Earnings Labs

ACADIA Pharmaceuticals Inc. (ACAD)

Q3 2015 Earnings Call· Thu, Nov 5, 2015

$22.76

+2.06%

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day ladies and gentlemen and welcome to ACADIA Pharmaceuticals Third Quarter 2015 Financial Results Conference Call. My name is Mike and I will be your coordinator for today. At this time all participants are in a listen-only mode. We will be facilitating the question-and-answer session towards the end of today's call. [Operator Instructions]. I would now like to turn the presentation over to Lisa Barthelemy, Director of Investor Relations at ACADIA. Please proceed.

Lisa Barthelemy

Analyst

Thank you. And good afternoon and welcome to ACADIA's third quarter 2015 financial results conference call. This call is being recorded and an archived copy will be available on our website at www.acadia-pharm.com through November 19, 2015. Joining me on the call today from ACADIA are Steve Davis, our President and Chief Executive Officer; Terry Moore, our Executive Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer; Bob Mischler , our Vice President of Strategy and Business Development and [Ed Harrigan], a consultant to the company. We will begin our call today with a business update and brief comments regarding our recently announced financial results. Following this, we will provide you with an update on our NUPLAZID development program and commercial preparations and we will then open the floor to your questions. Before we proceed, I would first like to remind you that during our call today we will be making a number of forward-looking statements, including statements regarding our research and development programs and plans; our commercialization plans; our manufacturing quality systems; and our strategy, including the timing, results or implications of clinical trials or other development efforts; the benefits or advantages to be derived from, future approval of and the commercial potential for, our product candidates in each case, including NUPLAZID; the timing, content or likelihood of regulatory filings or approvals; future developments; launch and commercialization of NUPLAZID; the expansion of pimavanserin into additional indications; and our future expenses, cash position and usage. During our call today, we may use words such as anticipate, believe, could, expect, intend, may, plan, potential, predict, project, should or the negative of those terms and similar expressions that convey uncertainty of future events or outcomes, to identify these forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are based on current information, assumptions and expectations that are inherently subject to change and involve a number of risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in the forward-looking statements. These factors and other risks associated with our business can be found in our filings made with the SEC. You are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements which are made only as of today's date. ACADIA disclaims any obligation to update these forward-looking statements. I'll now turn the call over to Steve Davis, our President and Chief Executive Officer.

Steve Davis

Analyst

Thank you, Lisa and good afternoon. Let me first take this opportunity to thank all of you for joining us on today's conference call. Today my prepared remarks are directed at three areas. First, I'll touch on the news we announced starting of this week about the FDA acceptance of NUPLAZID NDA with Priority Review and the work we're doing to prepare for the planned commercialization of NUPLAZID in the United States. Second, I'll discuss the important work we've conducted to date in our comprehensive life cycle planning project and our planned expansion of pimavanserin into other areas of significant unmet medical needs. And last I'll comment on our financial results for the third quarter. Following my review, Terry will lead a review of our pre commercial activities for NUPLAZID and then we'll open things up for questions. We've had a productive last couple of months. We submitted our NDA for NUPLAZID for Parkinson's disease psychosis or PDP in early September, we announced on Monday of this week that the FDA accepted the NUPLAZID NDA for filing and granted Priority Review with the PDUFA date of May 1, 2016. This Priority Review comes on top of NUPLAZID's breakthrough therapy designation in PDP in 2014. As a reminder Priority Review accelerates the review timeline from 10 months to six months from the date of acceptance of filing and is granted to drugs that may offer major advances in treatment or drugs that may provide a treatment where no adequate therapy exists. In NUPLAZID's case we believe it addresses both of these [structures], that is it potentially offers a major advance in treatment, as it would be the first and only drug approved for psychosis associated with Parkinson's disease. I understand that many of you may have questions about the NDA or…

Terry Moore

Analyst

Thanks, Steve. And good afternoon everyone and you can tell us getting very exciting around here and I'm happy to report that during the third quarter our commercial activities and preparations for the expected launch of NUPLAZID in United States are progressing as planned and are on track. Now, that our NDA submission has been accepted and we have a PDUFA date for approval, I'd like to take a minute just to provide a little more detail around the breadth and depth of our launch preparation efforts. We have a project launch team comprised of senior leaders and department heads representing key functional areas across the company. This team has developed a tactical plan for each of their respective areas as it relates to the launch. To bring these plans together and ensure all activities merge onto the critical path for launch, the project launch team operates from an integrated master [indiscernible] chart that delineates all activities in the sequencing of these activities. I'm pleased to report that our activities are on track and will be well-positioned for launch once we receive approval from the FDA to market NUPLAZID for patients with Parkinson's disease psychosis. Now I'm going to shift gears just a bit to our external efforts. In conjunction with the medical affair colleagues we're continuing to execute on many of the pre-commercial activities that are required to ensure the successful launch of our products, the most visible of these of course has been our PDP disease awareness education program. Our multichannel approach which includes digital and print media as well as key expert educational speaker programs is continuing to garner interest and participation. During our last quarterly call I had shared that our website dedicated to educating healthcare professionals about PDP have recorded over 6,300 visits. I'm pleased…

Steve Davis

Analyst

Thank you, Terry. In summary this is an exciting and important time at ACADIA, our priorities are clear to secure FDA approval for NUPLAZID in PDP, to successfully execute on the planned commercial launch of NUPLAZID in the U.S. and to continue to execute on our life cycle management program with pimavanserin and other areas of large unmet medical needs. We're energized by the opportunity to recognize the need for continued innovation in the treatment of CNS disorders such as Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease and schizophrenia, all of us at ACADIA are committed to bringing medicines to the market that will improve the lives of these patients. Operator you may now proceed with the Q&A session.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Your first question is from Alan Carr with Needham & Company.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Hi, guys this is [Ester] on for Alan and thanks for taking my questions. So, my first question is how are physicians receiving the disease awareness campaign and related to that how is your level of confidence around the 150,000 PDP patients, I think you'd said that in a previous conference and based on the disease awareness campaign, is that number evolving?

Terry Moore

Analyst

I'm sorry, I missed the very first part of your question, could you repeat that please?

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

How are physicians receiving the disease awareness campaign? Is it positive? I know you're getting more hits or your upside but have you received any feedback from them?

Terry Moore

Analyst

Yes, so in addition to the feedback we've had advisory boards for long term care and other specialty areas and the feedback quite frankly has been phenomenal, people are very eager for us to be on the market to treat these patients and we get that from all angles including the feedback on the program. We've had people comment from advocacy groups that their physicians have commented about the program and feel very-very good about it. In relation to moving the needle, we know that we have moved the needle, we've seen especially with movement disorder specialist and psychiatry an obvious unsolicited interest when talking about the campaign and in terms of the 150,000 we think that, as you recall the market for us even though it's 400,000 patients really split into two sections, one was disruptive and non-disruptive. We feel that, that 150,000 is still an accurate number, but we feel that with a drug like NUPLAZID given its favorable tolerability safety profile that positions and our market research has confirmed this, appear to be more willing to start their treatment early on in less severe patients.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

And so moving onto the agitation studies or agitation program, do you think that if you start patients earlier on in Alzheimer's at the agitation level that you would be able to prevent the psychosis.

Steve Davis

Analyst

I think it's just way too early to speculate about what impact it might have but there's nothing that, that we would want to try to speculate today in terms of what impact you might have treating any of these diseases earlier in the disease progression. It's an interesting question, it's something that I just think it's a little bit too early for us to speculative on.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from Cory Kasimov with JPMorgan.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst · JPMorgan.

Hi, guys this is actually Britney on for Cory, thanks for taking my questions. Can you just give us any color on early reimbursement progress and any initial feedback there? And then how quickly would you be able to launch following potential approval on May 1st. Thank you.

Terry Moore

Analyst · JPMorgan.

Sure, as you know we've done extensive [access in] reimbursement work over the last year, we've refreshed that data. We feel that we have found our sweet spot that is commensurate with the value in terms of our pricing. I think your question was how long after approval do of you think that we'll launch? On average given everything that happens you can expect most companies to take about a quarter to get everything lined up, of course you have to get your label right and get your PI straight and make sure that everything is tied up before you run out there and on an average that's usually what occurs and we are thinking in those terms.

Steve Davis

Analyst · JPMorgan.

Let me just maybe just also add to that, Terry's group has done an exhaustive amount of work mapping out every potential scenario for launch timing. And obviously we recognize the value of every day of getting drug to the market, and so we're committed and we have very thorough plans to get there as just as fast as prudently possible. Sometimes [indiscernible] mentioned, can take up to a quarter, many times you see that, obviously you see sometimes sooner, there is a certain amount of logistics that you just have to deal with in terms of printing of your label, packaging et cetera. So, what we can commit to is we will be very eager to get to the market as quickly as we can.

Terry Moore

Analyst · JPMorgan.

And just to add to Steve's remarks with a prior review and an expedited timeline, we don't know exactly when that's going to occur so we do have tactical plans in place for many scenarios based on varying dates, so we feel very well prepared if things happen to change on us.

Operator

Operator

And we have time for one more question. The last question is from Jason Butler with JMP Securities. Your line is open.

Jason Butler

Analyst

I just had a follow-up on the earlier question around the agitation, patient populations. Can you give us any idea of what your thoughts are on the overlap between the agitation and the psychosis patient populations are? And ultimately how much you think that patient population or agitation would increase your addressable patient population versus just reinforce in a broader patient population different benefit the drug could have?

Steve Davis

Analyst

Yes, I'll give a first response to that and Terry feel free to jump in. It's meaningful, first of all let me just, I guess that's your first question, there's a nexus between agitation, aggression, psychosis there's more for of a nexus on the aggression of things with psychosis, but there's certainly a nexus there. Having said that there are two very distinct indications, FDA is viewing them as distinct indications when you talk to physicians they view them as two very significant but different issues recognizing there is some overlap between the two. So, I we'd like to get more detail, more color, it's a little bit premature for us to talk about just how much it would increase the potential for NUPLAZID for a couple of reasons including the fact that like PDP there is no diagnostic code for ADP nor for AD agitation. And so as you'll probably recall, there's a lot of very important foundation work we did in PDP to really understand exactly how many patients there are, who the physicians are that are treating those patients et cetera and in due course we'll do that, go through that same kind of exercise and ADP and in AD agitation, but until we get to the point where we have a more solid footing for beginning to share some of that information, we probably just can't go there quite yet.

Jason Butler

Analyst

And then just a follow-up, obviously it's still early in terms of trial design but can you help us out with your [indiscernible] on end point? Is this going to be the agitation, aggression demand of the MPI and what can you take away from other recent trials in the AD agitation space?

Steve Davis

Analyst

I'll start with a standard response, I'll add as much color as I can. This standard response is we're still in planning so we're not prepared yet to say what in point we'll use as our primary end point, we know there're multiple scales in the MPI scale and the CMA scale too, probably most likely scales, it's not like developing another stat, it is an area where, there's a little bit of ground breaking to do here with the agency and so we're very much on top and very focused on it but it's a little bit premature for us to determine that and talk about it.

Operator

Operator

There are no further questions. Mr. Davis please proceed to closing remarks.

Steve Davis

Analyst

Thanks again to everyone for joining us on today's call for your continued support, we'll look forward to updating you in the future on our ongoing progress.