Denny Lanfear
Analyst · Truist Securities. Your line is open
Thank you, Jodi. Good afternoon everyone, and thank you for joining us today on the call. Today, we're pleased to share updates from the third quarter of 2024. Nine months into the year, we continue to first make good progress towards advancing innovative next-generation therapy innovative next-generation therapies with the potential to extend cancer patient survival. And secondly, execute well against our 4 part strategy to deliver long-term shareholder value, specifically to drive top-line growth, control operating expenses, advance our pipeline, and improve our capital structure. While we have done well across each of these four dimensions, we are particularly pleased with the sales performance of the UDENYCA franchise through the third quarter. So I will focus there first. Significantly, UDENYCA has achieved 100% revenue growth since Q3 2023 reaching $66 million in revenue this quarter. This includes a 30% increase from Q2 to Q3 this year as our franchise kicked into high gear, demonstrating that our 3 presentation franchise options and its On-Body, the auto-injector, and the prefilled syringe is working very well and delivering exceptional value to customers. Also in Q3, UDENYCA retained its number 2 position in the market with nearly 30% share. We expect UDENYCA to return to market growth in 2025. Now let me address the UDENYCA supply interruption and our overall supply chain strategy for just a moment. I'm happy to report to you that based on the updated production schedule, our labeling and packaging contract manufacturing organization is resuming final packaging of UDENYCA this week. While this is a few weeks later than previously targeted, it's important to note that now that the CMO is restarting, they plan to process all 13 backlog lots without further interruption or delay. This comprises about 120,000 UDENYCA units, representing several months' worth of supply, which are expected to be completed over the next 5 weeks. This will allow us to restock the distribution channels as fast as possible as we expect to ship these final product lots as they are completed, making sure they get to our customers in an expedited fashion. Now that we have the schedule, we have started working with our channel partners and customers to understand and model how the restocking exercise will impact Q4 sales and the uptake dynamics. Since that effort is just now starting, we do not have a Q4 sales estimate for you today, but plan to provide one in early January. We've also made significant progress bringing an additional labeling and packaging CMO online in order to expand and further diversify our supply chain. Set up and test lots have been completed, qualification of manufacturing is underway and the requisite regulatory discussions are ongoing. Saleable lots are planned to start manufacturing in December, and once the product from this operation is authorized for sale, we will have successfully doubled our labeling and packaging capacity to over one million UDENYCA units annually, consistent with the rest of our supply chain. We will be ready to meet the growing demand for UDENYCA and expect substantial market share increases in 2025 and beyond. Now I'll turn to LOQTORZI, approved in nasopharyngeal cancer and our first commercial immune-oncology agent. LOQTORZI sales grew 54% quarter-over-quarter, as we continue to execute well against our launch plan. Paul Reider, my Chief Commercial Officer, will provide a more detail later on our call. So let me just say that we have tremendous confidence in long-term potential for LOQTORZI in the treatment of NPC and as a foundational element of our combination therapy strategies. As our pipeline of innovative immune-oncology drug candidates, let me share why I'm so so excited about the opportunities there. First, our differentiated and diversified portfolio includes promising tumor microenvironment, immunotherapy antibody drug candidates focused on enhancing the innate and adaptive immune responses to enable a robust immunological response and improve outcomes for people living with cancer. Second, our targeted development strategy focuses on combinations that have a established proof of mechanism, providing the strong line of sight into target tumor types with the most potential for improving efficacy in the areas of unmet need. And thirdly, our drug candidates target large addressable patient populations and attractive market opportunities across several high unmet need tumor types that in turn will drive substantial shareholder value in the upcoming years. As far as near term catalysts, I'll let Dr. Theresa LaVallee and Dr. Rosh Dias speak to the detail, but we look forward to reporting on Phase 1 and 2 clinical trials for CHS-114 and [indiscernible] dose respectively in the first half of 2025. Lastly, I'd like to reiterate that discipline financial management remains a high priority at Coherus, and we are now seeing the positive impact from our cost-saving efforts over the last year reflected in our balance sheet, which Bryan McMichael, our Chief Financial Officer, will cover later on this call. We are very confident in our ability to create long-term value for our shareholders through both our product portfolio and our competitively positioned pipeline. We are executing well against our strategy and goals for the year and are excited about where our vision can take us moving forward. And with that, I'll turn the call over to Paul.