Bob Kramer
Analyst · Cantor Fitzgerald. Your line is now open
Thank you, Bob and good afternoon, everyone. Thanks for joining the call. Today, I'll provide an update on the progress that we've made at our Bayview site and then talk a little bit about our recent accomplishments and milestones and further talk about the business enhancements we've implemented to better focus on our customers. I'll also discuss our revised full year guidance and our decision to end our involvement in the Center for Innovation in Advanced Development and Manufacturing or CIADM program with the US government. My comments are summarized across slides 7 and 8 in the deck accompanying the call. So let's get started. As you've seen this year, our Emergent team and our business have shown their strength and resilience as we've made substantial progress in the quarter. Some of the recent highlights include the following. First, we've made significant progress in Bayview resuming operations and production for Johnson & Johnson at the end of July and more recently completing all remaining work on behalf of AstraZeneca. As of the end of the quarter, we've contributed over 100 million dose equivalents of COVID-19 vaccine for global distribution. Importantly, we look forward to continuing to support J&J's ongoing vaccine production in the months ahead, while continuing to support their regulatory path for their vaccine. Next we secured key ongoing commitments from the US government on two core medical countermeasure products. First, we received the contract modification exercising and funding the second of nine annual options to supply ACAM2000 to the Strategic National Stockpile valued at approximately $182 million. Secondly, we received a contract modification exercising and funding the procurement of additional doses of AV7909 for the SNS valued at approximately $399 million over the next 18 months. Also our NARCAN Nasal Spray team continues to perform well above expectations in the midst of a worsening opioid crisis helping ensure this critical product gets in the hands of the patients and caregivers who need it. We also launched our pivotal Phase III trial for our chikungunya vaccine CHIKV VLP, a key milestone for us because it's the first Phase III drug development program that Emergent has funded on its own. More importantly, it underscores our commitment to progressing our pipeline programs in pursuit of critical public health threats and expanding our travel health vaccines franchise. And finally, we continue to grow our CDMO operations securing a new multiyear contract to produce Providence Therapeutics' mRNA COVID-19 vaccine candidate at our site in Winnipeg. As these highlights demonstrate, our core strategy and diversified business model remains strong. In addition, today we're announcing that the Department of Health and Human Services and Emergent have mutually agreed to end our partnership in the CIADM program. The agreement will close out all open obligations and task orders issued under CIADM base contract including the task order related to COVID-19 response. We're proud of the work all of our employees have done over the last nine years to honor our CIADM commitments. And you'll recall that the program was initiated in 2012 in recognition of the shortage of domestic manufacturing capability needed to respond to an unforeseen widespread public health threat following the H1N1 influenza pandemic. While an innovative idea execution of the CIADM program and the necessary operational investments by all administrations fell short of what was needed to maintain capability in case of an emergency. In fact, when the COVID pandemic struck, Emergent was just one of two original partners remaining in the program. Despite the issues, we responded swiftly engaging several of our facilities to meet the government's needs and made incredible progress in a time frame never before attempted under very challenging conditions. Our COVID-19 work with BARDA under the CIADM program included a number of activities. These included: a reservation of capacity at our Bayview, Camden and Rockville sites; a direct capital investment by the government in additional fill/finish capacity at our Camden and Rockville sites; both drug substance manufacturing for AstraZeneca in the reserved space at Bayview; and finally, drug product manufacturing for various COVID-19 therapeutic candidates in the reserved space in Camden. As a reminder, the COVID-19 work under the CIADM program was always expected to end this year and importantly our decision does not affect our work with Johnson & Johnson as it was never part of our CIADM contracting. We will continue to produce their COVID-19 vaccine drug substance at our Bayview facility. And as I mentioned at the top of the call, we're extremely proud that our collaboration with J&J and in addition to AstraZeneca has contributed over 100 million dose equivalents of COVID-19 vaccine for global distribution. So while we conclude our involvement in the CIADM program and bring to closure this important chapter in our business, it needs to be said that the work we accomplished under the program and related task order contracts with the US government served a critically important purpose one that our entire organization is immensely proud of. Despite the setbacks we had earlier in the year the team's been committed to our mission of protecting and enhancing life and steadfast in learning from our past to be even better. I'm proud of the team's resilience and the positive impact on millions of lives across the globe and importantly we're not done yet. As we look forward, we're encouraged and optimistic about the opportunities we see ahead across our entire business. Let me now pivot to recent business changes we've implemented in support of our strategy. During the quarter we've shifted our operating structure to now have three business lines each focused on distinct customer or market types. They are: the newly created government or medical countermeasure business; the commercial business; as well as the services or CDMO business, which remains essentially unchanged. To be clear, all three of these report to our Chief Operating Officer, Adam Havey. The government or MCM business will be led by Paul Williams who was previously running the vaccines business unit. This new structure will better serve our customers by sharing their breadth and depth of experience as one team and reduces the complexity with multiple touch points going into the government on different business units. The commercial business will be led by Doug White, who previously ran the devices business unit. He will now drive our core commercial capabilities and seek new investment opportunities. Doug's portfolio includes NARCAN Nasal Spray, travel vaccines and other similar customer facing products. This organizational change provides an opportunity to put the strategic and operational pieces of this business under one umbrella that were previously across multiple business units, positioning us to expand into new markets and efficiently integrate newly acquired products in the future. The services or CDMO business, the head of which we're continuing to accurately recruit for will continue to service our pharma and biotech innovator customers providing development, drug substance, and drug product manufacturing services that capitalize on our core skills and capabilities. As for our R&D programs, we established a centralized and cross-functional product development committee that will govern the R&D portfolio. We're also creating a science and innovation team led by Dr. Laura Saward, who previously ran the therapeutics business unit. Overall this new structure positions us to execute effectively on our strategic plan and deliver long-term success, strengthening our foundation and providing new opportunities for growth. So getting back to the operational highlights. As I mentioned we resumed production of J&J's COVID-19 vaccine at our Bayview facility in late July, following the implementation of rigorous and comprehensive quality enhancements and the FDA's permission to restart. Over the last five months, we've invested millions of dollars to overhaul cleaning procedures, upgrade our facilities, implement additional quality control and oversight practices, and make significant improvements to the processes for batch record keeping, personnel training, data integrity and lab testing. Emergent teams along with support from our J&J colleagues oversee all operations and materials transfer. We took the added step to bring in a recognized independent consultancy, who is expert in quality control and who are now reviewing and performing certifications prior to release of any batches. We continue to work closely with the FDA and J&J toward increasing our production level consistent with these new procedures. Finally, I want to commend our team whose around the work efforts over the last 18 months that accelerated the transformation of our Bayview facility from a clinical stage facility to one that is poised to support much larger scale production. Now moving to our core government or medical countermeasures business. Our work helping the US government protect Americans against smallpox, anthrax and other Category A biologic agents remains a top priority for the company. Recall that we previously announced the US government exercised and funded, the next term extension for ACAM2000 under our 10-year contract and we also secured the next option exercise for our smallpox therapeutic, VIGIV. We recently filed that up with the US government exercising the final option under the existing contract to supply doses of our next-generation anthrax vaccine candidate, AV7909 to the Strategic National Stockpile valued at approximately $399 million over the next 18 months. As a reminder, the current contract for AV7909 facilitates procurement by the SNS, while we seek full FDA approval. And to that end I'm pleased to announce two important updates today on the ongoing regulatory path for AV7909. First, the FDA has agreed to our request for a rolling review of the AV7909 BLA. The rolling review allows us to submit sections of the application to the FDA as they're completed rather than waiting until the entire BLA package is compiled. We anticipate initiating the BLA submission in mid-December. Based on this timing, we anticipate BLA approval by the FDA in late 2022 or early 2023. Second, the FDA has granted orphan drug designation for AV7909. This designation provides development incentives including a waiver of the BLA filing fee as well as potential seven-year marketing exclusivity upon regulatory approval. On the R&D front we recently initiated our pivotal Phase 3 safety and immunogenicity study for our single dose chikungunya vaccine candidate. CHIKV VLP is the only virus-like particle based vaccine candidate currently in development for active immunization against chikungunya disease. The study expects to enroll 3,150 participants in 50 US sites in the coming months. I'd like to congratulate the teams across our organization, who've made this significant milestone possible and who are advancing the development pipeline that will help fuel the long-term growth of the company. We look forward to updating you on this program as we make progress. Finally, with the launch -- the potential launch of a few other Phase I studies anticipated over the next year, as well as continued progress across our auto-injector platform programs focused on chemical threats, I remain encouraged by the contribution of our R&D programs and the effect they could have on our growth in the coming years. Moving next to our CDMO business. I want to highlight that we continue to see growth in this area both related to the pandemic and beyond. We continue to receive interest from both existing clients, and new prospects from small, mid and large-sized companies as well as governments and other organizations. Importantly, we're winning new business across all three service pillars of development services, drug substance and drug product including drug packaging. For example, during the quarter we signed a new five-year agreement with Providence Therapeutics to support its mRNA vaccine development out of our Gaithersburg and Winnipeg facilities. Building off an existing agreement this new baseline agreement is valued at $90 million and uses portions of all three of our integrated service capabilities, demonstrating the value of our integrated molecule-to-market model for customers. We will continue to cultivate growth, expansion and maturation of this core business. With respect to NARCAN Nasal Spray, our focus on the public health threat posed by the opioid epidemic is as strong as ever. Our NARCAN team has worked tirelessly to ensure that NARCAN Nasal Spray is available and affordable as overdoses continue to devastate families and communities nationwide. We remain committed to combating this crisis, not only through our work on NARCAN, but also through outreach efforts and public campaigns to elevate awareness of the dangers of opioids. On the ongoing patent infringement litigation front, recall that the US Circuit Court of Appeals held final oral arguments on August 2 of this year. While timing is up to the appellate court we continue to believe a decision could come by the end of this year. Importantly, in the event of a generic entry we are prepared to launch an authorized generic product in partnership with a large generics company, and are confident in our ability to maintain significant market share. Longer term we see Narcan and more broadly our opioid-related portfolio a core component of our portfolio of solutions impacting public health. Finally, let me update two important corporate updates. First, I'm pleased to announce that we intend to publish our inaugural ESG or sustainability report later this month. The report will provide insight into our environmental, social and governance practices. These include: product quality and patient safety standards; our human capital and employee-focused programs; our existing charitable and volunteer programs; our work to safeguard the environment and health of our communities and employees; as well as our corporate governance and business ethics principles and practices. I also wanted to note that on a personnel front Mary Oates, previously our Head of Global Quality has decided to pursue a new career opportunity and has left Emergent. We're conducting an external search for a new Head of Global Quality. In the meantime, I'm confident, that our team of talented dedicated professionals will continue the important quality advancements made in the last several months. To conclude our third quarter operational results demonstrate, that our business remains resilient and poised for growth, in line with our strategy. We continue on our path of both organic opportunities and potential M&A informed by prudent capital deployment all aimed at generating enhanced shareholder value. With that I'll turn the call over to Rich, who will take us through the detailed results for the quarter. Rich?