Bruce C. Cozadd
Analyst · Barclays
Thank you, Ami. Good afternoon, everyone, and thanks for joining us. We are a little over halfway through the year, and I am pleased to report that we’ve made very real progress executing on our strategy and growing our business. Not only have we closed two significant transactions and expanded our operations and management capabilities, we’ve also broadened our portfolio and made important investments in key products, extended our geographical footprint into Europe, and structured our commercial organization for efficiency and scalability all while continuing to drive top and bottom line growth. Our second quarter financial performance was extremely strong with record revenues of $130 million in the second quarter, more than double last year's second quarter revenues. GAAP net income of $27 million and adjusted net income of $66 million, a 72% increase over the second quarter of last year. While this growth was partially driven by the expanded portfolio from our recent acquisitions, Xyrem was the major driver, posting 11% year-over-year second quarter volume growth. The average number of active patients during the quarter increased significantly to 9,850 from 8,700 from the prior year’s second quarter. We think this strong performance is the result of our ongoing programs to improve compliance and persistency and the focused efforts of our Xyrem-dedicated sales force, which has now been in place for a full quarter. We think there is further room to improve on compliance and persistency measures and we’ve recently been obtain that data at a physician level, which will allow our reps to share with physicians how their patients are doing relative to the overall treated population. Looking ahead, we are now projecting the Xyrem volume growth for the year will be in the low double digits, and we are raising our guidance for Xyrem sales. We have recently begun to increase efforts to improve the awareness and diagnosis of narcolepsy via medical education. In early June at the annual meeting of the Associated Professionals of Sleep Society or APSS, held in Boston, a standing room only crowd of over 400 health care practitioners attended a physician education symposium on narcolepsy. Jazz was the sole sponsor of this (inaudible) event, the first such event at the APSS meeting in over four years. We also issued results of the narcolepsy awareness survey known as Awaken, which highlights the low understanding of narcolepsy among the U.S. public as well as in the medical community. These findings suggest that meaningful opportunities exist to help improve the diagnosis and treatment of this serious disease. We have supported additional independent research, further characterizing the disease and its burden. One such effort includes new data to be presented by Dr. Maurice Ohayon from Stanford, at the upcoming American Neurological Association or ANA, meeting in Boston in early October. Dr. Ohayon's analysis has elucidated for the first time some of the very serious comorbidities associated with narcolepsy, again reinforcing the need for effective diagnosis and treatment. Let me turn now to Erwinaze, the most recent addition to our specialty product portfolio. As a reminder, Erwinaze was approved by the FDA late last year for the treatment of acute lymphoblastic leukemia in patients who are hypersensitive to E-coli derived asparagins. We are pleased to report the second quarter worldwide Erwinaze sales matched with our first quarter level of $33 million and we have increased our original reported forecast range for the full year from $115 million to $125 million to a range of $125 million to $129 million. Note that as the acquisition closed on June 12, only $6 million of Erwinaze sales were included in our second quarter results. A significant majority of Erwinaze sales are in the U.S., where we now have 20 sales representatives and a team of oncology focused medical science liaisons that support the product. The market is highly concentrated with roughly 50% of sales coming from fewer than 30 institutions, including the major oncology centers in the U.S., such as Children's Hospital of Orange County, MD Anderson Cancer Center and Dana Farber Cancer Institute. Erwinaze had strong payer support at both the state and commercial level, and to our knowledge no patient has been denied treatment due to lack of reimbursement. Since approval, approximately 13 hospitals had purchased Erwinaze, suggesting additional growth can be achieved within the currently accepted treatment protocols. We intend to invest in additional medical education, scientific affairs. A particular focus to these initiatives will be to help the medical community and oncology nurses in particular better recognize and detect hypersensitivity to E-coli derived asparagins. With meetings hosted by the Association of Pediatric Hematology Oncology Nurses, or APHON, and the American Society of Hematology, planned for later this year, we have several opportunities to increase the promotional and medical affairs presence for Erwinaze and provide information about its appropriate dosing and administration. Going forward, we anticipate seeing increased utilization of asparaginase-based regimens among the adolescent and young adult populations, reflecting current practice trends and efforts by the National Cancer Institute and National Comprehensive Cancer Network. Over time the adolescent and adult population could be an opportunity for expanded use of Erwinaze. I will now turn to Prialt, the only non-opioid, intrathecally-administered drug approved for severe refractory chronic pain. Prialt sales for the second quarter increased by 12% compared to the year ago second quarter in line with our expectations. This year we have been investing in and executing on three core initiatives. Expanding and training the sales force, increasing medical education and clinical affairs, and optimizing distribution and support services. As you will recall we added ten sales consultants earlier this year bringing our total to 30 and we’ve since implemented an expanded training program. This group is off to a good start with expansion of current and addition of new accounts that help drive Prialt growth over time. We recently implemented a nationwide speaker program and separately we are beginning to provide medical education with several programs planned this fall to improve the medical community's overall understanding of intrathecal therapies available for pain management. We are also increasing our medical affairs focus including building a larger medical affairs staff to support Prialt and pursuing related activities to help improve utilization of Prialt by insuring understanding of its benefits when appropriately dosed. Finally, we are designing a customized, centralized distribution system that we expect to begin implementing through a phased launch starting late this year. We continue to believe that more patients could benefit from Prialt, and we remain committed to increasing awareness of and access to Prialt therapy. I would also like to make a few comments regarding our development pipeline. We are working to obtain U.S. regulatory approval for IV administration of Erwinaze, and we plan to initiate enrollment in the U.S. registration trial this fall with the intent of improving patient comfort and compliance. In the U.S., Erwinaze was administered to patients three times per week via intra muscular injections. Outside the U.S. Erwinaze is often administered intravenously. We anticipate that IV administration will provide significant benefits to patients, their families, and nurse providers. Asparec, a pegylated recombinant erwinia derived asparaginase, is currently being evaluated in a Phase I dose escalation trial in Europe. We are also continuing the development of Leukotac, an anti-CD25 monoclonal antibody intended for the treatment of steroid refractory acute graft versus host disease. Leukotac is currently being evaluated in a Phase III study for which we anticipate results in mid to late 2014. Finally I want to acknowledge the outstanding efforts of all of our employees including our new colleagues from EUSA Pharma. Integration efforts are proceeding well with the U.S. commercial operations of EUSA now incorporated into a new Erwinaze business unit under Russ Cox's leadership, and the international business of EUSA remaining under Brian Morton's leadership. The Azur and EUSA transactions this year have not only brought us great product and product candidates, but also great people who together are committed to achieving our mission to improve patients' lives. Let me now turn the call over to Kate.