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PDS Biotechnology Corporation (PDSB)

Q3 2016 Earnings Call· Tue, Nov 1, 2016

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day, ladies and gentlemen and welcome to the Edge Therapeutics Third Quarter 2016 Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After managements prepared remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session and instructions will follow at that time. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. I would now introduce your host for today’s conference, Greg Gin, Investor Relations for Edge Therapeutics. Please go ahead.

Gregory Gin

Management

Thank you, Takea. Good morning everyone and thank you for joining us today. During this call, we will report on Edge Therapeutics' results for the third quarter of 2016. Joining me this morning are members of the management team including Brian Leuthner, President and Chief Executive Officer; Andy Einhorn, Chief Financial Officer; and Dan Brennan our newly appointed Chief Operating Officer. Brian, Dan and Andy will make brief prepared remarks and then we’ll open up the call for Q&A. Before we begin, note that the press release we issued this morning is available on our website at www.edgetherapeutics.com. In addition, the live webcast of this call is also available on our website. To access the website, click the Investor's link on the top navigation menu, then click on New & Events, then Events & Presentations on the left navigation menu. There will be taped replay of this call which will be available approximately two hours after the call's conclusion and will remain available for seven days. The operator will provide the replay instructions at the end of today's call. Today's conference call may contain certain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. To the extent that any statements made on this call contain information that is not historical, these statements are forward-looking and are not guarantees of future performance and involve risks and uncertainties including those noted in this morning's press release and Edge's filings with the SEC. Investors, potential investors, and other listeners are urged to consider these factors carefully in evaluating the forward-looking statements and are cautioned not to place undue reliance on such forward-looking statements. Actual results may differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements. Edge specifically disclaims any intent or obligation to update these forward-looking statements except as required by law. And with that, I will now turn the call over to you Brian. Brian?

Brian Leuthner

Management

Thanks, Greg. Good morning everyone and thanks for joining us today. Let me start by saying that we’ve delivered solid execution against key priorities in the third quarter. Our primary focus during the quarter was activating clinical sites for our Phase 3 NEWTON 2 study of EG-1962 and commencing the enrolment of patients in these sites. I am pleased to report that we now have multiple sites, including many leading academic centers actively screening patients in many sites of already enrolled patients into this study. As we look to enrol the NEWTON 2 study as quickly as possible, our goal is to activate as many of the leading ruptured brain aneurysm treatment centers around the world as we can. This process of bringing clinical studies sites on board to screen patients is going very well. This is due to the high level of interest among the sites in the NEWTON 2 study and the outstanding efforts of the entire Edge team and our partners. We are pleased with our accomplishments and for more specifics on the sites that we now have screening enrolling, please go to clinicaltrials.gov. A key point regarding our NEWTON 2 sites is that not only are these among the top academic centers throughout the world, but these sites also have experienced conducting clinical trials including some in the original NEWTON study. We are confident that the leading investigators in the field and the entire volume centers that are part of NEWTON 2 have the necessary quality controls in place to ensure a perfect patient selection and protocol [ph] this year. We expect all of the sites participating in the NEWTON 2, hence they should be up in running in the first half of 2017. During this quarter, we hosted NEWTON 2 investigator meetings with neuro surgeons,…

Daniel Brennan

Management

Thank you, Brian and good morning everyone. It’s a pleasure to be here on my first Edge Therapeutics earnings conference call. While I've only recently joined Edge, I can tell you that I'm excited to be working with the team to continue to advance EG-1962 to the NEWTON 2 Study and develop the pre-commercialization, commercialization strategies and the organization that will enable us to rapidly advanced EG-1962 if approved to people who are truly in need. In fact I recently have the opportunity to talk to several individuals from large academic centers about the join the NEWTON 2 Study including the head of neurosurgery and clinical coordinators and managers. And they were very enthusiastic about the getting this study up and running at their sites and to begin screening for patients. My experience with hospital-based therapies, CNS therapies and multiple orphan designated drugs along with my commercial launch and business development expertise will complement the already strong foundation in place here at Edge. Previously, I served as Chief Operating Officer for Insys Therapeutics from 2015 to 2016. From 2009 until 2015 I was the Vice President and Group General Manager of Lundbeck U.S. Neurology Business Unit and Business Development Group. During which time the Lundbeck U.S. Neurology group launched four specialty orphan products and achieved growth and sales from 60 million to 820 million annually. Prior to that I was at Abbott Laboratories serving as a divisional Vice President and General Manager of the Acute Care Hospital Business Unit, responsible for more then 80 commercial personnel and 240 million in hospital-based pharmaceutical fills [ph]. I also served in various sales, marketing and new product development roles for Eli Lilly from 1997 through 2007 which included positions and training in Lean/Six Sigma and Global Hospital Critical Care Commercialization. I look forward to sharing updates with you in the future about Edge's pre-commercial preparations and activities, market development activities including the health economic assessment of EG-1962 and other corporate progress. And now, I'll turn it over to Andy for the financial review.

Andrew Einhorn

Management

Thank you, Dan, and welcome to the team. I'm pleased to report that Edge continues to be in a strong financial position. As we reported in our press release cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities total to $112.8 million as of September 30, 2016 compared to a $130.2 million as of December 31, 2015. Research and development expenses in the third quarter were $6.7 million inclusive of approximately 567,000 of non-cash stock compensation expenses. This compares to $6.5 million of R&D spending for the third quarter of 2015. General and administrative expenses were $3.6 million for the third quarter including approximately $666,000 in non-cash stock compensation expense as compared to $2 million for the third quarter of 2015. We reported a net loss of $10.8 million for the third quarter as compared to a net loss of $10.1 million in the third quarter of 2015. The increase net loss in the third quarter reflects the aforementioned higher levels of R&D and G&A expenses. As of October 28, 2016 we had 28.9 million shares outstanding. As we look to the balance of 2016 we expect our operating expenses to increase as we progress of NEWTON 2 Phase 3 Study of EG-1962 and as we continue to advance our other development programs and build out our infrastructure. Based on our current plans, we ended the third quarter with cash resources that we expect to be sufficient to fund our operations to and beyond on the full data readout from our NEWTON 2 study which we estimate to be in the fall of 2018. So, we feel we are well capitalized and currently have no immediate financing plans. Before I hand the call back over to Brian, I'd like to note that we filed our Form S-3 Universal Shelf Registration Statement for $200 million with the SEC on October 21st. The Shelf Registration Statement was filed as soon as practical following our one year anniversary of Edge's initial public offering which occurred October 2015, which is a commonly utilized practice. Importantly, the registration provided the opportunity to maintain maximum flexibility to manage our balance sheet and our business and to raise funds in a prudent manner as conditions and opportunities dictate while we continue to execute our growth strategy. As stated in our Form S-3 and e-proceeds [ph] raised the sales of securities under this shelf are intended for general corporate purposes including research and development, general and administrative expenses, working capital and capital expenditures. At this point, I'll turn the call back over to Brian for closing remarks before we take questions.

Brian Leuthner

Management

Thanks, Andy, and thank you again for joining us today. We appreciate your continued support and look forward to updating you as we continue to advance through to another development of Edge. To summarize, we remained steadfastly focused on the key objective for Edge and that's mainly the execution of the NEWTON 2 study. And we're also well equipped both from a management and the financial perspective to execute on our development and our commercialization strategy for EG-1962. We are poised to advance a second development programs that's the interest external administration of EG-1962 enter the clinic in the fourth quarter of this year as well. So operator, we're ready now to take some questions.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] And our first question comes from Joseph Schwartz of Leerink Partners. Your line is now open.

Joseph Schwartz

Analyst

Thank you, and congratulations on a very productive first year as a public company. aSAH patients have a lot of issues when they present for treatment, so I was wondering what you're doing to ensure that they are manage consistently in the NEWTON 2 study. I'm thinking as much as controlling variability in the oral nimodipine control arm as well as ensuring that we see the most out of 1962?

Brian Leuthne

Analyst

Sure. Hi, Joe. Thank for the question. I think as I mentioned the key here is to really focused on site selection and make sure that the sites were here to making sure that we have the protocol and they're following the protocol and they're really fed up [ph] to do clinical trial. So, we've really focused on getting the right site. These are sites they have. Many of them or most -- all of them have done clinical trials. Many of them have done trials in subarachnoid hemorrhage and many of them also are the NEWTON – the Phase 2 study site. So, that's really what we're doing to ensure that there is consistency around treatment practices.

Joseph Schwartz

Analyst

Okay, great. And then is there a certain profile of aSAH patients that you want to have enrolled in NEWTON 2, and so what are doing to ensure that you have the right kinds of patients. Are you also doing any kind of stratification amongst the patients that are screened or enrolled?

Brian Leuthne

Analyst

Sure. And a couple of the other things on your last question as well. As you know there are treatment guidelines around how to manage these patients. So again we're focus on these sites to have experience. And as far as patients that we're looking at, sure, we talked about in the past and many of you've heard one of the key predictors of how patients would do at 90 days is their consciousness level when they come into the hospital and that's referred to the scale to use as the World Federation Neurological Surgeon. And we're making sure in this study that the protocol looks for WFNS of two through fours which we believe clearly the more salvageable group in the patient to have an EVD. So, we'll be stratifying by the WFNS in this study.

Joseph Schwartz

Analyst

Okay, great. Thanks for talking my questions.

Brian Leuthne

Analyst

Sure. Thank you for the question Joe.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And our next question comes from Jason Butler at JMP Securities. Your line is now open.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Hi. This is Harry [ph] on for Jason. Thanks for taking the questions. I just have two questions. One, if you could provide some more detail in the design and protocol for the 12th patient open-label intracisternal trial. And second for Dan, given the kind of Pharmco economic benefit does it shown in the NEWTON for EG-1962. How are you thinking about positioning that to formulated committees? Thank you.

Brian Leuthne

Analyst

Sure. Harry, can you repeat, I'm sorry, I got your question for Dan.

Daniel Brennan

Management

What was that first question, again?

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Yes. Sure. Just some more color around the protocol design for the 12th Patient Open Label intracisternal trial?

Daniel Brennan

Management

Sure. Good question. So, on the cisternal, that's going to be very similarly design to the NEWTON study. You know, we're going to be looking at the safety in the PK. The only difference is that we're going to be looking at WFNS-1 and 2 patients that do not have an external ventricular drain so that these patients who undergo microsurgical clipping they do not have an EVD and there will be WFNS-1 and 2 because that we obviously didn't want to cannibalized patients in our NEWTON 2 study.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Great. Thanks.

Daniel Brennan

Management

For the question on the health economic analysis, obviously this is early days not only for me but also early days from thinking through this entire model, but we are doing work on that, and obviously with the NEWTON 1 study if there is data that replicates the reduction in hospitals day, the reduction in ICU days that will all go into the analysis. And moving forward into formulary discussions they'll be champions from the neurosurgery level, as well as analysis that we'll put together from a model that includes those types of outcomes that we see against the Standard of Care which is oral nimodipine and we'll bring all that together and have that available for the formulary committee to consider.

Brian Leuthne

Analyst

And considering Dan, just started a couple weeks ago, clearly the health economic is one of the things that we're looking at. We're really just starting to dove in and understand the patient journeys and all of the different aspect that are involved when you look at these patients, but we're glad to have him on board and he's been digging in already.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Okay. Thanks.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And our next question comes from Muriel Chen at Guggenheim. Your line is now open.

Muriel Chen

Analyst

Hi. Thanks for taking my questions. There are few here. So first question just on the intracisternal delivery, can you talk about the market opportunity there and how that competes with your existing opportunity or adds to it. And then second thing is on 1964 and of for 1963, do you have an additional updates on those products. And then last question that we get a lot, I just wondering if you could help with this. People ask us even though the NEWTON trial was open-label what gives you confidence that the results are predictive for the Phase 3 studies? Thanks.

Brian Leuthne

Analyst

Let's focus on first on cisternal. So, as you know with our current NEWTON 2 study we're looking at patients to have an external ventricular drain and based on our research we've done that's not 50% of the total number of patients that have aneurysmal subarachnoid hemorrhage, in fact I was down at a site visiting a customer, -- said to a customer recently and he said, okay how can we get those other 50% that may benefit from EG-1962? And clearly the first way is those patient that undergo clipping and don't have an EVD, the doctor have direct access underneath their brain so that they could administer this medicine right in to the base of cisterns where some of the blood is sitting and everything. So, we are actually one of the things we've asked Dan to do also is to determine what percentage of that other 50% do these patients make up, so we're still working on getting the exact numbers. Clearly it's not the whole 50%, it's less than that. But we're evaluating that exact number as far as quantifying it to give you guys some guidance. Clearly around external doctors ask about this question all the time. But right now, it’s a tough number to get quantitatively because there's no great store that look to all the patients and then cuts out those patients that don't have an EVD, that undergo microsurgical clippings that don't undergo on... So along with [Indiscernible] we're trying to assess the actual percentage amongst that other 50%, but we're again we along with our customers are potential customers are trying to help to tone in on that number. Second thing is EG-1964 for those of you that know about that, that is to prevent the recurrent bleeding after which is…

Muriel Chen

Analyst

Okay. Thank you.

Brian Leuthner

Management

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] And our next question comes from Vamil Divan at Credit Suisse. Your line is now open.

Vamil Divan

Analyst

Great. Thanks so much for taking my questions. So, just want to sort of following up on some of the comments that you just made in the other questions. In terms of the sites, I think you said there is 65 sites that are in the NEWTON study around that number. How many of those were in the prior studies you have done prior work with the product? And then second, can you just provide me with one other question you gave sometimes is around the orphan status oral suspension has, so can you just maybe update us on where, how that will play out and you mentioned somewhere you think you would be clinically relevant efficacy results if you hit those results with that exclusivity that may exist pretty other product. Thanks.

Brian Leuthner

Management

So thanks Vamil. First question on the sites is, yes, almost all of them; all of the sites that were in NEWTON are going to be transferred into and will be a part of the NEWTON 2 study. So we felt there was an easy transition and frankly all of the sites wanted to be part of the NEWTON 2 study, so that’s their perspective from our sites and yes, we are looking for about 65 sites or so throughout the world, North America, U.S. Canada, Europe, parts of Europe and then also in Austro Asia. Now, regarding the orphan as you know we’ve been granted orphan I think your question was around the -- there is an all suspension out there and you know our philosophy and we’ve had discussions with them, yes is that the standard of care right now are the oral Nimodipine gel caps. And when we submitted the protocol for our NEWTON 2 study the FCA accepted that the capsule or the competitor for our study as standard of care. So with that said, you know our plan is to go forward and go head to head against the standard of care which is oral Nimodipine the gel caps and go from there, so that’s our plan and we believe that by showing assuming that we show superiority versus the oral Nimodipine gel caps that that will be sufficient to receive approval, so...

Vamil Divan

Analyst

Okay, thanks a lot.

Brian Leuthner

Management

You’re welcome. Thank you, Vamil.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. I’m showing no further at this time. I’d like to turn the call back over to Mr. Brian Leuthner for closing remarks. Sure. Thank you very much. And again, I’d just like to conclude by saying you know we appreciate everyone who joined us today in the call and we look forward to continue to give updates on the progress of the NEWTON 2 study as well as the cisternal study as we continue to move forward. So thank you very much and have a great day.

Operator

Operator

This conference will be available for replay after 11:30 PM Eastern Standard Time today through November 15, 2016, 11:59 PM. You may access the replay system at any time by dialing toll number 404-537-3406 or toll free at 888-266-2081. Thank you for your participation in today’s conference. This concludes the program and you may now disconnect. Everyone have a great day.