Earnings Labs

Emergent BioSolutions Inc. (EBS)

Q3 2014 Earnings Call· Thu, Nov 6, 2014

$8.17

+1.68%

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Third Quarter 2014 Emergent BioSolutions Incorporated Earnings Conference Call. My name is Denise, and I'll be the operator for today. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question-and-answer session. (Operator Instructions). As a reminder, this conference is being recorded for replay purposes. I would now turn the conference over to the company. Please proceed.

Robert Burrows

Management

Thank you, Denise. Good afternoon everyone. My name is Robert Burrows, Vice President of Investor Relations for Emergent. Thank you for joining us today as we discuss our financial results for the third quarter and nine months of 2014. As is customary, our call today is open to all participants. And in addition, the call is being recorded and is copyrighted by Emergent BioSolutions. Participating on the call with prepared comments will be Dan Abdun-Nabi, President and Chief Executive Officer; Adam Havey, Executive Vice President and President of our Biodefense Division; Barry Labinger, Executive Vice President and President of our Biosciences Division; and Bob Kramer, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. For the cal today, Dan will discuss the state of our business including high level current period financial results and an overview of divisional operations; Adam will discuss in greater detail, the current state of the Biodefense operations; Barry will discuss in greater the detail the current state of the Biosciences operations; and Bob will conclude with the detailed discussion of our financial performance and outlook. Following the prepared comments, we will conduct a Q&A session. Before we begin I am compelled to remind everyone that during today’s call either in our prepared comments more the Q&A session, management may make projections and other forward-looking statements related to our business, future events, our prospects for future performance. These forward-looking statements reflect Emergent’s current perspective on existing trends and information. Any such forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve substantial risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from those projected in any forward-looking statements. You are encouraged to review Emergent’s filings with the SEC on forms 10-K, 10-Q and 8-K for more information on the risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ. During our prepared comments or the Q&A session, we may also refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures that involve adjustments to GAAP figures in order to provide greater transparency regarding Emergent’s operating performance. Please refer to the two tables, one for the third quarter and the other for the nine-month period found in today’s press release, regarding our use of non-GAAP or adjusted financial measures and the reconciliation between our non-GAAP adjusted financial measures and our GAAP financial measures. For the benefit of those who maybe listening to the replay of webcast, this call was held and recorded on November 06, 2014, since then Emergent may have made announcements relating to topics discussed during today’s call. So again, please reference our most recent press releases and SEC filings. Emergent BioSolutions assumes no obligation to update the information in today's press release or as presented on this call except as may be required by applicable laws or regulations. Today's press release may be found on the Investors Home page of our website. With that introduction, I would now like to turn the call over to Dan Abdun-Nabi, Emergent BioSolutions' President and CEO. Dan?

Dan Abdun-Nabi

Management

Thank you, Bob. Good afternoon everyone and thank you for joining our call. Over the course of 2014, we have made significant progress in our priorities to grow our business consistent with our growth plan. Our revenue and net income performance was strong with third quarter revenue of $138 million. This is above the guidance of between $110 million to $125 million that we provided during our earnings call in August. For the quarter, our GAAP net income was approximately $22 million and our non-GAAP adjusted net income was $25 million. Historically, our fourth quarter is our strongest quarter both in terms of revenue generation and net income performance. We anticipate this trend will continue this year based on expected financial contributions from our BioThrax business, additional product sales in both divisions, contract manufacturing operations and our contracts [expense] and collaborations business. As announced in today's press release, given our strong financial performance today and our anticipated progress for the remainder of the year, we are increasing our full year 2014 revenue guidance to between $440 million to $460 million and GAAP net income guidance to between $35 million to $45 million. We're also increasing our adjusted net income guidance to between $50 million to $60 million. Operationally, we continue to make progress in our priorities across both divisions. For our Biodefense division, our core business continues to be strong and we remain on plan for the expansion of BioThrax manufacturing and Building 55. Moreover, with a broader portfolio of Biodefense products, we are making steady progress on expanding sales including our international markets with additional growth anticipated in the fourth quarter. We have advanced our cost containment objectives through a consolidation of sales and marketing operations and the realignment of sectors of our workforce to create additional operational efficiencies…

Adam Havey

Management

Thank you Dan. During the third quarter we continued to make solid progress expanding our Biodefense business by focusing on what we do best, delivering CBRN countermeasures that address current health threats, advancing the development of additional medical countermeasures and platforms that address unmet public health needs and building a flexible, vertically integrated manufacturing infrastructure, capable of rapidly producing vaccines, therapeutics, small molecules and other biologics. And expanding the use of our product portfolio on a global basis. So let me highlight our recent accomplishments. In the third quarter, Biodefense revenues were just over $104 million, greatly contributing to the overall performance of the company year-to-date as well as to the increased outlook for full year 2014. The third quarter revenue included $66 million in BioThrax sales and over $26 million in contract and grant revenue. BioThrax revenue was primarily from sales under our current five-year $1.25 billion contract with the CDC to deliver 44.75 million doses due to strategic national stockpile. Delivery of BioThrax this quarter was on track and comparable to deliveries this time last year. Other Biodefense revenues totaled $21.4 million so far this year. RSDL sales for the three-month and nine-month periods were in line with our expectations including first-time purchase orders for a number of strategically important couturiers. As with that, we completed a substantial delivery of product to the SNS under our multi-year USG contract. And lastly, AIG revenue was attributable to deliveries under our current USG contract and we are working diligently to respond to FDA request during the BLA review. We are optimistic that this product will be licensed in early 2015, which will trigger a $7 million payment. Next, let me update you on Building 55, our large-scale BioThrax manufacturing facility. Back in September, we announced initiation of the pivotal non-clinical…

Barry Labinger

Management

Thanks, Adam and good afternoon everyone. During the third quarter we made good progress toward our goal of building a high growth biopharmaceutical business that meaningfully enhances patients’ lives and is financially self-sufficient. Having completed a thoughtful portfolio assessment following the close of our Cangene acquisition, we've made some decisions and implemented them to restructure the business for its greater financial health. Let me focus on a few examples. We're very excited about our participation in the attractive immune-oncology space specifically our proprietary redirected T-cell cytotoxicity or RTCC approach with our ADAPTIR platform. These are bi-specific therapeutic proteins that binds the anagen zone on tumor cells such as PSMA prostate cancer cells and through CD3, which is expressed on T-lymphocyte. The anti-CD3 part of the molecule actives a T-cell mediated immune response targeted against the tumor cell. Other companies are also pursuing RTCC as it’s a very promising approach. Our technology offers some clear benefit. In preclinical studies, we see protein activation of T-cell activity with less release of cytokine. As you’re probably aware, the release of cytokines at high levels can lead to safety issues. Our molecules also offer pharmacokinetic advantages such as long half-life leading the less frequent dosing, as well as manufacturer ability advantages. Our most advanced RTCC program is ES414 or Anti-PSMA Anti-CD3 Molecule, which is poised to start Phase I in the next couple of months in patients with prostate cancer. Consistent with our overall strategy of securing partnerships for early-stage programs, we’re pleased to have signed a co-development and commercialization agreement with MorphoSys, a successful German-based biotechnology company known for its scientific excellence and which is building an exciting development stage pipeline largely in oncology. In the third quarter we recognized a little over $15 million of revenue on the $20 million upfront payment.…

Bob Kramer

Management

Thank you, Barry and good afternoon to everyone on the call. I’m going to discuss our financial performance for the third quarter and then turn to a summary of where we are on a year-to-date basis as we head into the fourth quarter, targeting to deliver the increased revenue, net income performance mentioned earlier on the call. Before I jump into the details of the third quarter, I’d like to highlight a few comments made on our Q2 earnings call in August as a backdrop to our Q3 results. On that call, we discussed our expectation of increasingly strong financial performance in the second half of 2014 in order to meet our projections. We forecasted our Q3 revenues to be between $110 million and $125 million which reflected this improved performance. We also guided that our sales mix would generate improved operating margins in the second half of the year as higher margin BioThrax sales became a greater percentage of our overall product revenue. And lastly, we discussed our continued focus on advancing our ADAPTIR platform product candidates through partnerships as a way of demonstrating the value of our technology and importantly deferring R&D costs. During the third quarter, we made significant progress on all fronts, starting with total revenue which was around $138 million, outperforming the midpoint of our range by 20 million and bettering our Q2 total by 25%. This performance was a result of the combination of the continued strength of our Biodefense business and boosted by the Bioscience business in the recognition of approximately $15 million of the $20 million upfront fee associated with the partnership with MorphoSys focused on ES414, our based ADAPTIR prostate cancer product candidate. Drilling down a bit, total product sales for the quarter came in at $85 million. Of that $77…

Operator

Operator

(Operator Instructions). Our first question comes from Jim Molloy with Summer Street. Please proceed.

Jim Molloy - Summer Street

Analyst

:

Dan Abdun-Nabi

Management

Okay. Thanks Jim. I appreciate your participating on the call. On the RSDL, first let me answer the second question and I’ll hand over the RSDL to Adam. So it’s true there is a $6 billion in the total, request has been sent over. About a $155 million, a $160 million has been allocated to BARDA specifically for the development of medical countermeasures, therapeutics and vaccines. So, currently that might -- depending on what Congress does with it that might be the level of additional funding that would be provided to BARDA over and above what the economy has allocated for the Ebola crisis. So, hopefully that gives you some clarity. So on the RSDL front, Adam why don’t you -- I think the question was what were the RSDL?

Adam Havey

Management

As you can tell, Jim, as our portfolio has grown and expanded, we’re going to focus on BioThrax sales. That's primary driver and kind of catering all of our other products sales really in other sense. We're not going to build that level of granularity as we move forward. So that's something we have to kind of estimate it on a gross level with the additional products in our portfolio.

Dan Abdun-Nabi

Management

Yes. And a little bit more clarity on Adam’s, specific products start to gain additional market channel become larger and larger in terms of their revenue generation. We will get greater visibility as they become bigger in percentage with the total revenue overall.

Jim Molloy - Summer Street

Analyst

Okay, fair enough. A couple of quick follow-up questions if I could; thank you for that. R&D really fell off the table I guess in a good way to have a lower number there. Is that sustainable, where does that number get to on the actual spend, but you guys -- obviously most of the R&D is the contract grants reimbursed R&D? And then talk a little bit about the fully diluted shares kind of took a jump in the quarter, what's the driver of that and we have steady levels?

Bob Kramer

Management

Jim, this is Bob. So, on the R&D for the quarter, the net R&D reflects clearly the netting of the $15 million MorphoSys upfront payment. So, you shouldn't expect us to have essentially zero net R&D on the quarterly basis going forward. But as we talked about on prior calls our emphasis is on continuing to manage R&D costs looks for opportunities to partner certain technologies like the ES414 candidate and gradually walk that net R&D number as a percent of our revenue down from historical levels of 20% to 25% down to a high teens number. So we'll continue to make progress there.

Dan Abdun-Nabi

Management

I'll add just a comment to that, Bob. Jim, as you know it's been a priority for us to partner these assets and initially we've been spending quite a bit of time on that partnering and it turned that ES414 was the first to get across the goal line. So, this remains a focus for us across the portfolio and actually for the prior quarter itself, we think that the ADAPTIR platform being bi-specific is the state-of-the-art, it's a very interesting platform. So to Bob’s point, can't expect to see this on a regular basis, but it is a part of the way in which we intend to operate our business. So, don't be surprised in the future when we announce deals that are around partnering particular assets or the platform as a whole.

Bob Kramer

Management

And Jim on the question about fully diluted or the weighted average number of shares, in the quarter, we're reflecting the impact of the convert shares. We did not include them last time because we had a net loss cumulative as of the end of six months. So, it was inappropriate for us to reflect those fully diluted weighted shares.

Jim Molloy - Summer Street

Analyst

Excellent. And I guess the last question, should we be expecting another acquisition to get to the $500 million at some point here in 2015?

Dan Abdun-Nabi

Management

It's a great question. So, the short answer is yes, we are looking at acquiring. And it’s really not so much around when do we get to the 500 but that’s just the way in which we intend to build both businesses. And where we are right now is -- there are number of interesting targets that we’ve identified for both Biosciences and Biodefense and some of them could be meaningful contributors to top-line and bottom-line. So I am actually quite excited about the prospects for completing transactions. But as you know, it’s a timely process and we need to be patient and we need to be prudent. And as we’ve discussed in the past, we do have specific metrics and criteria; we don’t get worried to an opportunity, if it turns out, if it’s part of an option and we get out there and we’re out there. And if we can’t do it on the terms that we feel are appropriate for our shareholders, we will walk, which has happened in the past. So, we remain active but prudent in terms of our approach to M&A.

Jim Molloy - Summer Street

Analyst

Great. Thanks for taking my questions.

Dan Abdun-Nabi

Management

Okay.

Operator

Operator

(Operator Instructions). Our next question comes from Marc Frahm with Cowen & Company. Please proceed. Marc Frahm - Cowen & Company: Hi, and thanks for taking my question. And just kind of housekeeping on Building 55 as we move towards approval. Do you guys expect to kind of press releasing when these major steps are finished or just are we going to have to wait until the application is complete?

Dan Abdun-Nabi

Management

[Technical Difficulty]. Marc Frahm - Cowen & Company: Okay. And then also as we all are anticipating it eventually being approved, when could we expect to see some movement on kind of negotiating the next contract for BioThrax and will that necessarily include the Building 55 or might it happen sooner or I mean that can reflect that excess capacity?

Dan Abdun-Nabi

Management

Yes. It’s a great question. [Technical Difficulty]. Yes. So, our expectation -- experience with the CDC has been at least in this context, we would expect to start the discussions with them once the application starts to go in. I think they would look at this and say there is no new to have a discussion until we know, you’re actually across the goal line with getting application restarted. And then there is some lead time associated with any of these contract negotiations. So that’s an area where we likely will not provide great visibility to investors; those discussions are confidential. But we do anticipate making progress during the course of next year potentially starting those discussions as early as second quarter next year. Marc Frahm - Cowen & Company: Okay. And then there has been some hope that you could start selling more to non-U.S. governments. Will all of us kind of have to wait until we have a new U.S. contract or can you do that in parallel?

Adam Havey

Management

Yes. So Marc, this is Adam Havey. So we would do that in parallel. Obviously the upside in capacity in 55 really creates, I’d say even more opportunity internationally. But as we’ve mentioned in the past, we continue to work on expanding our reach internationally, if you will BioThrax, for BAT, for AIG, for VIG and RSDL. So that’s the major focus for us right now and will continue to be a focus in 2015. We think we can build some demand in those market prior to approval of Building 55 and we’ll continue to see movement there in 2015. Marc Frahm - Cowen & Company: Okay. And then finally back to the Ebola task order, is something of that going to be contingent on the funding request from Obama getting filled by Congress or does BARDA have enough money sitting around right now to settle this request?

Dan Abdun-Nabi

Management

So, that's a great question. BARDA does have funds. We don't have complete transparency in terms of exactly how much they have and how much they will be allocating to each of the activities they have underway. And as you can appreciate, this is a fairly expensive program that they're launching here. My suspicion and I think it was just common sense, they all have adequate funding to do everything that they would like to do, but they do have funds in order to get these programs started and then they will continue to fill that pipeline through additional appropriations as they materialize from Congress. Marc Frahm - Cowen & Company: Okay. Thank you very much.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Randy Scherago with LaSalle Street Capital Management. Please proceed.

Randy Scherago - LaSalle Street Capital Management

Analyst · LaSalle Street Capital Management. Please proceed.

Hi guys, great quarter and just a couple of quick questions just on housekeeping. The facility in Winnipeg is that going to be again write-off or sort of a net neutral to earnings going forward? Any sort of -- and number two, any clarity on what you're doing with IXinity? Is there, are you starting or rolling off of that program or are you going forward with it, will there be cost associated with it? And the third was the shutdown sort of a normal shutdown for Building 12 in lancing, are you back up and running again and making BioThrax?

Bob Kramer

Management

All right, Randy, this is Bob. I'll take the first part and then I think Barry will answer the second and probably Adam the third, so you get three of us in a row here. I think on the write-down or the sale of the facility in Winnipeg, there may be a small gain, but it won't have a material impact on our statements overall.

Barry Labinger

Management

Okay. And the question about IXinity; as you know, we received a complete response letter from the FDA at the end of July when we reached our PDUFA date. We've since had discussions with the agency and reached resolution on the content of response to that which we have submitted. So the program is back under review and if the review is completed successfully then we do plan to launch of this product in 2015. There is no additional cost associated with responding to the issues that were raised in the CRR. So, we have some ongoing studies that we've had in place anyway and we'll continue and it’s post marketing commitment and we've had some preparation for the launch on the commercial side, but all consistent with the plan, we just had a bit of a delay in getting through approval on the launch.

Randy Scherago - LaSalle Street Capital Management

Analyst · LaSalle Street Capital Management. Please proceed.

Would the launch be late 2015?

Barry Labinger

Management

More around the middle of 2015.

Adam Havey

Management

So, as you mentioned we really shutdown and we've successfully come out of the shutdown, actually came out a few days early and things look great moving forward.

Randy Scherago - LaSalle Street Capital Management

Analyst · LaSalle Street Capital Management. Please proceed.

Great. Thank you, guys.

Operator

Operator

We have no further questions. I would now turn the call over to Mr. Bob Burrows for any closing remarks.

Bob Burrows

Analyst

Thank you, Denise. With that ladies and gentlemen, we have concluded the call. Thank you for your participation. Please note that today's call has been recorded and a replay will be available beginning later today. Alternatively there is available webcast of today's call, an archived version, which will be available later today accessible through the company website. Thank you again. And we look forward to speaking to all of you in the future. Good bye.