Alan Auerbach
Analyst · Citigroup
Thank you, Mariann. And thank you all for joining our call today. Today Puma reported total revenue for the first quarter of 2020 of $51.2 million. Total revenue consisted of license revenue of $2 million, royalty revenue of $0.6 million and net sales of NERLYNX of $48.6 million. Net sales of $48.6 million in the first quarter of 2020 and represented a decline from the $58.7 million in net sales reported in the fourth quarter of 2019 and an increase of 6.7% from the $45.6 million reported in Q1 of 2019. I will begin with a review of some of the highlights of the quarter and then provide more details on NERLYNX' commercial activities in the US. Maximo Nougues will follow with highlights of the key components of our financial statements for the first quarter of 2020. As investors are aware, in the second quarter of 2019, we presented results from our Phase III trial of neratinib in third-line HER2-positive metastatic breast cancer also known as the NALA trial at the American Society of Clinical Oncology Annual Meeting in June. Based on the results of the NALA trial, Puma filed a supplemental new drug application or sNDA for neratinib, for the treatment of third line HER2-positive metastatic breast cancer in June of 2019. The sNDA was accepted by the FDA in September 2019 and NERLYNX was approved in this indication in February 2020, two months before our anticipated PDUFA date. As investors are also aware Puma has an ongoing basket trial of neratinib in HER2 mutated cancers referred to as the SUMMIT trial. The SUMMIT trial was modified in early 2020 and such that ER-positive HER2-negative breast cancer patients, who have a HER2 mutation, will be randomized to receive either fulvestrant alone, fulvestrant plus trastuzumab and or the combination of neratinib plus fulvestrant plus trastuzumab. Each arm of the amended study will initially enroll seven patients during stage 1 and if no patient in a given arm responds that arm will be closed for further enrollment. If in the first stage one or more patients respond, the cohort will then be expanded up to 18 patients. If less than four patients in the expanded arm respond that arm will be closed to further enrollment. If more than four patients respond, the arm will be expanded and further patients will be enrolled. The amendment to the SUMMIT protocol has been approved by many of the clinical sites that are participating in the study. Enrollment into the ER-positive HER2-negative cohort in Q1 of 2020 was slightly higher than enrollment to this cohort in the fourth quarter of 2019 and did not appear to be impacted during the month of March due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Enrollment in the month of April, however, did decline to a level that is toward the lower range of the range of monthly enrollment that was seen in this cohort during 2019. We believe that this decline may be due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Based on this, we anticipate that we will receive the initial results from the Simon two-stage trial in Q1 of 2021. Once we receive these initial results, we plan to schedule a pre-NDA meeting with the FDA and to discuss the potential for accelerated approval. Over the past 6 to 12 months, Puma has been making a number of key additional hires in order to strengthen our commercial presence with NERLYNX. Most recently in late March, we announced that Jeff Ludwig joined Puma as the Chief Commercial Officer. Jeff brings with him extensive experience in commercial sales and marketing in oncology, including previous positions at Astellas and Amgen. Jeff has led multiple sales teams across several successful launches of oncology therapeutics and we are pleased to welcome Jeff to Puma and look forward to working with him to grow the NERLYNX commercial franchise. I will now review our US commercialization progress for NERLYNX. Just a reminder, I will be making forward-looking statements. As you may recall, we have two channels that provide NERLYNX to patients. We refer to these as our specialty pharmacy channel and our specialty distributor channel or also referred to it as our in-office dispensing channel. In the first quarter, bottles sold in the specialty distributor channel represented approximately 23% and of the total bottles sold in the quarter. This represents a slight increase from the 22% we reported in the fourth quarter. During the fourth quarter, we also noted an increase in the number of new physicians in the specialty pharmacy network, writing prescriptions for NERLYNX. The total number of NERLYNX prescribers increased approximately 6.8% in the first quarter of 2020 and compared to the total number of NERLYNX prescribers in the fourth quarter of 2019. Later in the call, Maximo will review the full financial results, but I will now provide you with the current sales results. Slide 4 shows our quarterly net sales of NERLYNX since FDA approval. As I previously stated, our net product sales revenue was $48.6 million in the first quarter compared to $58.7 million in net sales reported in the fourth quarter of 2019. During 2019 at the American Society of Clinical Oncology Annual Meeting and the San Antonio breast Cancer Symposium, we presented data from our control trial showing that using dose escalation during the first month of NERLYNX treatment reduces the grade-3 diarrhea associated with NERLYNX and improved tolerability. As you can see on slide 5, the percent of new prescriptions that appear to be using this dose escalation technique continues to increase, and in fact increased from 28.7% in Q4 of 2019 and to 30.4% in Q1 of 2020. Slide 6 shows the total bottles of NERLYNX sold by quarter. You will notice that the number of bottles sold in Q1 declined sequentially from 4,935 in the fourth quarter of 2019 to 4,035 in the first quarter of 2020. As we noted in our Q4 call in February, during the fourth quarter, there was an increase in inventory purchased by the specialty pharmacies, which accounted for about $5 million in increased inventory. During Q1 of 2020, the specialty pharmacies drew down some of this excess inventory to meet demand, which may have negatively impacted our bottle sold during the quarter. In addition, as we also mentioned on our call in February, we saw a decline in NRx in the fourth quarter of 2019 that occurred mostly during the Thanksgiving Christmas and New Year's holidays, which we believe may have been due to patients delaying starting NERLYNX until after the holidays. This may be due to patients wanting to avoid potential GI side effects, which tend to occur with the greatest frequency in the first month or so after initiation. As we also discussed on our call in February, we did indeed see a large increase in the number of new patients signing up to the specialty pharmacy in January. As we have discussed with investors in prior earnings calls, when these new patients sign up through specialty pharmacy it takes approximately two weeks for the patient to actually receive their prescription and for Puma to see the NRx. Although, therefore, although there was a sharp increase in the number of patients signing up through the specialty pharmacy in January. Due to this delay actual NRxs started out lighter than expected and may have negatively impacted our total bottles sold in the quarter. We did see this trend move in a more positive direction in late January and early February. NRx in the first quarter of 2020 increased 7.9% from the fourth quarter of 2019 and while TRx in the first quarter declined 6.3% from the fourth quarter of 2019. We believe that the previously mentioned trends involving delays in NRXs in January may have negatively impacted refills in the first two months of the quarter resulting in a TRX decline quarter-over-quarter. Refills did pick up in March leading to a 12% TRX increase in March versus February. In April, the number of new patients signing up for the specialty pharmacy was essentially flat with the number signing up in March. However, we are remaining conservative in our outlook for whether or not COVID-19 will have a negative impact on sales. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, our commercial teams have experienced a decline in our access to physicians and health care providers. Our teams have worked hard to adapt to this new environment with an increase in non-personal promotion and virtual interactions. With that said, there still remains a significant amount of uncertainty as to when states will open up and what access restrictions will be lifted. Given this level of uncertainty, we are taking a conservative outlook with regard to future sales trends. We will continue to monitor these trends closely and look forward to updating our investors in future earnings calls. We have formed partnerships with companies that have commercial and regulatory expertise outside the United States in order to make NERLYNX available to patients across the world. During 2019, NERLYNX was approved in several countries outside the U.S. and Europe as is seen on the slide. This morning we were pleased to announce the approval of NERLYNX in China. During the remainder of 2020, we look forward to the potential approval of NERLYNX in additional countries including parts of Latin America and South America as shown on the slide. In Europe in the fourth quarter, our partner Pierre Pharm launched NERLYNX in Germany, the United Kingdom and Australia. Although it is still early we are very pleased with their initial success. NERLYNX was launched in the first quarter in Sweden and we anticipate that Pierre Pharm will launch NERLYNX and approximately eight to 10 additional countries in Europe throughout 2020. We look forward to updating investors on the European launch in the future. Most recently on April 30th, we reported the signing of a license agreement with Bixink Therapeutics, a South Korean company focused on anticancer drugs and therapeutics that will commercialize NERLYNX throughout the country. I will now turn the call over to Maximo Nougues for a review of our financial results.