Stephen Tang
Analyst · Evercore ISI. Your line is open
Thank you, Jeanne, and thank you everyone for joining us today. I hope you and your families are safe and well. As you will hear today, OraSure continues to successfully navigate the COVID-19 pandemic. Today, we reported record-breaking fourth quarter and double-digit full year revenue growth, driven by our sales of our molecular sample collection kits for COVID-19 testing. In addition, our base business was resilient, with demonstrated strength in sales of our international HIV testing products, which also grew by double digits year-over-year and strong genomics growth in key customers in our disease risk management and companion animal segments. We expect our role in COVID-19 detection to only grow in importance as we've made substantial progress in our rapid antigen self-test for COVID-19. We have locked the proprietary assay chemistry, and completed development, and completed clinical testing. I'm delighted that, we were able to accelerate the clinical trials for the prescription self-test, and now plan to submit for Emergency Use Authorization or EUA, for both a prescription self-test and a professional self-test by the end of the month. We also remain on track to resubmit two separate EUAs for our lab-based oral fluid antibody test and look forward to bringing this pioneering product to market as soon as possible. Revenue from our sample collection kits for COVID-19 molecular testing continues to meaningfully contribute to our business, with full year revenue from those kits totaling $50 million. In the fourth quarter, net revenues of $62.9 million represent the highest quarterly revenue performance in OraSure's history driven by $22.5 million in sales of our COVID-19 molecular sample collection kits in that quarter. We expect this strong sustained performance to persist as testing remains a key strategy to combat the pandemic. Here in the US, the Biden administration has called for more broad testing to turn the tide of the pandemic and proposes dedicating $50 billion in spending to testing. A December Rockefeller Foundation report calls for 300 million tests per month and that's just to safely reopen America's public schools and keep them open. Globally, this number will likely be much larger, because vaccines will not be widely available in much of the world. Multiple tests from multiple manufacturers will be required to meet the massive global need. The emergence of new more contagious variants of the coronavirus underscores the importance of testing as a means to detect infection, especially as the rollout of vaccines encounters logistical hurdles. Dr. Anthony Fauci has said that we will reach herd immunity when 70% to 85% of the population is vaccinated. Currently less than 10% of the US population is fully vaccinated. Globally, the number is far less. And as COVID-19 moves from a pandemic to an endemic disease, we believe people will still need to know their status and test regularly making testing an important part of overall disease management. Also as the virus mutates, surveillance or the genetic sequencing of samples for variant identification will become an increasingly important part of our global coronavirus response plan. We join our industry peers and public officials who believe that testing will remain a key part of our return to normal life of unrestricted gathering and travel even with widespread vaccination. Against that backdrop, OraSure continues to advance its three distinct COVID-19 opportunities: sample collection for molecular testing and surveillance; an easy-to-use rapid antigen self-test; and a lab-based oral fluid antibody test each of which will help accelerate OraSure's growth. Our portfolio of COVID-19 tests and collection kits all feature convenient, pain free, self-collection and can help improve access to testing alleviate the burden on the health care system, minimize exposure risk and conserve personnel protective equipment or PPE. The momentum we've seen from our molecular COVID-19 sales significantly outweighs the challenges that the pandemic presents to other areas of our business. We expect that once commercialized, our antigen and antibody tests will accelerate our record-breaking growth. Use of DNA Genotek molecular sample collection kits continues to grow in back-to-work settings, back-to-school programs, laboratory testing and direct-to-consumer offerings. We are encouraged by the high-volume repeat orders from existing customers as well as demand from new customers. To date, our molecular collection kits are now included in eight EUAs granted by the US Food and Drug Administration to DNA Genotek's customers. We've also received our own FDA EUAs for the use of our OMNIgene ORAL, an ORAcollect RNA collection devices in COVID-19 testing, which allows for the unsupervised use of these devices at home or in health care settings when used as part of an approved or validated at-home test kit. In February, State University of New York announced that their campuses have administered more than one million COVID-19 tests since the start of the 2020-2021 academic year. These tests were developed by a DNA Genotek customer Quadrant Biosciences and uses our ORAcollect RNA collection device. And Clinical Reference Lab has announced that their CRL Rapid Response COVID-19 saliva test, which uses the OMNIgene ORAL collection device is now available through Walgreens Find Care digital health platform. Internationally, the OMNIgene ORAL is being utilized as a collection device by Chronomics for the UK government's Test to Release for International Travel COVID-19 testing program, which was announced in January. In addition both the OMNIgene ORAL and ORAcollect RNA saliva collection devices received interim authorization for use in COVID-19 testing from Health Canada in January. This enables diagnostic labs, health authorities and COVID-19 test kit providers across Canada to offer self-collection both at-home and via health care professionals. These authorizations could be transformative for public health efforts in Canada by adding important tools to increase access to testing. Also of note, OMNIgene ORAL was included in Time magazine's roundup of the best inventions of 2020. Turning to our diagnostic test for COVID-19, OraSure continues to make substantial progress on the development of our COVID-19 rapid antigen self-test. Subject to regulatory authorization, our rapid antigen self-test would detect COVID-19 infection using nasal samples self-collected from the lower nostril. As we've learned from our HIV test, simplicity and ease of use are paramount when it comes to self-test. Our COVID-19 rapid antigen test requires no instrumentation, batteries or smartphone. Users would simply swab their nostrils, swirl the swab and buffer solution and see the result. As I noted earlier, we have finalized product development and completed the clinical studies necessary to submit both the professional version and the prescription self-test version in Q1. We are pleased that the clinical trial results validate our commitment to meeting the high standards we have set for ourselves. The self-test market represents a significant opportunity for COVID-19 testing. And as of Friday, only three self-tests have been authorized by the FDA. Subject to regulatory approvals, we intend to market the prescription self-tests for use by individual consumers with a prescription at-home or in any location by employers and universities on or off-site, or by physicians, or public health authorities via remote testing and the professional tests for use at drive-through sites physician offices, public health testing sites and employer or university health centers. In addition, we intend to continue our plans to pursue an over-the-counter claim with the additional clinical testing required. We are also planning to launch our rapid antigen test outside the US as we anticipate the COVID-19 diagnostic testing market will shift to international markets as US vaccination advances. Moving on to our third COVID-19 opportunity, our lab-based oral fluid antibody ELISA test. Antibody tests are becoming more important as vaccines rollout and the focus on herd immunity increases. Our test has the potential to be the first antibody test authorized by the FDA that uses oral fluid samples. This is an important distinction. Oral fluid samples are easy for individuals to collect. They minimize health care professionals' need for PPE and reduce the exposure to potentially infected patients as compared to blood draws. OraSure's test has been shown in a peer-reviewed clinical study to increase the ability of antibody tests by 25-fold versus blood-based testing. In addition in this study, the OraSure oral fluid SARS-CoV-2 antibody test was shown to have a 90.9% positive percent agreement and 100% negative percent agreement versus serology. With this test individuals would use a collection pad to self-collect an oral fluid sample under the observation of a health care professional. The sample would then be placed in the OraSure oral antibody collection device buffer for storage and transport. It will then later be dispensed onto the OraSure ELISA microplate for testing in a laboratory. This lab-based antibody test can aid in identifying individuals with an adaptive immune response to SARS-CoV-2 indicating prior infection. The test could also aid health officials in community surveillance efforts and seroprevalence studies. At the request of the FDA, we plan to resubmit two separate EUAs for the test: one covering the oral fluid specimen collector; and one for the microplate assay. In addition, the FDA has requested additional analytical studies be conducted on sample collection and stability. These studies are in process and we plan to file the EUAs for this pioneering product as soon as the studies are completed. Meanwhile, we continue to sell our antibody tests for research use only. This has led to interest from several companies and labs that are conducting seroprevalence studies. In addition, our antibody test is being used in studies that are looking at vaccine response. We expect that the antibody testing will become more important as the vaccine rollout continues both to determine vaccine longevity and measure progress towards herd immunity. I'd also like to touch on our ongoing manufacturing capacity expansion efforts, which continue on schedule for all of our COVID-19 activities. In addition, we now plan to add capacity for an additional 50 million rapid antigen self-tests bringing capacity to 120 million tests per year by the second quarter of 2022. This additional capacity is intended to support sales outside the US included in these numbers are approximately 17 million of our existing tests for HIV, HCV and Ebola. Before I turn the call over to Roberto for a report on our fourth quarter and year-end financials, I'd like to note that we are encouraged by the Biden administration's stated commitment to a scientific, organized and centralized approach to COVID-19 testing in the US. We especially welcome the administration's focus on rapid tests and the proposed $50 billion investment to increase the nation's testing capacity. This underscores the durability of our COVID-19 testing opportunities and aligns with our motivation to ensure simple, safe and rapid testing is widely available. And with that, I'll hand it over to Roberto for a report on the financials. Roberto?