Bob Kramer
Analyst · Cantor Fitzgerald. Your line is open
Thank you, Bob, and good afternoon, and thank you all for joining us on the call today. In my prepared remarks, I'll provide a brief overview of our financial performance for the quarter and year-to-date periods, and then discuss select operational accomplishments. The majority of my comments will focus on four areas of near-term focus for the company. These include, first of all, the state of our anthrax vaccine franchise, specifically the ongoing shift to the next-generation vaccine, AV7909, as the primary post-exposure asset for our country's strategic national stockpile for anthrax response; second, the status of the smallpox franchise, including our recent award of the Vaccinia immune globulin intravenous contract, as well as ongoing contract negations with the U.S. government related to ACAM2000, the only FDA-licensed smallpox vaccine; third, the state of the NARCAN nasal spray business; and finally, progress on a few key programs within our development pipeline. Before we get into the state of the business, I wanted to share a piece of good news on the government's efforts to strengthen national security. On June 24th, the Pandemic All Hazards Preparedness Act was reauthorized. This is the second reauthorization of the original act, which was signed in 2006. As background, the original act established the United States' framework for responses to threats that may result in a public health emergency. This included establishing the Medical Countermeasures Enterprise and the role of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response. It also included the stockpiling and procurement of medical countermeasures in the strategic national stockpile. And finally, it included the development of medical countermeasures to protect the American public from threats like smallpox, anthrax, botulism, among others. This reauthorization expands the 2006 act by further strengthening the ability of both the Department of Health and Human Services and the ASPR to combat any public health emergency, whether manmade or naturally occurring. The combination of the reauthorization with the publishing of the White House National Biodefense Strategy in 2018 solidifies the government's commitment to public-private partnerships and provides a clear demonstration of the government's unwavering focus on safeguarding our nation's health security. Now, I'd like to transition to Emergent's business, starting with our financial performance for the quarter. Our second quarter financial results were in line with expectations and reflect the trends we anticipated for the year. As expected, and as we've discussed previously, the timing of the progression of both our anthrax and smallpox vaccine programs shift both revenue and earnings more toward the back half of calendar year 2019. As you'll see from today's press release, revenue in the first half of the year is approximately 40% of our full year guidance, tracking as expected. Further, as I'll cover in more detail in a few minutes, each of our programs continues to evolve at the pace that was planned. To that end, as noted in the press release, we have reaffirmed all of our financial guidance metrics for 2019. Now, let's discuss each of the 4 areas of near-term focus for the company; first, the addition of the next-generation anthrax vaccine, AV7909, to our existing product line. As a reminder to those of you who may be less familiar with the company, Emergent is the only provider of an FDA-licensed anthrax vaccine, BioThrax. We've been working for more than a decade in partnership with the U.S. government on developing a next-generation anthrax vaccine, AV7909. This new vaccine candidate, which expands our portfolio beyond BioThrax, is designed to offer the benefits of a shorter dosing regimen plus a rapid and more robust immune response, making it well-suited for use in a general population under a post-exposure scenario. As we disclosed previously, we began manufacturing AV7909 in March of this year, and we anticipate beginning delivery of the initial 3 million doses to the stockpile this quarter as part of our $1.5 billion development and procurement contract with BARDA. As a reminder, that contract includes both a 3 million dose delivery under the base portion of the contract plus options to procure up to an additional 50 million doses of AV7909 over the term of the contract. To that end, as you saw in the separate announcement issued on Tuesday of this week, the U.S. government has now exercised the first contract option, valued at $261 million, to procure approximately 10 million doses of AV7909. These doses, on top of the base 3 million doses, are expected to be delivered to the stockpile over the course of the next 12 months. During the second quarter, we also continued to deliver BioThrax into the stockpile under our existing procurement contract. Importantly, while the U.S. government is looking to mainly stockpile AV7909, moving forward, for post-exposure use, we expect the government to continue to procure BioThrax to support pre-exposure immunization programs, such as the U.S. Department of Defense's longstanding practice to immunize personnel prior to deployment into high-threat areas. To be clear, we see a continuing demand for BioThrax due to its unique indication for pre-exposure protection from anthrax. Both of these are significant milestones, and we're very pleased with the progress that we're making across the anthrax vaccine business. Turning to our smallpox franchise, we have significant progress to report here as well. In June, we announced a contract award by the U.S. government valued at approximately $535 million over a 10-year period for the continued supply of Vaccinia Immune Globulin intravenous into the stockpile as a treatment for complications resulting from smallpox vaccination. As many of you know, VIGIV, together with our ACAM2000 smallpox vaccine, are integral to the government's overall preparedness and response strategy to have a sustainable and sufficient supply of medical countermeasures in the stockpile to protect the U.S. population against the threat of smallpox. With the VIGIV contract secured, momentum regarding contract negotiations for ACAM2000 has accelerated with the U.S. government. We have continued to manufacture product and ensure sufficient supply chain availability to meet our shipment obligations once we land on the final contract. As a result, we have a high degree of confidence in our ability to provide substantial number of doses to the stockpile during the second half of this year, further supporting our reaffirmed guidance. Next, I'd like to talk about the opioid crisis, and in particular the role of NARCAN nasal spray in helping curb the devastating impact of opioid overdoses. As a reminder, current estimates show that there are approximately 34 million Americans who are in an elevated risk of an opioid overdose, according to CDC guidelines. This is roughly 10% of our country's population. We remain focused on continuing to raise awareness of the threat of opioid overdoses and to work on increasing access to and maintaining the affordability of NARCAN nasal spray. To these ends, we're working closely with insurers and pharmacy benefit management companies and have achieved a 97% excess across all payer types. We've established new statewide distribution programs to increase the breadth of availability of NARCAN nasal spray access through state and local agencies. We continue to work with different organizations in addition to our program for schools, public libraries, and YMCAs to increase awareness of the dangers of opioids and expand access of NARCAN nasal spray to help them be prepared for potential opioid overdose emergencies. As an example, Delta Airlines recently stated that it would be joining United, Alaska, and Frontier Airlines in having NARCAN nasal spray in their emergency medical kits on board commercial aircraft. Finally, we continue to work with states to help them implement co-prescription legislation. In Q2, New Mexico became the 9th state to implement co-prescription legislation, joining the states of Virginia, Rhode Island, Vermont, Arizona, Florida, Washington, Ohio, and California. New Mexico now requires a Naloxone co-prescription for high-risk opioid prescriptions and any prescription over a 5-day supply. As we think about addressing all the markets' needs for NARCAN nasal spray, it's important to remember that our product is clearly differentiated as a community use product. It's convenient and does not require any medical training or certification to administer. As a result, we continue to be encouraged by the fact that NARCAN nasal spray is clearly the preferred choice across our broad base of potential end users as evidenced by the business outperforming our plans year-to-date. Bottom line, NARCAN nasal spray is making a significant difference, and we will continue to work hard to address areas of unmet need while continuing to stress expanded access and availability, increased awareness, and sustained affordability of this critical asset in response to the opioid crisis. We have more work to do, but we remain confident in our ability to play a significant role in reducing deaths caused by opioid overdose. Now, I'd like to provide an update on our leading clinical development programs. First, we continue to make progress in the development of innovative improvements and new products in our development programs focused on the opioid crisis, including extending the shelf life of NARCAN nasal spray, developing a higher-dose Naloxone prefilled syringe for medical personnel use; and finally, developing a single nasal device that can deliver multiple 4-milligram doses of Naloxone. Second, I'm pleased to note that a few weeks ago, just after the end of Q2, we completed enrollment in our Phase 3 AV7909 study ahead of schedule. As a reminder, this study is being conducted to evaluate the lot consistency, immunogenicity, and safety of AV7909 in healthy adults. Announced in March, this Phase 3 study, which is fully funded by BARDA, plan to enroll 3,850 adults across 35 U.S. sites with an overall study duration of approximately 20 months. Third, you will recall that, in April, we announced positive results from our interim analysis of our Phase 2 study evaluating a series of dosing regimens for our chikungunya virus VLP vaccine candidate. During the second quarter, we selected the dose strength for a single dose administration to support Phase 3 clinical studies anticipated in 2020 and eventual commercialization. And fourth, during the second quarter, we completed Phase 2 trial enrollment of our flu IGIV therapeutic for severe illness caused by influenza A infection in hospitalized patients. We anticipate data from this trial in the first half of 2020, which will drive the next phase of development with the design of the Phase 3 trial. In summary, we continue to successfully execute against our operational plans for the year. The second quarter and year-to-date results demonstrate the progress we're achieving toward our operational goals. The back half of the year promises to be very active and exciting. Importantly, we remain on track with our plans and remain confident in our outlook for the year. Looking beyond the current year, we're completing our new 5-year strategic plan covering the period of 2020 through 2024. We expect to introduce the new plan and to provide an in-depth review, along with management presentations and invited speakers, at an Analyst and Investor Day that we're planning for Q4. More details on that will be forthcoming shortly. That concludes my prepared comments, and I'd now like to turn the call over to Rich Lindahl. Rich?