Earnings Labs

Enanta Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (ENTA)

Q3 2017 Earnings Call· Mon, Aug 7, 2017

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good afternoon. My name is Brandy and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Enanta Pharmaceuticals third quarter financial results conference call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers' remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions]. Ms. Miceli, you may begin your conference.

Carol Miceli

Analyst

Thank you, Brandy. And welcome, everyone, to Enanta Pharmaceuticals' fiscal third quarter financial results conference call. The new release with our financial results was issued this afternoon and is available on our website at www.enanta.com. You can also listen to the webcast or the replay by going to the Investors section of our website. On the call today is Dr. Jay Luly, President and CEO; Paul Mellett, Chief Financial Officer, and other members of Enanta's senior management team. But before we begin with our formal remarks, we want to remind you that we'll be making forward-looking statements, including plans and expectations with respect to our licensed products and our product candidates and financial projections, all of which involve certain assumptions, risks and uncertainties that are beyond our control and could cause our actual developments and results to differ materially from these statements. A description of these risks and uncertainties is in our most recent Form 10-K and other periodic reports filed with the SEC. In addition, Enanta does not undertake any obligation to update any forward-looking statements made during this call. I'd now like to turn the call over to Dr. Jay Luly, President and CEO.

Jay Luly

Analyst

Thank you, Carol. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. Enanta is in an exciting period in its development with many milestones and achievements expected in the next several months. And we are in a strong financial position to pursue our ambitious R&D goals. At the end of our June 30 fiscal quarter, we had approximately $235 million in cash and marketable securities. In addition, we earned a total of $65 million in milestone payments, following the approvals of MAVYRET in the EU in July and in the US last week. MAVYRET is AbbVie's new HCV therapy, consisting of the combination of glecaprevir and pibrentasvir or GP. We anticipate GP will achieve commercial regulatory approval in Japan next quarter, which would earn us an additional $15 million milestone payment. We will also continue to earn royalties on AbbVie's net sales of all our collaborations HCV products. With this funding, we are advancing our wholly-owned programs in non-alcoholic steatohepatitis, known as NASH; primary biliary cholangitis, known as PBC; respiratory syncytial virus, known as RSV; and HBV. Our NASH and PBC candidate EDP-305 is a highly selective and potent FXR agonist currently completing a Phase I study. We're aiming to announce data from this study, including pharmacodynamic biomarker data, at AASLD in October. Meanwhile, we're conducting NASH and PBC-enabling clinical studies during the second half of this year. We expect to start a Phase II study in PBC next quarter and we plan to begin a Phase II study in NASH in early 2018. NASH is a complicated disease for which we believe the treatment will likely require a drug regimen using a combination of mechanisms. Our long-term commitment to NASH therapies has led us to conduct additional discovery and preclinical activities, which we hope will provide us a…

Paul Mellett

Analyst

Thank you, Jay. I'd like to remind everyone that Enanta reports on a fiscal year schedule. Our fiscal year end is September 30 and today we are reporting results for our third fiscal quarter ended June 30, 2017. As Jay just mentioned, Enanta ended the quarter with approximately $235 million in cash and marketable securities as compared to $242 million at our September 30, 2016 fiscal year-end. We expect that these cash resources and our potential future royalty revenue stream from AbbVie will be sufficient to meet our anticipated cash requirements for the foreseeable future. The $65 million in milestone payments we have already earned this quarter for MAVYRET approvals in the EU and US will be reflected in our cash resources at our fiscal year end at September 30. For the three months ended June 30, 2017, revenue was $7.5 million compared to revenue of $14 million for the same period in 2016. Revenue in both the current and prior quarter consisted exclusively of royalty income earned on AbbVie's net sales of its HCV regimens, which declined over the 2016 period. Milestone and royalty payments have varied significantly from period to period and we expect that variability to continue in the future. Moving on to our expenses for the three months ended June 30, 2017, research and development expenses were $15.4 million compared to $10.8 million for the same period in 2016. The increase in research and development expense was primarily due to increased preclinical and clinical costs associated with the progression of our wholly-owned R&D programs in NASH, PBC, RSV and HBV. General and administrative expense was $5.2 million for the quarter ended June 30, 2017 and $4.3 million for the comparable quarter in 2016. The increase in these expenses was primarily due to increases in compensation expense, driven by increased headcount. Enanta recorded an income tax benefit for the three months ended June 30, 2017 of $4.1 million compared to an income tax expense of $0.4 million for the same period in 2016. The company's estimated annual effective tax rate for fiscal 2017 of approximately 33% reflects research and development tax credits, which reduce the company's annual effective tax rate slightly below the statutory rate of 35%. For the quarter ended June 30, 2017, we incurred a net loss of $8.4 million or $0.44 loss per diluted common share. Further financial details will be available in our Form 10-Q for this fiscal quarter. I'd now like to turn the call back to the operator and open up the lines for Q&A. Operator?

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Jessica Fye with J.P. Morgan.

Yuko Oku

Analyst

Hi. This is Yuko on the call for Jessica. Thank you for taking our questions. Within the biomarkers you're evaluating for 305's ongoing Phase I study, what will you point to investors as the most important to watch? And what is the magnitude of change you want to see over this dosing period that will give you confidence you'll be able to drive efficacy? And also, from a tolerability standpoint, do you think that Phase I data will give us a good sense as to whether 305 may have better tolerability profile than OCA? And if so, on what measures do you think it might differentiate on tolerability?

Jay Luly

Analyst

Sure. So, with regards to biomarkers, we'll be looking at several different things, drawing lots of labs and looking at various other kinds of markers. Certainly, FGF19 up-regulation and reduction in C4 will probably be a couple of the guiding markers that we and others have used in this field to look at. Regarding magnitude, you should be able to see, hopefully, a dose-dependent effect on these. We studied a wide range of doses. So, we're hoping to have captured that range effectively, but I want to get all the data in and look at it. With regards to tolerability, versus OCA, we will be looking at safety and tolerability as a standard part of the Phase I study. We'll have lipid panels and all the rest that you can imagine. We'll be doing it not only in healthy volunteers, but we're also, as you probably know, looking at it in presumptive NAFLDs. So, we wanted to get into this sort of different patient population that is obese and may or may not have Type II diabetes or prediabetes, so that we could, again, sort of further examine the molecule before going into "full-blown" Phase II studies. So, we'll have the data when we have it. It'll be – I think it'll be as a strong data set from the perspective of we will have looked at safety and tolerability and pharmacodynamic biomarkers in about 150 subjects. So, it's a pretty good size study and the data will be rolling in very soon. And again, our target is to put it out in the October timeframe at AASLD.

Yuko Oku

Analyst

Great, thank you.

Jay Luly

Analyst

You're welcome.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Liisa Bayko with JMP Securities.

Jon Wolleben

Analyst · JMP Securities.

Hi. This is Jon on for Liisa. Thanks for taking the questions. Just a couple of questions on 305 as well. Can you remind us what the split is between the number of healthy volunteers and the presumptive NAFLD in Phase I? I just can't recall.

Jay Luly

Analyst · JMP Securities.

Sure. So, the Phase I has a – in healthies, it's a single ascending dose in healthies and it's a multiple ascending dose in healthies and then it's a multiple ascending dose in presumptive NAFLD. And it's roughly a third, a third, a third.

Jon Wolleben

Analyst · JMP Securities.

Got you. I was just wondering if you had any comments or your takeaways from the recent Intercept data, with the ability to lower LDL with the use of statins, if there's any read-through to 305 with that data set?

Jay Luly

Analyst · JMP Securities.

Well, we certainly haven't looked at statin use with 305 and we don't know whether or not that would even be an appropriate thing to do. As I said in – say, we've got ongoing, we'll be collecting all that lipid data and see what it looks like. Pre-clinically, we've seen some signs that there potentially could be some differentiation there. But at the end of the day, the other clinical trials are what's going to trump everything else. So, I think we just need to get that data in and look at it. I guess it's encouraging from that perspective for Intercept, but that's about all we can say with regards to our program. We just don’t have that data yet.

Jon Wolleben

Analyst · JMP Securities.

And lastly, what are the NASH-enabling studies you have ongoing and what else is left to do before you can actually begin the Phase II?

Jay Luly

Analyst · JMP Securities.

Well, it's really just wrapping up the existing data set, getting the data all analyzed and figuring out what the appropriate doses would be for our next studies on our existing Phase I study, the one we just talked about. And then from a NASH-enabling study, we're doing things like DDI studies, so that we can understand how best to effectively dose EDP-305 in patients who could be on concomitant meds for other NASH-related conditions. So, some of them are just very standard DDI studies. We're also doing a hepatic impairment study, so that we can study the effects of EDP-305 in patients with hepatic impairment. Again, understanding that behavior as well as the DDI behavior will set you up to most optimally enroll from a broader patient population in your Phase II study. So, those studies are all ongoing and, in some cases, wrapping up. So, I think that's where we are.

Jon Wolleben

Analyst · JMP Securities.

Perfect, thank you.

Jay Luly

Analyst · JMP Securities.

You're welcome.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions]. There appear to be no further questions at this time.

Carol Miceli

Analyst

Okay. Thank you, everyone, for joining us today. If you have any additional questions, feel free to give us a call in the office. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.