CMMB — Q2 2026 Financial Report Analysis

Overview

Chemomab Therapeutics is an Israeli drug developer with no products on sale and no revenue. Its one drug candidate is nebokitug, an antibody that blocks a protein called CCL24, which is linked to both inflammation and scarring (fibrosis). In the second quarter of 2026 (April–June) it lost $2.2 million, roughly the same as a year earlier ($2.1 million). Cash and short-term deposits fell to $6.7 million. The company itself says that is only enough to last through the first quarter of 2027.

The quarter's numbers matter less than what Chemomab announced in July. It agreed to an all-stock merger with Scipher Medicine, a privately held US precision-medicine company. After the deal, current Chemomab shareholders would own about 32% of the combined company and Scipher's owners about 68%, before a $30 million fundraising that closes alongside the deal. The combined company would trade as "SCIP". It plans to test nebokitug in rheumatoid arthritis (RA) rather than pay for a large liver-disease trial on its own. Closing is expected before the end of 2026. That makes this one of the last quarterly reports Chemomab is likely to publish as a stand-alone company.

At a glance

• $6.7 million in cash and deposits, down from $10.4 million at the end of 2025. The company used $3.7 million in the first half alone. The financial statements carry a "substantial doubt" warning about whether it can keep going for the next 12 months without new money.
• Research spending fell 45% in the first half ($2.1M vs $3.8M). That is because the Phase 2 SPRING trial in a liver disease called primary sclerosing cholangitis (PSC) has finished, not because a new program is ramping up.
• Shareholders are set to own about 32% of the combined company with Scipher. In practice this is a reverse merger: Scipher's investors take control, and Chemomab's drug is the main asset it brings.

The numbers

Chemomab has no sales, so the usual revenue and margin lines don't apply. What matters for a company at this stage is spending (mainly research and development, R&D), the resulting loss, and the cash left to fund it.

*The filing reports the loss per ordinary share: $0.003 (Q2 2026) vs $0.004 (Q2 2025). Each American Depositary Share (ADS, the unit traded on Nasdaq) represents 80 ordinary shares. We computed the per-ADS figures from the reported net loss and the weighted-average share counts (640.2 million vs 463.5 million ordinary shares).

Over the first six months, the net loss narrowed 27% to $3.94 million from $5.38 million. Almost all of that improvement came from R&D, which fell $1.7 million. Management attributes the drop "primarily" to "lower consultants and subcontractors costs following the completion of the Phase 2 SPRING clinical trial, as well as lower salaries and related expenses." Overhead (general and administrative, or G&A) edged up 3% over the half. The company points to a $144 thousand increase in professional services, which fits a quarter spent negotiating a merger.

What the headline numbers hide

• Cash runway is the whole story, and it is short. "Runway" means how long the cash lasts at the current rate of spending. Operating cash use was $3.74 million over six months, or about $1.9 million a quarter. At that pace $6.7 million lasts a little under four quarters. Management's own estimate is "through Q1 2027", which is shorter, presumably because deal costs will add to spending. The notes to the financial statements state that cash on hand is "sufficient to meet planned expenditures for a period of less than 12 months" and that this raises "substantial doubt about its ability to continue as a going concern". In plain terms, without the merger and the $30 million that comes with it, Chemomab would have to raise money again within months.
• Lower losses come from doing less, not from progress. Spending fell because the main trial ended and no new trial has started. That is not a business getting more efficient. A cheaper quarter here mostly reflects a pipeline on hold while the company waits for a partner or a deal.
• The per-share loss improved only because there are more shares. The quarterly net loss actually grew 5%. Loss per ADS improved 24% only because the average share count rose about 38% from a year earlier, after share sales. Those included an "at-the-market" program, in which the company sells new ADSs gradually on the open market. Through it Chemomab raised $5.9 million net at about $3.04 per ADS between August 2025 and June 2026. The weighted-average count of 640 million is also higher than the 580 million ordinary shares actually issued. That gap fits the unexercised "pre-funded warrants" from the 2024 private placement, which are near-free rights to receive shares and are counted in the per-share figures.
• First-half cash burn looks lower partly because of timing. Accrued expenses and employee-related liabilities rose $0.3 million over the half. Bills that have been incurred but not yet paid flatter operating cash flow for now and will reverse when they are paid. Cash use was still clearly lower than in 2025's first half ($6.1 million), mainly because the trial is over.
• Interest income is shrinking with the cash pile. Financing income fell to $153 thousand in the half from $369 thousand. The company says this was "due to reduced balances held in bank deposits."
• No one-off charges or adjusted figures distort the picture. Chemomab reports only standard accounting (GAAP) figures. Stock-based pay was small ($221 thousand in the half).

Takeaway: Chemomab can't fund its next step alone. It has about $6.7 million against spending of roughly $1.9 million a quarter, and its auditors' going-concern warning makes the Scipher merger and its $30 million financing effectively the company's financing plan. For current holders, the value now rests mostly on their ~32% stake in the combined company and on the contingent payments (CVRs) attached to the deal, not on Chemomab's own balance sheet.

The Scipher deal, in plain terms

• Structure. Chemomab will first move its legal home from Israel to the US: a new Delaware parent company will own it. That parent then absorbs Scipher in an all-stock deal. Chemomab is the legal buyer, but Scipher's holders end up with about 68%, so control passes to them. This kind of deal is called a reverse merger. Scipher CEO Reginald Seeto would run the combined company, and Chemomab CEO Adi Mor would join its board.
• Money. The parties put the combined company's value at $150 million before the new financing. The financing raises at least $30 million from existing Scipher backers (Northpond Ventures leads, with Khosla Ventures, Blue Owl and Neuberger-managed funds also taking part), and the deal can't close without it. These investors also get warrants, the right to buy more shares later, priced off a lower $75 million valuation. That is a sweetener that could dilute other holders if the shares do well. The companies say the combined cash should last through the Phase 2 RA trial results.
• Contingent value rights (CVRs). Chemomab holders also get CVRs, rights to extra payments if certain things happen later. The deal sets $10 million if nebokitug wins FDA approval for any use. It sets $40 million if the PSC program reaches a Phase 3 trial or is partnered or sold, payable in cash, stock or both. These are not tradable and may never pay out.
• Recent steps. On September 23, 2026, the companies amended the Israeli redomiciling agreement. Chemomab called the change technical: shares will convert so that the combined company starts with 10 million shares outstanding, with no change to the 32/68 split. A Form S-4 registration statement, the document shareholders will vote on, was filed publicly on September 25. Closing also depends on Israeli tax rulings and a shareholder vote.

The drug: where nebokitug stands

• Primary sclerosing cholangitis (PSC). PSC is a rare, progressive disease in which the liver's bile ducts become inflamed and scarred, and it has no FDA-approved treatment. In the Phase 2 SPRING trial, nebokitug met its main safety goal. The company reports statistically significant improvement in liver stiffness at 15 weeks, along with lower bilirubin (a marker of how well bile drains) and less itching. The company says it agreed with the FDA on the outline of a Phase 3 trial: several hundred patients, with time to a first serious clinical event as the main measure. It has not found the partner to pay for that trial, and the combined company says it would only "continue to evaluate strategic opportunities" there.
• Rheumatoid arthritis (RA), the new focus. Scipher's AI-based platform, SPECTRA, ranked nebokitug as the top clinical-stage candidate for RA. Scipher sells a blood test that flags patients unlikely to respond to the most common class of RA drugs (TNF inhibitors). The plan is to use that kind of test to pick the patients most likely to benefit. The planned timeline is an IND filing (the FDA application to start human trials) in 2026, first patients in the first half of 2027 and 12-week results in the first half of 2028. Nothing in the filing describes any nebokitug study in RA patients so far. The RA case rests on the PSC trial's biomarker data, animal studies and Scipher's computational ranking.
• Quarter's scientific output. The company presented three abstracts at the EASL liver congress (May 30) and an oral presentation at Digestive Disease Week (May 4). All were further analyses of SPRING trial samples, such as protein and gene-expression signatures. None contained new clinical outcome data.

Outlook

Management gives no financial guidance beyond the runway statement ("through Q1 2027") and the expected merger close "before the end of 2026". On the current path the company's own financial reporting has little left to show. Spending will stay low until the merger closes, and after that the reporting entity becomes Scipher Medicine Corporation, with Scipher's operating business and a different cost base.

The things to watch, in order of importance:

1. Does the deal close on time, with the full $30 million? If the shareholder vote, the Israeli tax rulings or the financing slip, Chemomab's runway into early 2027 leaves little room. It would probably need to raise money again at a weak point.
2. Does the RA IND go in during 2026, as planned? It is the first concrete test of the new plan.
3. Is any PSC partner found? That decides whether the $40 million CVR is ever likely to pay out.

Our read: the quarter confirms that Chemomab, as a stand-alone company, has reached the end of what its cash can fund. Its shareholders are trading control for a funded RA trial and a set of contingent payments. Whether that was a good trade depends almost entirely on the 2028 Phase 2 readout, which Chemomab's own financial statements can't tell us anything about.