We sat down with Ronan Levy, executive chairman and co-founder of Field Trip, about a week after the company’s big move to the NASDAQ.
So I guess we should start with congratulations on the NASDAQ listing. I’m sure you’ve probably dropped a thousand press release style statements in the last two weeks, but I’ll give the chance for one more…
“Thank you. It was a primary and central focus for us from the early days to get onto a major US listing and to achieve it less than a year from our CSE listing in Canada was a great achievement. So we’re quite pleased and proud of the team. It feels really good to be here.”
I joke how there was kind of a leaderboard and office pool of who was going to be the next to uplist to the NASDAQ. Compared to the buzz around the MindMed listing, you quietly sprung this news on us. Which seems like it might be the company style. Slow and steady wins the race. Not too many bells and whistles?
“Yes, slow and steady does win the race. It’s not that we’re opposed to bells and whistles. We just saw very first hand in the cannabis industry how things can get out of hand. How valuations ran up. There was a lot of spending on IR promotions to drive stock prices and we saw the consequences of that. And we’ve also seen it being used pretty aggressively within the psychedelics industry.
We want to create value by creating value, not by creating advertisements that make it seem like we’re creating value. So it’s just a very conscious choice about our tactics, about how we wanted to be seen and perceived.
And if you look at the companies in the cannabis industry who have generated the highest returns over the last seven years, it was the sleepers, the ones you might not have heard of, that have performed the best. We like that style.”
I go on to theorize that perhaps the decreasing amount of buzz as each new company uplists to bigger exchanges could be due to psychedelics gaining acceptance on Wall Street and the financial big leagues. It’s less of a novelty now. Which is probably a good thing for the industry.
“Yeah, I think there’s definitely excitement around psychedelics. For sure. In fact, we might be getting to the point where there’s so much excitement that people are feeling like it’s a little bit saturated. They’re having a hard time, from an investment perspective, separating the thoughtful businesses or the good strategies from the bad ones.
There’s such a tight alignment right now, everyone pursuing very similar paths, that seeing clear differentiators is becoming harder and harder. But it’s never been a challenge with Field Trip. This is why we have the integrated approach with our Field Trip health centers rolling out across North American and Field Trip Discovery division developing the next generation of psychedelics focusing on novel chemical entities.
It’s called psychedelic therapy. Psychedelics with therapy. So if you’re doing one without the other, then you’re missing an essential piece of the equation. By doing this integrative model, we’re de-risking the future commercialization of our molecules. By having these centers for delivery, we are also de-risking the drug development because again, it’s psychedelics with therapy. If you’re not innovating on the therapy, you’re not understanding how therapies pair with psychedelics. If you focus only on the drug, then you’re missing a huge part of it.”
So we get into some of the details that differentiate Field Trip from others in the space. I mention that Field Trip is kind of known as “the clinic guys”, a reputation Ronan acknowledges but that they hope to soon change with FT-104, the company’s exciting new molecule.
“We are continuing with our clinic openings: 20 before the end of the year, and 30 before the end of next year. And many other companies are realizing the reality of therapist and delivery bottlenecks. Compass is now building out their Centers of Excellence, and Cybin just partnered with Greenbrook TMS. But we’ve been doing it since day one and I think we have a great head start in terms of awareness, information, and new insights. So I think it really positions us well to thrive in the emergence of this industry.
But the more exciting stuff is in the drug development side of things. We expect sometime in the fall to be announcing the lead indications for FT-104. Our analysis continues and we’ve retained some really well-known consultants to firm up our thinking about what indications we want to pursue. So that’ll be announced in the fall. And the disclosure of exactly what molecule FT-104 is will come at the end of the year. Then we’ll see Phase 1 clinical trials commence early next year, and all things being equal, Phase 2 clinical trials before the end of next year.”
At the moment, all the biggest market cap valuations are going to companies focused on drug development; which makes sense when considering the massive sales figures connected to conditions like anxiety or depression. If Field Trip can successfully get into the drug development game, while also expanding their industry-leading and revenue-generating network of clinics, then you’ll likely see Field Trip Health begin to close the market cap gap and generate those slow and steady and impressive returns.
The conversation Ronan continued on, touching on the Field Trip team’s history and motivation for getting into psychedelic medicine. We discuss the loftier and altruistic perspectives that seem to characterize many of the players driving this psychedelic renaissance, and how this more holistic language is a positive thing, seeping into how we see the world and structure our businesses.
We even manage to speak about “magic and poetry” and how a little bit of it is needed to make the changes society needs. A refreshingly progressive conversation with the chairman of a NASDAQ-listed company.
Stay tuned to Microdose’s podcast and YouTube channel to see the conversation in full.