Earnings Labs

Catalyst Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (CPRX)

Q4 2015 Earnings Call· Wed, Mar 16, 2016

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Greetings and welcome to the Catalyst Pharmaceuticals Partners Fourth Quarter 2015 Financial Results. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A brief question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder this conference is being recorded. I would now turn to turn the conference over to your host Alicia Grande, Vice President, CFO and Treasurer. Thank you Ms. Grande, you may now begin.

Alicia Grande

Analyst · Piper Jaffray. Please proceed with your question

Good morning and thank you for joining our conference call. To begin, on today's call, we have Pat McEnany, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer and Dr. Steven Miller, Chief Operating Officer and Chief Scientific Officer. Before we begin, let me remind you that we'll be making forward-looking statements involving known and unknown risks and uncertainties, which may cause Catalyst's actual results in future periods to differ materially from forecasted results. A number of factors, including those described in Catalyst's annual report on Form 10-K for fiscal year 2015 and its other filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission could adversely affect Catalyst. All forward-looking statements are qualified in their entirety by these cautionary statements and Catalyst undertakes no obligation to revise or update this presentation to reflect events or circumstances after the date hereof. At this time, it is my pleasure to turn the call over to Pat McEnany, our CEO.

Pat McEnany

Analyst · Piper Jaffray. Please proceed with your question

Thanks Ali. Good morning everyone and thank you for joining us today. I would like to welcome everyone to our fourth quarter and 2015 yearend results and update call. On today's call, I will give you an update on our activities and progress for the last year's fourth quarter and so far this year, including the FDA regulatory status for Firdapse, as well as our pre-commercialization activities and infrastructure preparedness. Steve Miller will then provide an update on our various drug development programs. Following, Ali will give a brief review of our financial results for the quarter and fiscal year. Lastly, we will take your questions. As we communicated last month, Catalyst received a Refusal of File letter from the FDA with respect to our NDA for Firdapse. While we are disappointed at receiving this notice, we also believe that we will shortly understand what is required to resolve any open issues and to re-file the Firdapse NDA. With breakthrough therapy designation and orphan drug status, we believe that we are well positioned to work closely with the FDA. As we have previously stated, the Refusal of File letter does not provide comment on the acceptability of the submitted clinical data and no judgment is made in the letter on the efficacy or safety of Firdapse. We are in communication with the FDA to determine the path forward for the successful and timely resubmission of our application. At this point, we are currently scheduled to meet with the FDA in early April after that meeting and once we have received the formal minutes from that meeting, we expect that we will be in a better position to discuss our regulatory path forward for Firdapse. We continue to believe that it is very important to provide patients with access to an…

Steve Miller

Analyst

Thanks Pat and good morning, everyone. In December we completed submission of the NDA for Firdapse for the treatment of Lambert-Eaton myasthenic syndrome and congenital myasthenic syndrome. Both of these diseases are ultra rare with prevalences in the United States believed to be approximately 3,000 and 1,000 to 1,500 patients respectively. As Pat previously stated, we're constantly scheduled to meet with the FDA in early April to try to resolve any open issues and to resubmit our NDA for Firdapse as soon thereafter as possible. As Pat also previously mentioned the Refusal to File Letter does not comment on the safety and efficacy information provided in our NDA. It is our hope that the issues raised in the letter can be resolved in a relatively short period of time and that our NDA can be resubmitted in the second or third quarter. However until we meet with the FDA and work out a path forward that is acceptable to the agency, we will not be able to layout our future development plans for Firdapse and the timing of our activities. On our pipeline, we recently announced topline results from our Phase 1b double-blind placebo-controlled safety and tolerance study of CPP-115 in normal healthy volunteers. The results showed significant increases in brain levels of the surrogate marker for potential efficacy, Gamma-aminobutyric acid or GABA. The main adverse effect of prolonged elevated brain GABA somnolence, was also observed. While the primary objective of this study was to obtain safety and tolerance data for CPP-115 administered over 14 days, brain GABA levels were measured as a surrogate marker of potential efficacy, since CPP-115 is a second generation GABA aminotransferase inhibitor. Specifically, this study examined GABA levels in both the Parietal-Occipital Cortex a grey matter rich region that approximates brain regions thought to be…

Alicia Grande

Analyst · Piper Jaffray. Please proceed with your question

Thanks Steve. Yesterday we reported a GAAP net loss of $20.2 million or $0.25 per basic and diluted share for the 12 months ended December 31, 2015, as compared to a GAAP net loss of $15.5 million or $0.24 per basic and diluted share for the same period in 2014, excluding non-cash gains of 65,000 attributable to the change in fair value of liability-classified warrants, non-GAAP net loss was $20.3 million or $0.25 per basic and diluted share for the year 2015. In comparison, 2014 non-GAAP net loss was $14.5 million or $0.23 per basic and diluted share, which excludes a non-cash loss of $994,000 attributable to the change in fair value of liability-classified warrants. For the fourth quarter of 2015, we reported a GAAP net loss of $5.8 million or $0.07 per basic and diluted share, compared to a GAAP net loss of $3.5 million or $0.05 per basic and diluted share, for the same period in 2014. Excluding non-cash gain of $390,000 for the change in fair value of liability-classified warrants, non-GAAP net loss was $6.2 million or $0.07 per basic and diluted share for the fourth quarter of 2014. In comparison, the non-GAAP net loss for the fourth quarter of 2015 was $4 million or $0.06 per basic and diluted share and excludes non-cash gain of $472,000 attributable to the change in fair value of liability-classified warrants. Research and development expenses were $3.8 million and $11.8 million for the fourth quarter and full year 2015 respectively compared to an R&D spend of $2.4 million and $10.1 million in the fourth quarter and full year of 2014. Research and development expenses for 2015 increased from the prior year primarily due to continued activities related to ongoing studies and trials for Firdapse and CPP-115, the costs of our Firdapse…

Pat McEnany

Analyst · Piper Jaffray. Please proceed with your question

Thanks, Ali. Before we answer your questions, I’m going to summarize our major goals and potential milestones looking at the coming months. Firdapse has demonstrated that it provides an important therapeutic benefit to LEMS and CMS patients and potentially for other indications and we remain confident in its potential approval and future launch. We're focused on resolving any open issues we have with the FDA and successfully resubmitting an NDA preferred apps as soon as possible. We know the FDA delay is frustrating, but note that our internal team and outside regulatory counsel have been working around the clock to prepare for upcoming meeting with the FDA. We'll also continue to advance our drug pipeline, build out our management team and progress with commercialization plans for Firdapse albeit at a more measured pace. I continue to be encouraged with advances in rare diseases and Catalyst remains committed to providing education and awareness about LEMS and CMS to patients, physicians and payors. We work closely and support organizations and advocate for patients with rare diseases such the National Organization of Rare Diseases and Global Genes. We must brought awareness and improve access to these very important therapies. With that, I’d like to thank all of you for participating in today’s call and open up to call for questions.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. At this time we'll be conducting a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] Thank you. Our first question comes from the line of Charles Duncan with Piper Jaffray. Please proceed with your question.

Charles Duncan

Analyst · Piper Jaffray. Please proceed with your question

Hi guys. Thanks for the overview and for taking my question. My first question is regarding the interactions with FDA. I know that you haven’t completed those, but I’m kind of wondering in the upcoming meeting with the FDA, what do you expect the discussion or focus on and also did the information requested in the complete or in the Refusal to File letter include any analysis from your, the Catalyst [farm trials or -- and/or financed academic studies of GAAP] [ph].

Pat McEnany

Analyst · Piper Jaffray. Please proceed with your question

Charles, there were no questions with regard to additional analysis of our data requested in the RTF, but as we’ve stated in a previous press release, the FDA has requested additional supporting information and to that point, we expect to gain clarity on several open issues that still remain when we meet with the FDA in early April. So there were as we again previously stated -- there was a question with regard to our intent to include CMS in the initial label. And other than that, we’re really not in a position to provide more specifics about the content of the RTF until we meet with the FDA for a number of reasons, one of them is from a competitive point of view and also sensitivity of dealings with the agency, we need to be cognizant of. So for those reasons, we really don’t want to be more specific until we have our meeting, come out of that meeting with an understanding, we see the formal minutes of the meeting, which we should receive within 30 days of the meeting and then we'll be in a better position to present our path forward and a new timeline.

Charles Duncan

Analyst · Piper Jaffray. Please proceed with your question

Okay. That’s helpful Pat. But at this point, do you anticipate any additional clinical or non-clinical studies to be required and if so, if not whatever, what is your best guess as to timing of a refilling approximately?

Pat McEnany

Analyst · Piper Jaffray. Please proceed with your question

Charles, we’re not going to comment on requirements, clinical or non-clinical until we meet with the FDA and present our entire plan and our path forward. So I think that’s premature. It’s a good question. I understand it, but we’re not prepared to talk about that today. And so our timeline again is we expect to meet with the FDA in early April, we expect to receive the minutes from that, the formal minutes from that meeting within 30 days of that meeting. We hope that we can turn around the required information in a relatively short period of time. At that point, the FDA we anticipate there will be a new 60-day review of the materials submitted in the NDA and hopefully at that point, we have an acceptance of our NDA for filing.

Charles Duncan

Analyst · Piper Jaffray. Please proceed with your question

Okay. And then the last question that I have regarding this is I am kind of wondering what changed if anything because it seemed like with the -- with the Firdapse program it was relatively straightforward, you were requested to conduct the study that you conducted. Is there a different study they asked for or is there new expectation or could it been the CMS or did they get some input from some other company or whatever? What do you think changed that or was it just simply something that you forgot or neglected to supply in the file that or in the NDA that resulted in the refusal to file?

Pat McEnany

Analyst · Piper Jaffray. Please proceed with your question

Charles, part of it is administrative, technical if you will and again I can't say what has changed. I know that from the FDA's point of view, our filing was not complete and we anticipate fixing it and providing what the incomplete data that was requested. So to this point, really I think until we meet with them and get further clarity, I just think that's as much color as we can provide at this point.

Charles Duncan

Analyst · Piper Jaffray. Please proceed with your question

Okay. That makes sense. Thanks for the added information.

Pat McEnany

Analyst · Piper Jaffray. Please proceed with your question

Yes sir. Thank you, Charles.

Alicia Grande

Analyst · Piper Jaffray. Please proceed with your question

Thanks Charles.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] [Abrupt end]