a natural CEO, a steady hand, driven, likeable and a perfectionist. But also ruthless and controlling. She vehemently rejects the latter tags. “I think as a CEO you do need to be strong. You absolutely need to be assertive, you need to have an opinion and you need to be able to say it. Leading a company, you need to ensure that everyone remains focused. It isn’t always easy. There are a lot of strong opinions at the table and you have to stand your ground,” she says. “So if that means the company stays on track and is laser focused on executing and spending shareholders’ money on the things we said we would, then on probably all of those things I am a perfectionist and I expect a higher standard. I enjoy working with people, but especially people that work equally hard.” She acknowledges expectations are high that Opthea can deliver on its promises, especially given the hundreds of millions pumped into the group by some of the world’s most prestigious investors. Yet she worries that over time she has been judged differently in her role as a woman, especially with some of the commentary that occurred when she became CEO of the firm at such a young age.“I know that there are a lot of male CEOs that were CEOs before they were 40 and they were never labelled as ‘young and green’. I’ve been in this field for 25 years and that can still occasionally come up. I don’t think that they would say the same to a male in the position,” she says. “I’m just going to prove them wrong by doing what I think needs to be done and not taking it too personally. Trying to deliver on executing things is the best way to prove yourself.” The Melbourne-based Baldwin has two teenage children and a husband who is a senior director at blood plasma giant CSL. She says they have a family “framework” to enable both to travel and work irregular hours and have a policy never to both be travelling overseas at the same time. “It is basically whatever needs to get done gets done to raise the kids and to make sure that there is food on the table. He’s not precious about cooking dinner and doing anything that needs to get done. Honestly, I can’t imagine being married to someone that didn’t have that attitude,” she says. Baldwin, who is also the deputy chair of AusBiotech. the local industry’s peak body, now hopes Australia can follow America’s lead in encouraging the smartest scientists in the nation’s universities to take their PhDs outside of traditional benchwork. “In the US market, there is a greater understanding and recognition that you can use your PhD outside of traditional research-based work. That comes from the fact that the industry is a lot more evolved. We are getting there in Australia but we are still a long way off. That transition was easier for me to do in America,” she says. She still goes to work every day determined to fulfil the dream of making her doctoral thesis a commercial reality. “Not many people get that opportunity to take early stage research all the way through and not many Australian companies actually get to fully retain ownership of their assets, remain in Australia and execute on a big clinical trial that has the potential to generate a drug that will make a huge difference for millions and millions of people around the world,” she says. “It’s been a long path so far. But it’s been a privilege to be able to do that.”
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