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CorMedix Inc. (CRMD)

Q2 2014 Earnings Call· Fri, Aug 15, 2014

$7.58

-3.13%

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good morning ladies and gentlemen and thank you for waiting. Welcome to the CorMedix, Second Quarter Conference Call. All lines have been placed on listen-only mode and the floor will be open for your questions following the presentation. Without further ado, it is my pleasure to turn the floor over to your host, Mr. Randy Milby. Mr. Milby, the floor is yours.

Randy Milby

Management

Good morning and welcome to the CorMedix, second quarter 2014 conference call. I will begin by providing you with an update on our commercial strategy and operational progress. Then our new CFO, Harry O'Grady, who is here with me today in New Jersey, will provide a more detailed summary of our financial results. Harry has just joined CorMedix and he brings with him a strong track record of financial management in operations and business development, he has experience at Mylan in Specialty Pharma business, Catalent Pharma Sterile business, as well as Bayer Healthcare. I look forward to working with him as the company evolves. I want to thank our Interim CFO and Board Member, Steven Lefkowitz, who has gone above and beyond the call of duty in stepping in to fill this role as we searched for a full time replacement. Steve played a pivotal role not only in managing our financial matters on a day-to-day basis, but also for his significant contributions in structuring financings, reducing the level of our payables and strengthening our balance sheet. First, I want to remind you that this conference call may contain certain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 that are subject to risks and uncertainties. All statements, other than statements of historical facts regarding the management’s expectations, beliefs, goals, plans or the company’s prospects, future financial position and future revenues and projected cost should be considered forward-looking. Our actual results may differ materially from these projections or estimates due to a variety of important factors, including uncertainties related to clinical development, regulatory approvals, commercialization and financial condition. These risks are described in greater detail in CorMedix’s filings with the SEC, copies which are available free of charge at the SEC’s website at www.sec.gov or…

Harry O'Grady

Management

Thank you, Randy. Thank you all again for joining us today. I would like to now review the financial information filed yesterday on our Form 10-Q. As Randy mentioned during the quarter, we continued our roll out of Neutrolin in Germany and recently signed our first strategic partnership agreement. As mentioned on our last call, we expected our cash burn to increase as we began our commercialization of Neutrolin and as a result we ended the second quarter with a cash balance of approximately $7.7 million. I would like to now review our operating results and financial statements. For the quarter ended June 30, 2014, we recorded a gain of $3.5 million. Of this amount $5.1 million were non-cash items; a $5.4 million gain for revaluation of derivative liabilities, offset by $400,000 for stock based compensation. It should be noted that the derivative liability gain is directly tied to the price of our stock, which deceased from $2.51 on March 31 to $1.81 on June 30. The accounting treatment of these derivatives calls for them to be marked-to-market, the change in value flowing through the income statement. So as our stock price rises, the increase in net value shows up as a loss on our income statement. This quarter with the decline in our stock price, the opposite happened resulting in a large gain on our income statement. Please keep in mind that while this accounting treatment are resultant gains and losses on our income statement this quarter, they are not cash expenses and do not impact our ability to fund operations. As Randy noted, we just started our commercial operation. Sales in the second quarter were approximately $40,000, while cost of goods was approximately $54,000. The charges of the cost of goods are not ongoing expenses and as far…

Randy Milby

Management

With that we’ll turn it over to questions. Operator.

Operator

Operator

The floor is now open for questions. (Operator Instructions). We do have a question on the line from Scott Henry, Scott go ahead.

Scott Henry - Roth Capital Partners

Management

Thank you and good morning. I guess starting with EU royalties, roughly 40,000 in the quarter, which was a pretty good jump from Q1, but still pretty low. How should we think about that trajectory in the second half of ’14?

Randy Milby

Management

Thanks Scott. As you heard from Harry, our numbers for the second quarter were not what we expected or hoped; I have to be candid about that. We need to do better, we are still in the early stages of the launch in Germany. Progress has been slower than we anticipated in hemodialysis patients on catheter. One factor is because of the competitive response. We continue to gain patients and the acceptance of Neutrolin and the early adopters have been placing reorders. So as with any launch, we continue to refine our messages and market under those competitive conditions. There are of course both economic and competitive pressures. But we believe we are addressing these with the product characteristics and target messaging. We are going to be – Tony and the German team will be very active in German and at the EU conference and meetings. So I think you can still continue to do ramp. Its still as you know, in phases of a launch. It’s really difficult to project.

Scott Henry - Roth Capital Partners

Management

Okay, but you are starting to see reorders already. Correct.

Randy Milby

Management

Yes, we’ve been seeing reorders. So what you’ve seen is on early adopters there have been a number of reorders and part of it depends on the number of patients they have on catheter and so there’s been reorders from a lot of the bigger centers.

Scott Henry - Roth Capital Partners

Management

Okay, that’s certainly a positive sign. Shifting gears to the U.S. market, I mean what is you’re through in terms of – ideally would you like to partner before the trial starts or perhaps get the trail started and partner at that point. When are you looking towards timing of that U.S. partnership relative to visit to the trial?

Randy Milby

Management

So the question is relative to the partnership in the U.S., whether we do it pre or during. Our strategy is to partner before. We have discussions as you know. We’ve mentioned on our earlier calls. We have ongoing discussions with a number of companies. Now that we have the protocol approved from our earlier discussions, we think that the negotiations with some of these companies will accelerate. That being said, we are also putting external business development people on the task to accelerate the discussions with some of these companies.

Scott Henry - Roth Capital Partners

Management

Okay, great. And then the final question, the deal in Korea, what would be the timeline for getting product on the market there?

Randy Milby

Management

See, they have to go through. The question is there is timeline for the Korean market. They view this product as a medical device and therefore the timeline is a lot shorter. It would take most likely about a year or so to get the regulatory approval, according to their estimates.

Scott Henry - Roth Capital Partners

Management

Okay and how big is that market relative to say Europe or the U.S.

Randy Milby

Management

The hemodialysis in Korea is about the same size, a little smaller than Germany. It’s about 75,000 to 77,000 patients, and the oncology market is 1.2 million patients, about 55% to 60% are solid tumor, so they would be on a catheter.

Scott Henry - Roth Capital Partners

Management

Okay, great. Thank you for taking the questions.

Randy Milby

Management

You’re welcome.

Operator

Operator

The next question comes from Mark Kroenke (ph). (Operator Instructions). Mark.

Unidentified Participant

Management

Hey. Hi, good morning guys.

Randy Milby

Management

Hey Mark.

Unidentified Participant

Management

I was wondering if you could comment on the QIPD status. The potential for that and when would that be granted?

Randy Milby

Management

Question is about the QIPD. Tony do you want to take that?

Antony Pfaffle

Management

Sure. Mark, good morning and thanks for getting up early and at the end of the day it is something that we have been working on and once the IND is accepted, then the application goes in right after that, so within the next 60 days.

Unidentified Participant

Management

Okay and then you guys stated that you have cash until Q3, 2015 and so it sounds like based on how sales are going so far that there will be a gap between that point in time and breakeven, and so are you guys anticipating more dilutive financing next year or do you think you can bridge that gap with some of these deals and partnerships.

Randy Milby

Management

The question is based upon our projections in the third quarter of 2015, if there is a gap. We intent to – one of the things we are trying to. You answered your own question and that is some of these partnerships, we accelerate in the partnerships. We do get up front with some of these partnerships. That’s part of the standard of our package. So that’s one of the reasons we are accelerating some of these partnerships and we feel very confident with the discussions we have in the Middle East and that’s why it always takes a little longer that we anticipate.

Unidentified Participant

Management

Okay, and then one last quick question. know I think an issue on a lot of investors minds is the intellectual property issue in Europe and I know you can’t give strategy or details of what you guys are doing, but could you at least give us a timeframe maybe of when we can expect action to be taken on that.

Randy Milby

Management

The question is relative to our IP in the EU. As I said on these calls, before we do hold that positions in the U.S., Europe and other territories. All I can say is we are confident. We have freedom to operate and commercialize our product in the manner we are now doing and that we are evaluating this path position relative to the activities of the third parties and will defend our intellectual property as appropriate. We have always stated we will defend our intellectual property and our preferences to negotiate versus litigate. So based upon that you can kind of infer that we were under discussions.

Unidentified Participant

Management

Okay. Thanks guys.

Randy Milby

Management

You’re welcome.

Operator

Operator

The next question comes from Doug Schewegel (ph). (Operator Instructions). Doug.

Unidentified Participant

Management

Yes, good morning. I had a question or several questions. First with regards to the South Korean regulatory market, when did you file for approval there and where are we at in that process? You stated the timeline, it takes about a year. Where are we at in the process?

Randy Milby

Management

The question from Doug is the timeline in the Korean market. What we’ve done is for them to file, they need selected documents from us. We’ve submitted all those documents to them. We’ve had discussions about this during the negotiations. So once the deal was signed, we sent them all the documents and they will submit. They will keep us informed about when all that is done. All the package has not been submitted as of yet.

Unidentified Participant

Management

Can you give me some granularity on the IND process? How much more challenging or how challenging is that relative to what we’ve got with regards to the recent approval on the clinical trial.

Randy Milby

Management

So the question has to do with a little more color on the IND process. One of the reasons we brought Dr. Pfaffle onboard full time is because he’s jumped in, spending quite a bit on his time on this now. I’ll turn that over to Tony.

Antony Pfaffle

Management

Thank you, Randy. Doug, good speaking with you and thank you for joining the call. Yes, so the IND process is a process, which in the line of progress has been made and we are on the verger of submitting the IND in a matter of weeks. And once we submit it, there will be a 30 day clock and the FDA will get back to us and they will tell us if its been excepted. And then what happens is our PIND or PIND number or pre IND number gets converted to an IND upon the FDA acceptance of the IND and then we are ready to begin starting the trail. So we have been in close contact with the FDA. We really do appreciate their help and assistance in getting back to us on things like the protocol, which is essential to us filing the IND and we’ve gotten their acceptance to go ahead and file it, and we have been working on it, checking all the boxes on the list. There are numerous boxes, but we well into the process and again, within the next weeks we should be ready to file it, and when we do we’ll announce it.

Unidentified Participant

Management

So again, relative to the process to get the clinical trial design approval, how challenging is the IND process relative to that?

Antony Pfaffle

Management

We think – well, of course we’ll be optimistic, because the FDA has been very positive and we’ve gone back and forth on many conference calls with them from everything from end points to statistics to designs. So we are reasonably comfortable that they know what we are doing and that when the IND is submitted it’s a long list of items. There maybe a request for one of two additional items, I’m not saying that there will be or it may just be accepted out of the box. Again, I can’t predict, other than that its not like okay, we got approval the other day for the protocol and now we’re going to start on the IND. The IND has been a work in progress now for a number of months. So we are getting ready. We don’t want to submit a half page (ph) application. We want to submit a very detailed one and hopefully that will serve us well and we’ll get a good response.

Randy Milby

Management

So Doug, just for me to interject. As Tony mentioned, the IND has been work in progress and what we did was, we took the IDE as you recall. The interim was originally summated in the medical device and they were moved over to the drug division. We too the IDE which has a lot of that background information and then we were able to just update it and modify it according to the requirements for IMD. And as Tony said, even during the discussion, when we are talking with then about the protocol design, we had people working on getting the IND prepared and stretching the boxes and filling in the right information. So we feel pretty comfortable within the next 30 days as Tony said. In all these cases there’s a little back and forth discussions, which is good, because we educate them and they educate us. So we feel as Tony said we are very confident, and that’s why I stated this is within 30 days.

Unidentified Participant

Management

And you still feel they want a timeline to possibly initiate the Phase III trail, assuming reasonably with the IND and being converted from PIND to an IND. Starting the trial in or before the first quarter 2015.

Antony Pfaffle

Management

Yes. We are in the process, Randy and I and a variety of our staff members have been meeting with CROs and EDC or Electronic Data Capture groups that manage the date and we are in the process of eventually selecting one in the short term. So when the IND is accepted, we’ll be ready to hit the beaches running with the CROs. So yes, that timeline is very possible by the end of this year or the first quarter or next year.

Unidentified Participant

Management

Great. And I know you all are very focused with regards to Neutrolin. Could you give us a little more insight with the gel formulation of Neutrolin and its thixotropic properties like with CRMD004?

Randy Milby

Management

So the question has to do with the thixotropic gel. I can hardly say it, but that actually is a great question, because another reason that Tony came on full time is that he is leading a working group on the gel. We feel that the gel has a lot of market opportunities. We’ve met with some dermatologists and some leading physicians and evaluating the different applications of this gel, because we are trying to capitalize upon taurolidine. Taurolidine is the central core for CorMedix and the build out on the taurolidine franchise either through the gel, which we think has a lot of interesting properties for different applications.

Unidentified Participant

Management

Right. Thank you.

Randy Milby

Management

You’re welcome.

Operator

Operator

The next question comes from Scott Landrum (ph). Scott, go ahead.

Unidentified Participant

Management

Hey guys, good morning. Nice call and congratulations. Lot of my questions have already been answered. One quick comment, may be Randy if you could. I see that you’ve been buying stock every month. Could you kind of – I know that it was part of your plan and so maybe some of the investors could see that? And kind of talk about what do you think the total market opportunity is here in the U.S., now that we are on the verge of a Phase III trial is. Thank you.

Randy Milby

Management

Thanks Scotty. So the question, besides the comment about my buying stock, you’ll see that on a regular basis. Because I believe in where the company is today and where its going to be and as you look forward, both what we are doing in the EU, what we are doing in Latin America and in Asia and I am also very positive of the opportunities that that we are going to have in the United States. I’ve been traveling around. I was down visiting with Michael Allon, our Principal Investigator in the University of Alabama, Birmingham. I visited with some physicians yesterday and I think there’s a great opportunity for Neutrolin in this market place, both in hemodialysis, as well as oncology.

Unidentified Participant

Management

All right. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

The next question comes from Bruce Walck (ph). (Operator Instructions). Bruce.

Unidentified Participant

Management

Hey, good morning Randy.

Randy Milby

Management

Hi Bruce.

Unidentified Participant

Management

Quick question. Are we still thinking Q3 for the Middle East or are you going to push that a bit.

Randy Milby

Management

The question has to do with when will the Middle East sign some of their agreements. I wish I knew that answer, but right now I have it my model as third quarter, yes.

Unidentified Participant

Management

Okay, good.

Randy Milby

Management

As you now these last months they were in (inaudible) and then pretty much everything shuts down. But people are back and in September they start working, going though their documents. So we do have things well underway with the number of countries.

Unidentified Participant

Management

And do you have any guess for me as far as market size there.

Randy Milby

Management

I mean, it varies country-by-country. There is a pretty large hemodialysis population and also substantial oncology population. So if you look at the GCC, the Gulf Countries, you can kind of compile those. We’ve always believed in our projections and it’s not quite as large as the EU. The EU and the U.S. are about the same size, but it’s a significant market for us.

Unidentified Participant

Management

I’ve been over there. I know it is probably a concentrated market as well. Some of those countries have probably two or three cities where you might have dialysis centers, that’s about it.

Randy Milby

Management

Yes, that’s especially true in the United Arab Emirates and also in Saudi Arabia.

Unidentified Participant

Management

Thank you.

Randy Milby

Management

You’re welcome.

Operator

Operator

The next question comes from Doug Schewegel (ph). (Operator Instructions). Doug.

Unidentified Participant

Management

Yes hi. This is directed to Randy or Tony. I noticed with the Phase III trial that we are doing it with hemodialysis and then looking at doing it in a smaller sub-segment with the total parental nutrition or TPN. Is there a reason that we chose TPN rather than the (Technical Difficulty).

Randy Milby

Management

The question is related to the second Phase III trial. So I’ll turn this one over to Tony.

Antony Pfaffle

Management

Okay, Doug, that’s a really good question. The reason is because we’ve done an analysis and we are working with – we can’t identify who they are, but three top tier NCI cancer centers in which we have been in a long term discussion with and they have selected that populating, because the type of central line used to pick one percutaneously lends itself best to following the patents, the type of patents you get that line versus (inaudible) and plant the disk or generally have a better performance scores and we can follow them out for a longer period of time. So that’s the rational for it as selecting that type of catheter. In TPN patients generally, those are the ones that need to get extra nutrition, whether its post operative, they have a surgical repair for colon cancers or some other procedures and getting TPN to improve their nutrition and wound healing is very important. So those patients tend to be, of course with acceptance in it for the longer period in terms of fighting their neoplasm and their cancer.

Unidentified Participant

Management

Okay, great. Thanks.

Antony Pfaffle

Management

You’re welcome.

Operator

Operator

There are no other questions in the queue at this time.

Randy Milby

Management

Okay. Thank you everyone for joining the call and I just want to reiterate once again that we will continue to focus on execution. We are in the early sage of commercialization of Neutrolin and expanding into other countries and we’ll expect to see more news and things coming from us in the near term. Thank you very much.

Operator

Operator

This does conclude today's teleconference. You may now disconnect.