The Internet of Antibodies - Presentation by Jonathan Milner, Co-Founder & CEO of abcam at the NOAH 2013 Conference in London, Old Billingsgate on the 13th of November 2013.
The Role of Taxonomy and Ontology in Semantic Layers - Heather Hedden.pdf
abcam - NOAH13 London
1. The Internet of Antibodies
Jonathan Milner
Founder & CEO of Abcam plc
2. Introduction
• Jonathan Milner, Founder & CEO
• Former lifescience research scientist – studied breast cancer genes at Cambridge university
• Very exciting time at the start of a golden age of biological research
• Unable to buy the reagents needed to conduct gene studies
• Founded Abcam in 1998 to sell these reagents – antibodies – from an online catalogue
• Vision to create the largest catalogue of the best antibodies in the world
• Acquisitions have broadened Abcam into a world leader in protein research tools
2
3. Abcam in numbers
Sales
Pre-tax profits
Market cap
£122m
£46.5m
c£1bn
(year to 30 June 2013)
(year to 30 June 2013)
(£58m at IPO in 2005)
Web pages in Google
Publications
referencing Abcam
products in 2012
Delivering to
index
1.75m
(source: Google Search)
c24k
(source: Google Scholar)
Number of products
c125,000
>100
countries worldwide
3
4. What we do
• Manufacture, source and sell protein research tools including antibodies
– Tens of thousands of proteins interact in millions of ways
• Antibodies enable research – picks and shovels for studying proteins at a cellular level
• Used in scientific breakthroughs leading to new treatments for diseases such as cancer
• International customer base – academia to global pharma
• The US is Abcam’s largest market – huge US investment in lab bench research
• Competitors include Life Technologies, Merck Millipore, Santa Cruz Biotechnology
4
5. The internet of antibodies
• Historically, laboratory reagents were sold from paper catalogues
– Limited quantity and timeliness of information , minimal customer interaction
• The internet meant product information could be hosted online
• Potential for huge quantities of relevant, continually updated information
• This information is open source and unique to Abcam products
• Dynamic relationship created with online community of scientists
• Products manufactured in-house or sourced from third parties and branded Abcam
5
6. The information flywheel
• The quicker product information is
added, the faster sales grow
• More sales lead to an increased rate of
information addition
• This leads to improved sales and better
pricing
• Ultimately this makes the business highly
defensible
6
7. Catalogue growth by product over time
130,000
Number of products on the Abcam calalogue over time
120,000
110,000
100,000
90,000
80,000
70,000
60,000
50,000
40,000
30,000
20,000
10,000
0
H1
H2
2001/02
H1
H2
2002/03
H1
H2
2003/04
OEM Primary Antibodies
H1
H2
2004/05
H1
H2
2005/06
OEM Other Products
H1
H2
2006/07
H1
H2
2007/08
H1
H2
2008/09
Abcam Primary Antibodies
H1
H2
2009/10
H1
H2
2010/11
H1
H2
2011/12
Abcam Other Products
H1
H2
2012/13
8. Sales momentum in the catalogue
including unaudited pre-acquisition revenues of Epitomics (reagents) and Ascent
60000
Revenue £k calculated at fixed exchange rates
50000
40000
30000
20000
10000
0
H1
H2
2002 / 03
H1
H2
2003 / 04
H1
H2
2004 / 05
H1
H2
2005 / 06
H1
H2
2006 / 07
H1
H2
2007 / 08
H1
H2
2008 / 09
H1
H2
2009 / 10
H1
H2
2010 / 11
H1
H2
2011/12
H1
H2
2012/13
Added pre 2002 / 03
Added in 2002 / 03
Added in 2003 / 04
Added in 2004 / 05
Added in 2005 / 06
Added in 2006 / 07
Added in 2007 / 08
Added in 2008 / 09
Added in 2009 / 10
Added in 2010 / 11
Added in 2011 / 12
Added in 2012 / 13
9. Continual improvement
• Our website is an ever more important tool for our business
• IT team continues to focus on uptime and responsiveness
– 99.99% uptime on our website
– Response time of < 2 seconds for searches
• Improving accessibility and functionality of the front-end website
• Re-engineering core systems to enhance scalability
• Customer surveys, customer focus groups and randomly sampling web visitors
9
10. How big can it get?
• Business model designed for scalability
• High growth market fuelled by scientific advances
• Recent acquisition of a US company, Epitomics, with exciting new technology
• Vision to create the world’s leading lifescience reagents company
www.abcam.com
10