CEO end of year message 2023

As we near the end of another year, I am reflecting on what has been a year of contrasts and challenges. The contrasts have come in the form of much positive progress for the company, having grown the team significantly over the calendar year, but set against that we are seeing unprecedented market pressures and challenging economic conditions. We are not alone in finding the second half of 2023, in particular, commercially tough – I am in constant contact with many other leaders within the pharma and biotech industry, both customers and suppliers, and I think it's been a universally difficult time for all.

That said, there have been some really nice moments during the year including strong performance from our Torx platform (more of which in a separate message from Tim Cheeseright, who heads that business for us), big software releases from the Development team (including Flare v7 earlier in the year, and the forthcoming Flare v8, which is technically complete and heading into the release cycle). The Flare v7 release in July included a host of new science, including GCNCMC for Dynamics, Ensemble Covalent Docking, expanded QM methods, new QSAR methods and an enhanced ability to run multiple calculations in parallel. It also contained many new features for our Free Energy Perturbation (FEP) offering, which provides state-of-the-art capabilities in terms of predicting binding energies for proposed new compounds.

Alongside the new science, we also continue to enhance the amazing user experience of Flare, which provides unrivalled ease-of-use and ensures all of the scientific depth is easily accessible and usable by all users. Across all of the products, and within the R&D functions we also saw 2023 as a remarkable year of innovation and adoption of AI techniques, paralleling the expansion of the technology in the wider world. We firmly believe that this expansion will continue over the next few years and that AI tools will greatly enhance our capabilities and those of our customers.

All of this contributed to our ongoing holistic positioning of Cresset as a premier solution provider in the Design – Make – Test – Analyze (DMTA) application space for small molecule drug discovery.

I was particularly pleased this year to welcome the first cohort from our Post Doc program into full-time employment within the business, it’s exciting to see young scientists taking the step from academia to industry and launching their careers with Cresset. We were equally proud to unveil our new suite of meeting rooms which we have named the ‘Vinter Suite’ in honor of our scientific co-founder Dr Andy Vinter – this new facility means we have the flexibility to hold internal and external meetings, both large and small in a custom-designed environment.

At the corporate level, this was our first full year of operations since taking investment from Scottish Equity Partners: this has proven to be an excellent relationship, and we value the ongoing help that they provide as we progress the business. During the year we were very honored to have been accepted onto Innovate UK’s 'Scaleup' program – this is testament to the growth of the business as participation is limited in both numbers of companies and also only to companies with the highest growth potential.

I wish you all the very best of the season, and I look forward to 2024 with excitement and anticipation of the further great progress we aim to make as a company and as a trusted partner to our loyal customers and friends.

All the very best,
Rob