Keith Kendall
Analyst · BMO Capital Markets. Your line is open
Thanks, Lauren, and thanks to everyone on the call for joining us this morning, as we discuss a number of important developments in our business during the second quarter and through July. John and I are going to walk through some details in our remarks today and will be joined by additional members of the Aquestive leadership team during the Q&A session afterward. Yesterday, we announced positive top line results in the single-dose crossover study for Libervant. This is a critical milestone for our lead asset, which is now positioned to drive significant value for shareholders. This puts us on a clear and straightforward path to completing the filing of our NDA for Libervant in the fourth quarter. We believe that we've met the specific requirements for approval communicated to us by the FDA, and our product continues to prove that it has attributes of lacking in all other current formulations of diazepam. In addition, today we'll update you on two other important developments. We continue to build a leadership position in the epilepsy market with the initial entry of Sympazan. Shipments are up materially to date over Q1 and they continue to trend higher. Second, we completed a deal to refinance our debt in order to reset the repayment schedule and terms and provide additional capital to the company. Let me start by putting our news about the crossover study into context. The progress of Libervant is truly exciting to us. Libervant represents a material contribution to improve patient care for the treatment of breakthrough and cluster seizures, and will potentially contribute up to $200 million to $300 million in peak net revenues within three years to four years post-launch. Over 1 million patients in the U.S. have active, uncontrolled epilepsy and a need for rescue medication. Less than 10% of these patients are successfully treating their seizures with the current standard-of-care of rectal gel application. A medicine is only as good as its ability to be used by patients where they need it, when they need it and in a form they accept. We believe that Libervant will become the preferred rescue medication by patients and providers looking for an alternative, potentially superior and clinically differentiated treatment to manage and interrupt seizure clusters. This is based on strong data that shows the product can be quickly and safely applied, results in consistent therapeutic levels and comes in a form preferred by patients. Libervant is an important late-stage product for our company, and we're excited about where we are in terms of bringing this product to market. In terms of the progression of Libervant's development and NDA filing, as announced the first section of the NDA was submitted in May in accordance with the rolling submission plan submitted to the FDA earlier this year. We’ve recently completed the single-dose crossover study, which gives us a clear and straightforward path to submission and approval. Top line results indicate we met our primary objectives for the study. Specifically, the study confirmed our dosing model algorithm is appropriate for patients and will support a lower top dose than the top dose for the rectal gel. The results also show no difference between the film and the gel in patients using concurrent AED medications. In addition, once again, we observed several patients in the study who did not respond to a dose of the rectal gel, but in those same patients, we were able to produce therapeutic blood levels with Libervant. We are still performing quality reviews and statistical analysis on the data. Once that's complete, we look forward to presenting all the data in a KoL pool and will provide more details on the timing of that over the coming weeks. We remain on track to file the next portion of our NDA for Libervant in September as planned and more importantly, to complete the NDA submission in Q4 as expected. While we are progressing Libervant through the approval process, we continue to make progress introducing our technology to payers, prescribers, patients and caregivers, primarily through our commercialization of SYMPAZAN. SYMPAZAN was launched as our first proprietary product in order to position us in the epilepsy treatment market and help build-out our capabilities and relationships in anticipation of launching complementary epilepsy-related products, most importantly, Libervant. In addition to a differentiated value proposition for patients suffering from Lennox-Gastaut syndrome, there was a greater than 90% overlap of target prescribers for both SYMPAZAN and Libervant. All of our commercialization efforts relating to SYMPAZAN provide an opportunity for direct conversations with healthcare practitioners about the value of our PharmFilm technology in preparation for the eventual launch of Libervant. SYMPAZAN is tracking in line with our expectations. We believe it can generate approximately $65 million in net revenue at peak within five years. The latest monthly SYMPAZAN shipment volume has grown over 250% since the end of Q1. The prescribing base also continues to grow over 125% since Q1, with over 80% of those prescribers writing multiple scripts and a refill rate approaching 65%. This continues to track favorably with the analogs we use for uptake and refills Fycompa liquid and ONFI, respectively. Additional contracts with payers and PBMs were signed since the first quarter, and we continue to expect to achieve our goal of having over 70% of lives covered by the end of the year. We're happy with these trends. SYMPAZAN is strategically accomplishing what we wanted to, and these efforts will not only continue to contribute to our growing cash flow, but more importantly, establish the foundation ahead of a Libervant launch. The last key deliverable for the quarter was to refinance our existing debt facility. In this regard, we successfully completed our debt refinancing in mid-July with Madryn Asset Management and others that provides up to $100 million to our business, including $70 million upfront and up to $30 million in additional capital. This was important for a number of reasons. It allows us to -- it allowed us to pay-off our existing line with Perceptive, eliminating near-term principal repayments, including a $38 million bullet payment in 2020. It also provided an immediate injection of $15 million of incremental capital. And the deal provides for additional capital of up to $30 million between now and March of 2021, based on the satisfaction of certain conditions, which were described in our Form 8-K filed on July 15, 2019. We believe these funds, together with product revenues and the potential monetization of our royalty position in Sunovion's apomorphine product, following its FDA approval, can provide the capital we need ahead of the expected Libervant launch. Beyond the key goals, Suboxone is performing very well against the generic films that have launched at risk. Suboxone in the authorized generic, which we produce, still hold a very strong position of over 75% share of the film market. Our order book remained strong. As such, we are amending our guidance upward and narrowing the range for Suboxone. We now expect to produce between 240 million and 260 million strips and generate between $29 million and $32 million of revenue from Suboxone in 2019. While this represents the legacy part of our business, Suboxone continues to be an important source of revenue and cash flow and will contribute at a higher rate than originally expected for the remainder of the year. Additionally, the epinephrine or Aquestive-108 Phase I Proof of Concept clinical trial continues in Canada, and we're on track to complete it in the third quarter. Based on the data, once available, we would expect to move to a pre-IND meeting with the FDA as quickly as possible. In the event that data indicates some modifications to our formulation might be needed to reach certain PK performance goals, we'll move immediately to start that work and conduct additional Proof of Concept studies. Finally, Exservan, our Riluzole-based product for ALS, also continues to move toward a November 30th PDUFA date. As we have said previously, we are seeking to license the product outside the United States, and we have begun the process of identifying potential commercial partners in the U.S. as well. This was an important quarter for us and we made a lot of progress on key value drivers. The Libervant study has successfully concluded and we're on track to complete the NDA filing in Q4. SYMPAZAN continues to grow and is establishing strategic relationships for us in the epilepsy market in advance of the Libervant launch. We've improved the company's capital position and now have potential access to additional capital. And based on the current strong performance of Suboxone, we'll continue to see strong revenues through the end of 2019. We look forward to continuing to deliver on these activities in the third quarter and through the rest of the year. I'll now turn the line over to John Maxwell, who'll provide additional specifics around the debt refinancing and other aspects of our financial performance.