Joel Morales
Analyst · Barclays
Thanks, Anil. I'll now provide some brief financial highlights for year ended December 31, 2023. In terms of liquidity, we recently announced in February that we completed a private placement with Icelandic and other European investors worth $166 million in gross proceeds. Giving effect to this financing, our pro forma cash balance as of December 31 would have been $172 million, excluding $25.2 million of restricted cash. In terms of our operating performance, total revenues for 2023 were $93.3 million versus $85 million in the prior year, an increase of around 10%. The company recorded $48.7 million in product revenues for 2023, almost doubling revenues from the same period in the prior year. This sharp increase is driven by the timing of launches that started in the second quarter of 2022. Since then, our partners have continued to expand on share in existing markets throughout Europe and Canada and we have also launched into Australia in late Q4 of 2023. In particular, we recognized $18.9 million of revenue in the fourth quarter which proved to be our strongest quarter of 2023, driving full year revenues, consistent with the expectations we communicated during our last earnings call. The company also recorded $42.7 million in milestone revenues in 2023, largely driven by the recognition of $31.6 million of milestone revenues in the fourth quarter as a result of the positive top line results we achieved on the clinical efficacy and safety study for our AVT06 program, a biosimilar candidate to EYLEA. Another point worthwhile noting is that the cost of product revenue for the year ended December 31, 2023, is disproportionate relative to product revenue due to timing of new launches, scale-up manufacturing activities, production-related charges and costs associated with FDA inspection readiness. We do expect this to normalize as we've obtained FDA approval and are able to realize increased scale of manufacturing while expanding on our launches. We anticipate that this increase in volumes will have a favorable impact on cost of product revenues, particularly as we increase absorption of our fixed costs. We closed the period with 266 million shares outstanding, including unvested earn-out shares. Turning to the next slide, you will find our outlook for 2024 and 2025. We are forecasting revenues between $300 million and $400 million in 2024. This 3 to 4x growth year-on-year is driven by a combination of our newly planned product launches of AVT02 and AVT04 and significant development and performance-based milestones we expect to achieve throughout the year. With approvals now secured across multiple products and markets, we have begun to take all the necessary steps to enable our planned launches in 2024. Upon approval of SIMLANDI, our high concentration and interchangeable version of HUMIRA, we filed variations with the FDA that will enable us to manufacture at an optimized scale. We have, in fact, already begun to manufacture at that scale for our rest of world markets as of the end of last year and expect to be able to manufacture at the same scale for the U.S. by midyear 2024. We expect to begin supplying the U.S. market with prelaunch inventory in the very near term. Concurrently, our commercial partnership is in advanced stages of contracting with key payers in the U.S. And based on our product profile that includes the combination of high concentration and interchangeability, we are highly optimistic that we will gain broad market coverage. This year, we also expect to launch our biosimilar to HUMIRA into several additional global markets, including Latin America and the Middle East. With respect to AVT04, our biosimilar to STELARA, we have already launched in Canada and expect to expand our launches in Japan and Europe in the second and third quarters of this year, respectively. All requisite approvals have been secured in these markets and we expect to receive FDA approval in the U.S. by next month's BsUFA date. The launch for the U.S. is planned for February of 2025. However, our forecast assumes we commenced recognizing revenues late in the fourth quarter of this year as we ship initial prelaunch inventory into the U.S. Detailed planning for our U.S. launch is underway. These launches are not only driving growth in product revenues but also providing greater diversification in terms of commercial product offering and geographic concentration. They are thus important cornerstones of our strategy to drive growth and profitability over the mid- to long term. In terms of milestone revenue, as I mentioned earlier, we are anticipating the submission of at least three additional filings in major markets throughout the year for our pipeline. Additionally, we plan to commence clinical trials for our proposed biosimilar to Entyvio, AVT16. Commencing and successfully completing clinical phases of development and regulatory submissions are key events that drive milestone revenue recognition for the company. We're also expecting to recognize milestone revenues for the achievement of certain performance-based targets, such as the first launch of our biosimilars to HUMIRA and STELARA into new markets globally, as well as the achievement of cumulative net sales targets for these launched products. The last point I'd like to make regarding milestone revenues is with respect to licensing. As noted earlier in the presentation by Anil, we have active BD pipeline that has more recently been focused on partnering with our oncology and oncology-related assets. Accordingly, the company is actively pursuing licensing deals for early phase programs with a strategic partner or partners, providing potential upfront cash and milestones over time. We expect milestone revenue contributions to be significant this year and could range up to 40% to 50% of total revenues in 2024. The enhancement of our pipeline not only provides a basis for longer-term growth but generates near-term milestone revenue which is another core part of our business model. Based on the commercial assumptions I just described, adjusted EBITDA for the year is forecasted in the range of $50 million to $150 million. This includes continued R&D investments behind our pipeline as we advance three of our programs through final stages of clinical and the commencement of our AVT16 program into the clinical phase. I'd like to make a few points with respect to phasing in 2024. Firstly, you can expect this year to be lumpy in terms of our operating results. We expect Q1 total revenues to be lower than Q4 2023. This is driven by a slowdown in production to prepare for the FDA inspection in Q1 and prioritization of development batches to enable our planned submissions in 2024. Also, the timing of milestone triggers have an impact. Accordingly, we expect Q1 to be the lowest quarter of the year in terms of revenue and negative adjusted EBITDA. In Q2, however, we are expecting to see some initial uptake in product revenues due to our planned launches and we anticipate achieving a number of milestone recognition triggers in the quarter which will drive a significant increase in total revenues and we expect to achieve positive adjusted EBITDA. Finally, we expect product revenues to overtake milestone revenues towards the end of 2024, driving overall revenues and adjusted EBITDA. With respect to our liquidity, we are pleased with the proceeds raised during our last financing round in February. Based on our current operating plans, we believe this provides the company with sufficient cash flows to continue investing behind our planned launches and pipeline throughout the year. We will, of course, continue to monitor the dynamic timing assumptions behind our plan and ensure we are prepared to address any incremental liquidity needs should they arise. We expect our capital structure to simplify throughout 2024. Given the recent increase in our share price, the sponsor earnout shares have vested and 1/2 of the predecessor earnout shares have also vested during the first quarter of 2024. We have also seen increased exercise of public warrants which were issued during the de-SPAC transaction that we closed back in 2022. Additionally, approximately $300 million of our outstanding borrowings are in the form of convertible instruments which have a conversion feature that comes available in June of 2024. These activities are expected to reduce the derivative financial liabilities and outstanding borrowings on our balance sheet in the second half of the year. Ultimately, this will also reduce the large swings in finance costs that currently drive volatility in our non-operating results as well as reducing overall interest expense on the P&L. Finally, as we look forward to 2025, we expect to be able to double our total revenues year-over-year as we intend to continue expanding upon our launches within existing and new markets. With the additional launches and scaling mentioned earlier, product revenue will be the primary driver of growth year-on-year with contributions from milestone revenues being proportionately smaller as a share of total revenue. Given that we have just secured approvals for our lead assets in the U.S. and around the world and contracting is ongoing, we believe that this is the best direction that we can provide at the current time. We anticipate an exciting year ahead as we continue to transition into a global full-scale commercial operation launching multiple products into markets worldwide, while at the same time, advancing our pipeline. We look forward to updating you as the year progresses as more information becomes available. And with that, I'd like to turn the call back over to the operator for Q&A.