Pete D. Meldrum
Analyst · William Blair. Please go ahead
Thank you, Scott. As was announced earlier today after 24 wonderful years at Myriad, I have decided to retire at the end of the fiscal year. This was a very difficult decision for me since Myriad has been an important part of my life for nearly a quarter of a century. I have enjoyed being part of Myriad's pioneering work in personalized and predictive medicine. I feel extremely fortunate to have been a part of the team that played a central role in building this new industry of molecular diagnostics which has such an enormous potential to save lives and improve the quality of life of patients. However, I'm also looking forward to spending more time with my family and friends and focusing on the charitable work of the Meldrum Foundation. Myriad has always placed a high priority on management succession, and I am very fortunate to have been surrounded by an exceptionally talented and dedicated team of executive officers with whom I have had the privilege to work. Among my executive officers, one stands out as an ideal successor to me as Chief Executive Officer. Mark Capone has the experience, the skill set, industry knowledge, business acumen, and leadership style to guide Myriad into the future. Having worked alongside Mark for 13 years, I can think of no one I would trust more with the Company I co-founded 24 years ago. I want to thank Myriad's Board of Directors for their wisdom and guidance over the years. And, in particular, I have enjoyed my partnership with our Chairman, John Henderson. On a more personal note, I will genuinely miss each one of the exceptional Myriad employees who make this Company such a unique and special place to work. I appreciate everything our employees do each and every day to help patients with cancer and major diseases. I am pleased to report that Myriad exceeded the consensus top and bottom line estimates in our second fiscal quarter. Second quarters of a $184.4 million or up 9% on a sequential basis. Of particular note, we continue to be ahead of schedule in our transition from single cancer testing to our myRisk cancer panel with myRisk revenues up 60% sequentially to $85.1 million. Second quarter adjusted earnings per share was $0.40 an increased of 60% over the prior year and exceeded the consensus estimate by $0.05. While this was a strong quarter for the company, we have experienced some recent delays that caused us to revise our guidance for the full year. We are now anticipating fiscal 2015 revenues of $730 million to $740 million and adjusted diluted earnings per share of $1.50 to $1.55. The primary reasons for this guidance change are a lag in obtaining private insurance coverage for Vectra DA, a delay in the timing of Medicare reimbursement for Prolaris, an increase in work-in-process, and the timing of certain contracts in the pharmaceutical and clinical services segment. We believe most of these issues are transient in nature are confident that they will be successfully resolved. And believe they will have minimal impact on our long-term financial outlook. Bryan will discuss our guidance in more detail later on in the call. Importantly we continue to make significant progress on our three strategic initiatives of growing the hereditary cancer market, diversifying our business through new product introductions, and expanding our international presence. During the second quarter, we saw strong sequential revenue growth in our hereditary cancer market segment. Additionally, as Mark will discuss later on in the call, we have laid the groundwork from the laboratory capacity standpoint to fully convert the remainder of our hereditary cancer business to our myRisk test over the next three quarters. We are also making progress on our initiatives to expand the addressable market opportunity in the hereditary cancer segment. At ASCO this year, we plan to present data demonstrating the importance of hereditary cancer testing in the endometrial cancer patient population. Currently, we test less than 5% of the almost 50,000 newly diagnosed endometrial cancer patients in the United States. We also plan to initiate several new clinical studies in multiple cancers which represent new market opportunities for the Company. This quarter, Myriad achieved a major milestone with our BRACAnalysis CDx test receiving FDA approval, becoming the first FDA-approved, complex, laboratory-developed sequencing test. In the words of Alberto Gutierrez, Director of the Office of in vitro diagnostics and radiological health at the FDA, we are very excited that Myriad's BRACAnalysis CDx is the FDA's first approval of an LDT under pre-market approval application. And, it is the first approval of an LDT companion diagnostic. This undertaking was significant and required a substantial investment of both time and Company resources. FDA approval is the highest level of clinical validation in the United States and significantly differentiates the quality of our laboratory when compared to our competitors. Myriad has developed the capability to gain FDA approval of highly complex tasks as one of our core competencies. And this ability will be increasingly important as the regulatory environment evolves in the laboratory industry. This core competency is also extremely important to our pharmaceutical partners who want to reduce their risk as they bring new drugs to the market. Our global sales and marketing infrastructure further position Myriad as a preferred partner in the companion diagnostic arena. Mark will provide more detail on our launch plans for the BRACAnalysis CDx test later in the call. We are also pleased to be granted European CE marketing approval for our tumor BRACAnalysis CDx test which is a companion diagnostic for AstraZeneca’s new PARP Inhibitor Lynparza. Tumor BRACAnalysis CDx is the first and only tumor based companion diagnostics for a PARP Inhibitor to receive a CE mark. This positions Myriad well in the European market, because germline BRCA test would miss more than one-third of the ovarian cancer patients who could benefit from this new life saving drug. Also on the companion diagnostic front we recently presented new data at the San Antonio Breast Cancer symposium. On the ability of our myChoice HRD test to predict which triple negative breast cancer patients are likely to respond to platinum-based therapies. In a study conducted at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute 52% of patients with a high myChoice HRD score responded to platinum drugs compared to only 109% with the low HRD score. We believe this study along with other supporting data provides strong evidence in support of the use of myChoice HRD to guide therapy decisions concerning the use of platinum drugs. Based on the strength of these studies we are planning an early access launch of the myChoice HRD test later this summer. We're also making good progress with our myPlan Melanoma test and I’m pleased to announce that our first clinical validation study has been accepted for publication. Along with the second validation study and our clinical utility study we will have the necessary data to support the submission of a reimbursement [dorssier] to Medicare and the private insurance companies by the end of this fiscal year. While it is difficult to predict the ultimate timing of reimbursement coverage, we are very excited about the potential for this product and have seen robust demand already from dermatopathologists. To-date approximately 10% of all U.S. dermatopathologists are customer for myPath Melanoma. While this quarter’s revenues for Vectra DA was flat, we continue to be excited about the prospects for this test and the auto immune disease market as a whole. Our primary focus at the beginning of this year was to obtain private insurance reimbursement and our progress to-date has been slower than we originally anticipated. However, Myriad’s Managed Care team is now fully engaged and charting a strategy for Vectra DA reimbursement. Additionally we recently hired Bernard Tobin, a seasoned healthcare executive with proven operational track experience to lead Crescendo in its transition from a startup to an operational Company. Bernie had extensive management and sales experience at Amgen and Eli Lilly. Additionally, Bernie has significant managed care experience and was the executive director of national accounts for Amgen. Under Bernie's leadership, we have developed a plan to refocus our sales efforts on broadened payer coverage for Vectra DA. This plan includes sales initiatives such as streamlining the Vectra DA ordering process for rheumatologists, implementing sales strategies similar to our successful protocol integration program first developed in the preventive care market, and employing practice management software tools. These changes will take some time to be effective so we are not anticipating a significant inflection in Vectra DA revenues in the short-term. However, we remain confident in the growth prospects for Crescendo. As a reminder, Vectra DA already has Medicare reimbursement which represents a $600 million market in the United States, and we continue to envision this business as a major component of our revenue growth in fiscal 2016 and beyond. Finally, I'd like to touch on our international progress. As I mentioned earlier, we achieved a major milestone this quarter with the EMA approval of Lynparza and the CE Marking Approval of our Tumor BRACAnalysis CDx test. We believe the European approval of Lynparza will be a major driver for our international business. There is now a significant need to receive test results in a timely fashion, and more importantly, receive results that identify as many ovarian cancer patients as possible who may benefit from this new life-saving drug. We believe that our laboratory in Munich is uniquely suited to this challenge given our significant advantages in tumor tissue analysis, turnaround time, accuracy, and variant classification. Additionally, we have experienced strong revenue growth from our EndoPredict test which was up 80% sequentially. And, our international myRisk revenues enjoyed a record quarter increasing 50% quarter-over-quarter. Our total international revenues were up 118% compared to the same quarter of the prior year. And we are confidence that our international business will become a meaningful contributor to our long-term growth. In conclusion, , we believe Myriad is in an excellent position for strong revenue growth going forward. The investments we have made this year will ensure the durability of our hereditary cancer franchise, will allow us to expand and drive leverage in new, multi-billion-dollar market opportunities, and will lay the foundation for a global footprint. Before I turn the call over to Mark for an operational update, I would like to thank all of you for your support of Myriad and me throughout the years. Mark?