Earnings Labs

Eton Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (ETON)

Q3 2020 Earnings Call· Thu, Nov 12, 2020

$24.07

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good afternoon and welcome to the Eton Pharmaceuticals Third Quarter 2020 Financial and Operating Results Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Following the formal remarks, we will open the call up for your questions. Please be advised that this call is being recorded at the Company's request. At this time, I would like to turn it over to David Krempa, Vice President of Business Development at Eton Pharmaceuticals. Please proceed.

David Krempa

Management

Thank you, operator. Good afternoon everyone and welcome to Eton's third quarter 2020 conference call. This afternoon, we issued a press release that outlines the topics we plan to discuss on today's call. The release is available on our website, etonpharma.com. Joining me on the call today, we have Sean Brynjelsen, our CEO; Wilson Troutman, our CFO and Paul Stickler, our Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing. Before we begin, I would like to remind everyone that statements made during this call may contain forward-looking statements and involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially, from those contained in these forward-looking statements. Please see the forward-looking statements disclaimer in our earnings release and the risk factors in the Company's filings with the SEC. Now, I will turn the call over to our CEO, Sean Brynjelsen.

Sean Brynjelsen

Management

Thank you, David. Thank you everyone for joining us today. I am excited to share with you the many milestones that we've achieved since our last earnings call, including two FDA approvals, multiple NDA submissions and a successful equity financing. This accomplishment set us up for a strong finish to 2020 and positioned Eton for a transformational year in 2021, as we launch our portfolio of products. One of the most significant events this quarter was the approval of Alkindi Sprinkle, for the treatment of adrenal cortical insufficiency in patients under 17 years of age. We are extremely excited about Alkindi's commercial prospects, and we have assembled a highly experienced commercial team to lead the launch. I will be discussing our Alkindi launch plans in more detail later in the call. We were also pleased to see the approval of Alaway Preservative Free during the quarter. This product is the first preservative-free OTC ophthalmic product approved for the treatment of itchy eyes, caused by allergic conjunctivitis. Bausch Healthcare plans to make the product available by the spring allergy season and Eton will receive a milestone payment upon commercial launch, as well as an ongoing royalty on sales of the product. During the quarter, we also made significant progress with our pipeline. Our announcement today that Ephedrine Injection has been accepted for filing by the FDA, means that now all nine of our product pipeline candidates have been either submitted to the FDA or approved, that would be six submissions pending, three already approved. This is a tremendous accomplishment by our team and a major milestone for the Company. I believe it's unprecedented to see a Company of our age, a little over three years, with this many NDA submissions. In recent weeks, we've also successfully closed an oversubscribed equity financing…

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Andrew D'silva with B. Riley Securities. Your line is now open.

Andrew D'silva

Analyst

Hey, good afternoon. Thanks for taking my questions and congrats on the recent approvals. Just a couple from me. Just to start, as we think about the upcoming launch of Alkindi, can you actually discuss pricing for Alkindi? I understand it's going to be very well based on the patient, but that would be very useful and then, you broke up a little bit, or maybe my phone cut out, what are the number in percentages of covered lives that are in the applicable domestically for Alkindi?

Sean Brynjelsen

Management

Thanks, Andrew for the question. We had previously stated, the patient population, to be more than 5,000, we're further investigating into those numbers and we think it could be up to 10,000 patients in the US. In terms of pricing, we're -- it's priced on a milligram basis and what that means is that the pricing for each patient will be individual, will be different, it's not a, one pricing fits all. I will say that we're well under the main orphan drug cost in the US and we continue to believe the market opportunity to be in excess of $100 million. We do see a quick ramp to achieving a meaningful market share in 2021.

Andrew D'silva

Analyst

Okay. And of that 10 -- upto 10,000 patients, that's 1700, correct?

Sean Brynjelsen

Management

Yes. We've previously stated that the population is in excess of 5,000, now it seems like it's higher than what we, our initial assumptions, which is a positive. I can tell you our excitement for the project and for the commercial prospects are actually much greater today, than they were when we signed the deal.

Andrew D'silva

Analyst

Okay, that's great to hear. And then, and I understand that the difference between the specialists that you're working with for us in the, in Biorphen, do you expect that Alkindi will not run into any of the same headwinds related to COVID-19, primarily physician education and just getting into hospitals to meet the correct decision makers?

Sean Brynjelsen

Management

I'll turn that question over to Paul. In short, the answer is no, I don't expect it. And I don't think there's a comparable -- comparability between those two projects at all. But Paul, why don't you a few comments on that?

Paul Stickler

Analyst

Thank you, Sean. Andrew, thank you for the question. I think the answer is that, we anticipated the possibility of further healthcare provider shutdowns, restrictions and closures. Fortunately, endocrinology has been one of the least affected sub specialties in the United States. Meaning that they've been able to keep their clinical appointments in place remotely, with that in mind, we were able to modify our resource allocation. For example we've added more inside sales support and moderated our outside sales support staffs. We've enhanced our team's ability to interact with health care professionals remotely, while ensuring that we offer a strong non-personal promotional footprint. All that said, we're very encouraged by our early interactions that we've had to date.

Sean Brynjelsen

Management

So, I think the, the short answer there is that, these two products are very different. For Biorphen, there was a resistance to the ampule format, which is not going to be overcome, regardless of whether there was COVID or not COVID, certainly COVID didn't help that launch. But when you, for example, look at the success of the Ephedrine ready-to-use, which is out there, or there is another player that have launched that, they were able to ramp up pretty quickly. And that was also a switch from compounders to a ready-to-use vial. We believe there is comparability here and that the Biorphen vial will be an extremely successful product. It's just obviously going -- we got to get to that conversion process. But the, the real story here and the growth driver for the long term is going to be Alkindi, will be our rare disease franchise and other orphan drugs that we'll be launching, one of which we'll be launching next year.

Andrew D'silva

Analyst

Okay, perfect. And then, just the last a couple of ones from me; I'll put them together. As it relates to our way, should we model in the upfront payment or the milestone payment coming in this quarter, I was under the impression that there might be some just initial changing of inventory that might be recognized as revenue and that could fall into the 2020 year and then, you noted that you reduced the price of Biorphen, could you give a little bit more color around the pricing change? Are you now effectively in line or below what the compounders are charging?

Sean Brynjelsen

Management

Yes, exactly, that's -- that was the idea. There are two reasons why we lowered the price for the ampule. One, is to make preparation for the vial, the vial has, is a higher cost to the vial versus an ampule, so the vial will be slightly higher price and then so by bringing that price of the ampule down to what compounders were charged for compounded medication, made all the sense in the world. Certainly, we think the vial will be a premium product. Just as the Ephedrine for example, ready-to-use, is priced at a premium. So that's that piece of it. And I'm sorry, the second part of your question?

Andrew D'silva

Analyst

With Bausch and the milestone payment [indiscernible].

Sean Brynjelsen

Management

Yes. I do that for -- I mean, if you're going to model it, it's really, they've already announced they're launching it in Q1. So, I would say that would -- I would follow their guidance and whether you put that in January or February, that's up to you.

Andrew D'silva

Analyst

Okay, perfect. Thank you very much and good luck.

Sean Brynjelsen

Management

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Speakers, I am showing no further questions in the queue at this time. I'd like to turn the call back to Sean Brynjelsen, CEO for any closing remarks.

Sean Brynjelsen

Management

Thank you, Operator, and I'd like to thank everyone for taking the time to join us today.

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your participation on today's conference. This does conclude your program and you may now disconnect.