Jeff Ludwig
Analyst · JPMorgan. Please proceed with your question
Thanks, Alan. Really appreciate it. It is great to be here, and I'm honored to be leading Puma's commercial organization. We are proud of what we have accomplished so far, but clearly know there is much more to do to support patients and their families battling breast cancer. Before I move into the commercial review, just a reminder that I will be making forward-looking statements. During the second quarter of 2020, Puma's commercial access was negatively impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. As we reported on our first quarter earnings call, we did not see an impact from COVID-19 on new patient starts in Q1. However, we did see an impact in mid-Q2. As we previously reported, the number of new patients signing up in April through our specialty pharmacy channel was essentially flat compared to those signing up in March. We did, however, see a decline in May, more specifically, in the latter part of the month, which we believe was due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the stay-at-home orders and quarantines that were in place in various parts of the U.S. This trend did start to recover in June, which we believe may have been related to states beginning to open back up. We are aware of other companies who have drugs to treat early stage HER2-positive breast cancer reporting similar dynamics in May and June. So we believe that this COVID-19 impact may have had a broader impact on the early stage breast cancer market. 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 in-office dispensing channel. In the second quarter, bottles sold in the specialty distribution channel represented approximately 22% of the total bottles sold in the quarter. This is very similar to the 23% we reported in the first quarter. Later in the call, Maximo will review the full financial results, but I will now provide you with the current U.S. sales results. Slide 4 shows U.S. quarterly net sales of NERLYNX since FDA approval. As Alan noted, our net U.S. product sales were $48.8 million in the second quarter of 2020. This is a slight increase over the $48.6 million we reported in Q1 of 2020. Slide 5 shows the bottles of NERLYNX sold by quarter since launch. We sold 3,728 bottles of NERLYNX in Q2 of 2020, which is a decrease of about 7.6% from our reported Q1 2020 bottle sales of 4,035. Now, clearly, we do not like to see bottle sales decline. But as Alan mentioned, we believe this is directly correlated with an approximate one-week reduction in distributor inventory. Our commercial teams have worked very hard to adapt to this new COVID environment, and we are pleased to see that gross demand has stayed flat compared to Q1, despite decreased customer access and reported patient flow impact. As highlighted during our Q1 earnings call, NERLYNX received third line approval for the treatment of HER2-positive metastatic breast cancer. This was clearly an important milestone, as it brought forth an additional treatment option for patients battling metastatic disease. In Q2, roughly 8% to 10% of our new patient starts were in the metastatic setting. The vast majority of our overall business and of our new patient starts continue to be in the larger extended management setting. Alan mentioned that the interim results of the control trial were published online in Annals of Oncology in May. We believe the control data is very important, as it shows that proactive management of diarrhea can significantly improve NERLYNX tolerability by reducing grade three diarrhea and overall discontinuations. Utilizing a dose escalation strategy in the extended adjuvant setting, coupled with PRN loperamide, showed a greater than 60% reduction in grade three diarrhea and an approximate 80% reduction in discontinuation. As you can see in Slide 6, approximately 31% of new patient starts were initiated at a reduced dose in Q2, which is a slight increase over Q1. With the recent publication, coupled with an additional plan communication in Q4, we would expect this trend to continue. We believe that improving the tolerability of NERLYNX and reducing discontinuations should increase the average length of therapy and, ultimately, help patients in their battle with breast cancer. Moving on to rest of the world partnerships, we have formed strategic partnerships with regional pharmaceutical companies that have commercial and regulatory expertise within their respective geographies, with the goal of making NERLYNX available to patients across the world. During 2019, NERLYNX was approved in several countries outside the United States, and this trend has continued in 2020, as seen on this on this slide. Most recently, Specialised Therapeutics received approval in Brunei in April, New Zealand in June, and Malaysia in July. Medison received both regulatory approval and national reimbursement in Israel in Q1 of this year. And just yesterday, CANbridge received regulatory approval in Taiwan. And finally, Pint Pharma launched NERLYNX in Argentina earlier this year, and received approval in Chile in late April. During the remainder of 2020 and beyond, we look forward to the potential for NERLYNX to be approved in additional countries, including in Latin America, Asia, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East. In Europe, in the fourth quarter, our partner, Pierre Fabre, launched NERLYNX in Germany, the United Kingdom, and Austria. Recently, they launched NERLYNX in Sweden and received regulatory approval in Switzerland. Although it is still early, we have been very pleased with their initial success, and we anticipate that Pierre Fabre will launch NERLYNX in several additional countries in Europe throughout the remainder of 2020. We look forward to updating investors on our European progress in the future. I will now turn the call over to Maximo for a review of our financial results.