Paul Edick
Analyst · H.C. Wainwright
Thanks, Allison. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. Let me start again by thanking everyone who contributed in some meaningful way to us delivering an outstanding quarter for the company, including the patients we serve, the health care providers we enable and the dedicated Xeris team that executes at a high level every day.
The headline for today's call was 22% growth in total revenue versus last year, with momentum already building in the second quarter, giving us confidence to tighten our total revenue guidance, raising the bottom from $170 million to $175 million, making for a great start to 2024.
At a high level, we have continued our strong commercial performance across all 3 of our products. Recorlev, Gvoke and Keveyis together grew net sales by a combined 25% in the first quarter compared to last year. On Monday, we announced another technology partnership entering into a new collaboration and license agreement with Beta Bionics. And you'll recall that in January, we announced Amgen had executed the exclusive worldwide license agreement to develop, manufacture and commercialize a subcutaneous formulation of TEPEZZA using our XeriJect technology in thyroid eye disease.
I'm excited by the momentum we've already generated, the continued momentum into April, and I believe we're well positioned to deliver on all fronts in 2024.
Let's start with the performance of our commercial products in the first quarter. We're going to start with Recorlev today. We grew Recorlev net sales to $10.6 million in the quarter, a 137% increase compared to last year. We're very excited with Recorlev's progress, driving a quarterly record of patient -- for patient referrals and converting those referrals into new patients on drug at a record pace.
As patient referrals continue to grow, the underlying patient demand has shown increasing growth with average patients on drug growing 18% versus the previous quarter and 139% versus first quarter 2023. The number of unique prescribers with referrals also continues to grow. Growth in the first quarter was fueled not only by the significant increase in our patient referral pipeline and new patient starts, but importantly, by a significant increase in the number of unique prescribers who recognize the value in treating patients with Recorlev.
It bears repeating that we see tremendous potential for Recorlev in an increasingly dynamic Cushing's market. The key advantage prescribers recognize with Recorlev versus most other products used in the category is that Recorlev actually treats the underlying conditions in Cushing's by normalizing cortisol levels in the body. Increasingly, prescribers recognize this and that Recorlev is an ideal therapy for treatment of patients with Cushing's. Capitalizing on this momentum, we continue to add to our commercial team and patient assistance resources in support of continued Recorlev growth.
Moving to Keveyis. The Keveyis brand remains incredibly resilient in the face of generic competition. We're off to a much stronger start in 2024 than we anticipated, with Keveyis growing 3% compared to the first quarter last year. I stated last quarter that we expected to see a decline in Keveyis sales in the first quarter and for the year, driven by generic competition and payor resets. This didn't happen as rapidly as we expected. Unpredictably, underlying patient demand for Keveyis remains stronger in the first quarter than we anticipated, which we believe was driven by our continued ability to find and start new patients as well as retain existing Keveyis patients.
This resulted in sales that significantly exceeded our expectations for the quarter. And importantly, we're also seeing this momentum carry well into the second quarter. We are committed to the primary periodic paralysis community and finding new patients continues to be the key to maintaining Keveyis' contribution to our commercial portfolio.
Moving to Gvoke. Gvoke's net sales increased approximately 10% in the quarter compared to prior year, while Gvoke prescriptions grew 27%. This net sales increase was largely driven by Gvoke's gain in market share and the continued growth of the glucagon market in January and February. As of the last published weekly figures in April, Gvoke's share of total prescriptions was over 36%. The total glucagon market started off the year with growth consistent with historical trends as well. For reference, in February, the glucagon market grew a healthy 15% compared to prior year. However, the glucagon market, our script growth, and importantly, the utilization of our co-pay assistance program were all negatively impacted in late February and March when Change Healthcare announced their cybersecurity breach and shut down their claims processing systems.
For those who are less familiar with the situation, Change Healthcare is the largest U.S. clearing house that adjudicates prescription claims between pharmacies and payors. This shutdown essentially prevented the adjudication of many prescriptions by many pharmacies, especially certain chains through normal means starting in February through early April. This meant that many of our retail pharmacies struggled to dispense Gvoke prescriptions and Gvoke patients were unable to utilize our co-pay assistance program for several weeks. Not only did this impact prescription processing, but it also resulted in tightening of inventory by wholesalers. We calculate based on the change in the utilization of our co-pay card that the Change Healthcare cybersecurity breach had as much as a $3 million temporary impact on Gvoke net sales in the first quarter.
To be clear, this unprecedented situation did not have a similar impact on Recorlev or Keveyis as they are dispensed through a single specialty pharmacy that was able to quickly switch to alternate means of prescription adjudication.
Importantly, in late April and early May, we have seen recovery in prescription fulfillment and wholesaler purchases commensurate with script demand. Based on the most recent week of Gvoke new prescription data, new prescription market share for Gvoke has increased to 37%, and we believe the total glucagon market will return to historical growth trends by the end of the second quarter.
To be very clear, were it not for the Change Healthcare situation, we believe we would have exceeded expectations for Gvoke in total product revenue in the quarter.
Moving to our technology platforms. Our XeriSol and XeriJect platform science is growing and increasingly important part of our overall enterprise development. Not only is our formulation science what has enabled the development of Gvoke, and our levothyroxine pipeline product, but it's also enabling a growing number of partnerships that could deliver considerable revenue well into the future.
On our latest partnership, on Monday, we announced that we entered into an exclusive worldwide collaboration and license agreement with Beta Bionics for the development and commercialization of a new and unique XeriSol-based formulation of a liquid stable glucagon for use in bi-hormonal pumps or pump systems. Just to be clear, this is not Gvoke. We are formulating a new glucagon specifically for use in a pump. Through this partnership, we have the potential to receive payments through clinical development and low double-digit royalties on future sales of Xeris glucagon for pumps and pump systems.
Some other notable developments in the quarter, as we announced in January, Amgen executed the exclusive license agreement to develop, manufacture and commercialize a subcutaneous formulation of teprotumumab using our XeriJect technology in thyroid eye disease. With Regeneron, we have completed formulation development for both initial molecules. Regeneron's stability and nonclinical evaluations will take place over the next 6 months. Assuming continued success, that could lead to their potentially executing a license option for further clinical development, commercialization of any of the molecules in the platform, which would trigger additional onetime milestone.
Now on to an update of our XeriSol levothyroxine program, a potential once-weekly subcutaneous injection. We successfully completed the Phase II clinical study and data will be available by the end of the second quarter. As a reminder, this oral dose conversion data will help inform our proposal to the FDA for a pivotal Phase III program. We anticipate requesting an end of Phase II meeting later this year. If we gain alignment with FDA on a Phase III study design, we can start that study as early as mid-2025.
Here is my overriding message today. Our commercial product portfolio is generating significant growth, and we are adding new meaningful technology partnerships. We continue to meet or exceed expectations across the board despite the temporary impact of external uncontrollable events such as Change Healthcare. That continued performance and our future outlook is what gives us confidence in tightening our revenue guidance for 2024. We are raising the low end of our total revenue range from $170 million to $175 million. Our revised total revenue guidance is now $175 million to $200 million.
Our overall strong business performance is also enabling us to make incremental investments in our commercial business, our technology business and our internal pipeline, while maintaining our cash guidance of $55 million to $75 million at year-end 2024. We continue to build a healthy self-sustaining enterprise.
I'll now turn the call over to Steve for additional details on our financial performance.